OCR Text |
Show DRAINING THE EVERGLADES. A great scheme, on foot in Florida, is the drainage of the celebrated "Everglades" of that State, to bring them under cultivation. The Mobile Register says: One serious trouble with the land reclaimed by the drainage of the Everglades and Lake Okechobee will be its inflammability. It will be simply the residuum from the crops of successive ages of decomposed grasses, and has none of the density of soil. It is a fact, tested on several of the little keys surrounding the peninsula of Florida topped with a mold formed in this way upon a shelf of limestone substratum that fire lighted upon them will burn to the basis and reduce this mold to light ashes, which will blow away with the first breeze. The drained Everglades will need a heavy intermixture with sand, or fire insurance. |