Clipped from US, Ohio, Cincinnati, Cincinnati Commercial , December 14, 1872
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AFOOT I# FLORIDA.Correspondence Cincinnati Commercial,St. Augustine, Fla., November 25, 1872.I believe when I last -wrote I had just arrived at Smyrna, but there is one thing I had forgotten that will add greatly to the influx of winter tourists to this'State when the route is opened, as well as exhibit a field of tropical luxuriance, comparatively untrodden by man. An effort is being made to secure water communication into Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades. There is already a natural communication, which, with the expenditure of a few thousand dollars, could bo made passable for considerable sized boats. It is, I believe, from Lake Poinsett by a small stream and lake, to Lake Sohopekallga, Lake Cypress and Kissimmee into Kissimmee River that runs southward into Lake Okeechobee; thence southwestward by w ay of the Caloosa-hatchee River to the Gulf. This will furnish a delightful, interesting and safe trip to tourists,and if Jacksonville appreciates her own interests she will push it through as soon as possible. This will also furnish excellent amusement and an exalted moral pastime, of indiscriminate slaughter of birds, 'gators and everything shootable, just suited to these compulsory, pious and grave-yard looking youths and old men that yearly visit here, who can not find anything more exalting or diverting than wholesale slaughter of innocent creatures. Whether the 'gator can be classed among innocent creatures or not I an* unable to say. Prejudiceand au unpleasant experience may influence my judgment. Suffice it that the poor 'gator cannot take his otinin evm dignitate anymore on the hanks of the St. John's without being awakened from his siesta, probably, on the banks of the alligator’s Jordan; or to the realization that it is not all of life to live, especially when you have a rifle ball rolling around in your bowels. Every boat that comes up the St. John’s expends a vast amount of ammunition, and there was a 'gator killed for every one who Claims a victim, St. John’s would become a cesspool that would be a death hole to invalids. p,;ke your requiescat ih pace, poor 'gator, if thou canst, but I would emigrate to some bournewhere malaria is so deuse that no traveler, iflie should be unfortunate as to get there, everreturns. Rut to return to Smyrna. This placehas a celebrity and a nit111®* from the efforts of Doctor Turnbull, an Englishman, who, during the English possession of tins h^ate, endeavored, like many other peoplt*are doing m.‘F, aud fail, to establish a colony and amass a fortune. Securing from the Mediterranean in the yeW 1707, some twelve hundred Corsicans and Minoricans, chiefly the latter, he gave to this new Eldorado the name of New Smyrna, building for himself a castle or rather au embryo fortress, which was at the^arne time a prison-house for rebellious colonists. He secured that plenary power at home that soon made him think he was sovereign Lord over everything and everybody, until his cruel practices aud exactions culminated in rebellion, and flight to Augustine of many of the colonists, and he awakened , one morning to find his golden dreams bad vanished like ether before a radiant sun. What an ass a little exaltation makes of some people. The sands of time have not effaced his footprints. He has left behind him enduraing monm ments of his industry. Extensive canals still remain miles in length that drain rich and fertile swamps of many thousand acres, devoted chiefly to the culture of indigo, that is now found wild through all this region. His ex-Eort-from one year’s crop amounted to the andsome sum of £2,812, and it is my bigief thatit can be raised profitably now. In 1774, the London Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Science presented a gold medal to Mr.Htrackey, for as flue a Hamjtfe of indigo from here as that from GuatunaiL These swamp lands, drained by the canalsP make the finest sugar-cane. But little of the latffl is cultivated, and could be purchased cheap. Native torests are growing with pines eighteen inches in diameter, und palmettos dhirtv feet high, where sugar-cane once grew, and the rows are as dis-
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