Show t AWAY DOWN IN FLORIDA I WITH THE SENATORIAL PARTY FROM I CHARLESTON TO JACKSONVILLE I Th Biggest Town In Florida and Its I Non hClJl Population Fish In Summer F Sick Yankees iu Winter Oruiicci and Strawberries and Hot Weather E Special CorrMpondrace1 JACKSONVILLE Marclil2 I write this letter in Jacksonville the leading lead-ing commercial center of Florida It is the 0 entering point of the state and is the starting place for the north and south With 30000 inhabitants in the winter and about half that number in summer it bustles now during the season with southern life It contains 5 good stores fine houses and it looks different from Charleston as the pictures of death do from those of of life The senatorial sen-atorial party is at the Windsor hotel and b 0 the scenes about us are those of Saratoga rather than of a city many hundred miles south of New York This hotel has office carpets billiard rooms and wide verandas like the great sea side hotels of the Atlantic coast and it is crowded with wealthy northern men ii and women You hear on every side the I accent of the Yankee and the support of 1 Jacksonville is well indicated by the answer NO which a little negro boy gave to my question I as to what they did here to make living He said Iu de summer sail we lives off de fishes and in de winter we lives off de sick Yankees Tho sick Yankees of Florida are numbered by the tens of thousands and there are other tens of thousands of well Yankees who come south to get the glorious climate which this state has in the winter Today is like Ohio in June Winter underclothing undercloth-ing is unpleasantly warm I write by an open window and Senator Sherman and Gen McCook have just returned from a ride I which they took without their overcoats hit i front of me there is a large park filled with fruit show t orange groves and the yellow out from the bushy tops of bright green leaves I noticed many roses blooming in timeS time-S gardens as I drove about the city and we picked wild flowers yesterday evening at Savannah miles north of here The stores here have their straw hats conspicuously displayed dis-played and the negro children are barefoot The peas are in bloom and we had delicious strawberries for breakfast This city is lined with shade trees and they are all in green leaf and the plants grow most luxuriantly in the gardens The houses arc large and some of them are northern in their styles of architecture archi-tecture I saw one cottage which looked as though it might have been built for one of the suburban towns of New York city aivl the style of the stores is distinctively northern They have good storerooms and all kinds 01 stores carry large stocks of goods The hEM groceries are especially good and the jewelry stores show that they live off northern money Jacksonville is full of big hotels and board 138 ing houses It is plainly a watering plaeo and its accommodations show that it pays to cater to the tastes of the wealthy Many of the hotels arc run by northerner and the Windsor which is one of the best i i Florida is managed by a Vermonter Tl I city has street cars It 13 lighted with gt and its water comes from an artesian AVI 1 We drove out to this and found the well inn l a beautiful fountain sending up a hea > spray which fell like anumbrella of dianiom into a great basin and was carried frO thence to the city in pipes The water is lii crystal and it has when it first spurts upward up-ward a strong sulphur odor It tastes o sulphur too but this sulphur smell and test NJ pass off I am told after tile water has stood F E for a short time leaving it as sweet as that oi the purest mountain spring The land of north Florida at least that through which we have so far traveled i tllS not inviting to northern eyes We miss tl green sod and the sandy scrubby growl I which takes its place is no comparison to th i j blue grass of the north An acre of velvet lawn is more beautiful to my eyes than CITY the flowers orange groves and pines of these tropical lands and the country about herewith ITY here-with all its luxuriance has not the still lilj beauty of the rich blue grass regions of tho north The lands surrounding this city an S laid out in streets and lots for a great distance Trees have been planted and on paper I doubt not the property looks very attractive jager at-tractive It is not so to the eye Rngg n grass somewhat like our northern swami I I grass grows upon it Parts of it need drain U 5 age and the color of the grass now when it should be as green as the emerald is of a ha j colored brown The trees which are scatten C 0 sparsely over it are of the short leaf pim tall and lean with no branches till they burl picte forth in umbrella shaped foliage at the top t They givo little shade and one could not IK comfortable sitting on the half sandy iI i covered with Aeitluresoil beneath them Tlirr linos were few ganlcns in the com try about Jaci sonvillo through which we drove and I si but few garden patches about the small houses of the city The town has been ma by northern tourists and by its commerci ms location making it the chief shipping an btoj oer place of the state It has greu S etc C hopes for the future however and has grow i from about 1700 to as many thousands ii twenty years F mp Just hero I want to say a few words about I Charleston I was surprised at its many elegant q ele-gant old mansions and at some fine now ones There are n > re large houses in it than any of the other cities of 60000 in the United States On East Bay street facing the harbor art houses after houses 1 > igger than that of Janu Mill r G Blnine at Vuaj nifrton and on Moetin street tl re are houses big enough to entu tuiu a monarch and his retinue All of the 1 oii houses as I told you in my last letter have wide porches running one above th other along one side Windows and dooi open out on to these and they are from eight to twelve feet wide These porches or galleries gal-leries are never in front of the houses aid L they are in the better class of houses uphelt by round wooden or stone pillars They uSj ally look out upon gar d pns find the Charleston ton house has its lawn and garden at onside u City on-side of it next the galleries and never in it front or on both sides The houses are clost let to the street and their one end forms the line I hot vefiii their owners property and theii r D neighbors There are many houses in Charleston tary Charles-ton which could not be reproduced forT for-T > OOO and one new one Senator Palmer estimated must have cost at least 100000 Many of these fine houses were almost mined 0 by the earthquake but the scaffoldings surround sur-round these and they are being repaired old mansions still Back of many of these big itand the negro quarters and the large number num-ber of negroes on the streets show the existence F exist-ence of this great element of the souths population popu-lation They are more picturesque than the coloied people of the north and are more to polite They tip their hats to strangers and handkerchief the women wear bright colored turbans They seem to laugh maN and they ovidently i enjoy life more than the whites Not a few of them had things to sell to 1 Ot strangers and on the boat going to Fort i buuitcr a little old auntie in a striped ging ham turban sold the ladies of the party rNEPi little doll made of hickory nuts for i fEE heads n I d sticks stuck into them for bodies ittOn the heads of the dolls were lastemied itt little t1 turbamis uis like those worn by the I neglOCs mId their dresses were of the same I iini I I kind as theirs Time heads oE these hickory nut headed dolls had been colored black and they were made to represent lnirees In the Pump arms of each littleThite was curried a little white china 1ntlytI doll as long as an ordinary sized needle ipuny A boy as black as ebony and with a big under lip dropping over his low chhinnd showing show-ing his white teeth at every word had papers I and flowers to sell and was anxious to black l I Cloth boots at the same time F was most norsis I 1 u tent nnd not at all backward He confided to is that he belonged to a base ball nine which was called the Bloornin Lilies and that this club had lately walloped another an-other known as the Silver Shields The appropriateness of the names to these ragged colored urchins was strikingly in coiitiabt with their appearance Charleston stores do not size up with those of northern towns of half the size in appearance appear-ance The windows are not used to anv extent ex-tent for the display of goods and I saw many store windows shut partially from view by iron lattice work which was kept up all daylong The town in fact is vitally different from those jat the north and though nearly 1000 vessels land at its port yearly though it produces 9000000 or 10000000 a year m manufactures and though its trade amounts to between 60000000 and 70000000 a year it has little bustle and no apparent life It maybe that the earthquake has driven it out I do not know Nevertheless I imagine Charleston is a pleasant residence and I doubt not there are many comfortable homes in these wide galleried gal-leried houses It impressed Senator Mander son more like an Italian city than an American Ameri-can one and it looks to me like a city of the same size in the interior of France New Orleans Or-leans is emphatically a foreign city and Charleston seems to be its half sister Its promenade known as the Battery is one of the prettiest walks I have met with and the park at the end of it overlooking the harbor is full of trees and furnished with many easy benches It has a statue in it and there are numerous tree boxes about palmetto plants scattered throughout it The plants are however dead and I saw only one or two palmetto trees within the city The country south of Charleston through which the railroad goes is as wild as the newly penetrated frontiers of the great west Its towns are small and with the exception of here and there new one which has sprung up with the railroad they are all old and dilapidated The people of the country appear ap-pear poor and I saw more single oxen hitched up with rope harness into carts than I did horses We passed through the Beaufort Beau-fort district of South Carolina which is said to have about 1000 negroes in it to every white person and I noted at the stations that the colored citizens had evidently made their clothes in crazy quilt order and that patches predominated on coat and pantaloons panta-loons We reached Savannah at nightfall and were here met by Judge Emory Spear the mayor of the city and other prominent citizens citi-zens and were entertained by them at dinner din-ner Judge Spear looks very much like JohnS John-S Wise of Virginia and Henry Grady of Atlanta The three could pass for triplets and they are in fact the most progressive set of triplets in the south Spear is very popular in Georgia and I was told at Savannah Savan-nah that he would act contrary to his nature if he did not jump again into politics before long Savannah by the way is the greatest shipping ship-ping point for naval stores in the United States Georgia has been making great quantities of turpentine pitch tar and rosn during the past few years and I was told here that 600000 barrels of turpentine were now shipped from Savannah yearly Senator Palmer says the state does this at the expense of its forests and he doubts much whether Georgia will not lose by it in the end The pine trees die under the process The fires get in and the forests are burned We saw a number of forest fires during our trip both in North Carolina and Georgia and in some cases the blaze appeared large enough to envelop en-velop the whole country i FKANK G CAKPENTKR I |