The vegetable productions of Florida are particularly de serving of notice, both for their wonderful variety, and lux uriant growth. Nothing can exceed the majestic appear ance of its towering forest trees, and the brilliant colours of its flowering shrubs. The pines, palms, cedars, and ches nuts, grow to an extraordinary height and size. The lau rels, especially the magnolias, are uncommonly striking ob jects, rising with erect trunks to the height of 100 feet, forming, towards the head, a perfect cone, and having their dark green foliage silvered over with large milk white flowers, frequently eight or nine inches in diameter. The live oaks, after forming a trunk from ten to twenty feet high, and from twelve to eighteen in circumference, spread their branches fully fifty paces on every side. The cypress, generally growing in watery places, has large roots like buttresses, rising around its lower extremity, then rearing a stem of eighty or ninety feet, throws out a flat horizontal top like an umbrella, so that often growing in forests all of an equal height, they present the appearance of a green canopy supported upon columns in the air. The dog-wood trees rise to the height of twelve feet, then spread their branches horizontally, which, meeting and interweaving with others on every side, form a shady grove, so dense and humid, as completely to exclude the rays of the sun, and to suppress the growth of any other vegetable, thus presenting to the traveller a natural shelter, frequently ex tending for the space of ten miles without interruption. But the most beautiful of the forest tribe, is the tapering carica papaya, which rises to the height of twenty feet, with a stem perfectly straight, smooth, and silver-coloured, hav ing a spherical top of leaves always green, and ornamented at once with flowers and fruits. Many rich fruits, parti cularly limes, prunes, peaches, and figs, grow wild in the fo rests; and grape vines, whose stems are often ten or twelve inches in diameter, climb around the trunks of the trees to their very tops, but those which produce the best fruit creep along close to the ground from one low shrub to ano ther. Among the shrubs may be particularly mentioned a species of myrica, called the wax tree, which grows to the height of nine or ten feet, and produces a number of large round berries, covered with a coat of white wax, which is formed by the inhabitants into candles, harder and more lasting than those made of bees wax. Of the numerous flowering plants, we can only particularize a species of hy biscus, wl.ich, though a herbaceous plant, renewing its stem every year, yet grows to the height of ten or twelve feet, branching regularly in the form of a sharp cone, and is co vered with hundreds of large expanded crimson flowers, which blow in succession during the whole of the summer and autumn months. That singular vegetable production, generally called the long moss, which is found in most countries within the tropics, is remarkably prevalent in the woods of Florida. It grows from the limbs and twigs of all the trees, and pushing out on all sides its pendant branches, sometimes fills up, as with a curtain, the spaces between the arms of large trees, and, at other times, waves from the lower limbs like streams, to the length or fifteen or twenty feet. Wherever any part of it fixes upon the bark, it presently takes root as readily as if it had sprung from the seed. When fresh, it is eaten by the cattle and deer in the winter season ; and when properly dried, it is found to answer better than any other substance for stuff ing matrasses, chairs, saddles, &c. When steeped, dried, and beaten like hemp, it leaves a hard, black, elastic fila ment resembling horse hair, which the Spaniards in South' America work into cables, that are said to be very strong and durable. In the marshes and banks of the lakes and rivers, the reeds and rushes grow to an extraordinary size, some of the former being actually 30 or 40 feet high, and being used as masts to the canoes ; but among the aquatic plants, the Pistia stratiotes is particularly worthy of notice. It resembles a well-grown stock of garden lettuce, and ve getates from seed on the surface of stagnant water ; but, associating in large quantities, it forms floating islands, which, though first produced close to the shore, are some times carried by the wind or current into the river, where they are nourished by long fibrous roots descending to the muddy bottom ; and then extend themselves like a green plain, several miles in length, and a quarter of a mile in breadth, furnishing a habitation to crocodiles, frogs, otters, herons, curlews, &c.
The principal vegetable productions regulatly cultivat ed for the subsiqtence of the inhabitants, are corn, pulse, particularly beans, potatoes, pompions, melons, rice, and a variety of esculent roots, particularly a species of arum, which is much cultivated in the maritime districts, and has a large turnip-like root, resembling when boiled or roasted the taste of the yam. Tobacco, cotton, and in digo, are raised in considerable quantities ; and the last mentioned article, made in East Florida, is accounted equal to the best Spanish produce. Among the mineral
productions of this province are found several kinds of precious stones, amethysts, turquoises, and lapis lazuli. Ochre, pit-coal, and especially rich iron ore, are very abundant. Near to New Smyrna, a thriving settlement on the Musquito river, is a vast hot mineral spring, issuing from a high ridge on the bank of the river, with great force, and in such abundance as to fill a circular basin, capacious enough for several shallops to ride in it. The water is of a sulphureous nature, and covers every inanimate sub stance deposited in it, with a pale bluish coagulum ; but it is remarkably diaphanous, and the numerous fishes, which subsist in this tepid stream, are seen at a consider able depth with the greatest distinctness.
Tile country is stored with creatures fit for the use of man, without producing many that are very formidable, either from their ferocity or strength. There are rabbits, squirrels of several species, of which ate remarka bly beautiful), racoons and opossums, which are accounted very delicious food ; herds of deer and horned cattle, which arc large and fat, but subject to extensive ulcera tions in their thighs and haunches, supposed to be occa sioned by their standing during the heats of summer, in the lakes and rivers, feeding on the water-grass ; and horses, running wild, as well as kept in herds by the natives. They are extremely beautiful and sprightly ; but of a small breed, and almost as slender in their form as the American roe-buck. Of the wilder tribes, there are the weasel, polecat, and lynx, which last is a very fierce little creature, preying upon young pigs, fawns and turkeys ; foxes, of the small red species, which bark during the night, but move so precipitately, that they are seldom heard twice in the same spot ; wolves of different colours, larger than a dog, generally assembling in companies, par ticularly during the night-time ; bears, in considerable numbers, and of great strength, but scarcely ever known to attack human beings. When fat and full grown, they weigh from 500 to 600 pounds weight ; and their flesh is greatly esteemed as food by the natives. Of birds, be sides many which are migratory, there are found station ary in Florida, vulturesi.hawks, rooks, jays, parrots, wood peckers, pigeons, turkeys, herons, cranes, curlews, cor morants, pelicans, plovers, kc. A few of the more remar kable arc the snake bird, a species of cormorant of great beauty, which delight to sit in peaceable communities, on the dry limbs of trees, hanging over the lakes, with their wings and tail expanded, as if cooling themselves in the air ; and, when alarmed, they drop as if dead into the water, suddenly appearing again on the surface, at a great distance from the spot where they first sunk, but showing only their long slender head and neck above the water, which gives them very much the appearance of a snake. The crying bird, a species of pelican, about the size of a large domestic hen, and of a speckled colour, with a short tail, having the longest feather in the middle, and the two outermost perfectly white, which the bird is accustomed, whenever he is disturbed, to flirt out on each side with the quickness of lightning, uttering at the same time a very harsh and loud shriek. The wood pelican, a large bird, nearly three feet high when standing erect, feeding on ser pents, frogs, and other reptiles, is generally seen solitary on the banks of the marshes and rivers, with his neck drawn in upon his shoulders, and his long crooked beak resting like a scythe upon his breast ; this bird is suppos ed to approach the nearest to the Egyptian ibis. The painted vulture, of a white or cream colour, except the quill feathers of the wings, and the tip of the large tail feathers, which are of a dark brown or black, is seldom seen, unless when the deserts are set on fire, which some times happens from lightning, and is more regularly done by the Indians, to rouse the game ; and then they gather from every quarter towards the burning plains, and alight ing among the smoking embers, gorge their immense craws with roasted serpents, frogs, and lizards. The Creeks form their national standard with the tail-feathers of this bird, preserving them in their natural white colour, in peaceable negociations, but drawing a zone of red beneath the brown tips when they go to battle. The great savannah crane, a very stately bird, about six feet in length from the toes to the extremity of the beak when extended, nearly five feet when standing erect, and eight or nine feet between the extremities of the expanded wings : they fly in detached squadrons, all rising and fall ing as one bird, and while they move their wings in flight with slow and regular strokes, the shafts and webs of their quill-feathers may be heard at a considerable distance in the air, creaking like the working of a vessel in a tem pestuous sea.