The scheme was thwarted by the provident hand of President Washington, and the country rescued by his intervention from the horrors incident to a state of warfare.

Although the emigrants from St. Domingo might have resorted, with the remnants of their property, to Florida, and found it an asylum promising peace and plenty, yet, distracted and distressed as those truly unfortunate people were, it did not meet the views of men flying from fire and sword, to take up arms to conquer provinces for a government to which their evils were ascribed. Nor did the political situation of Spain cherish the acquisition of that species of population for her colonies.

Governor White had succeeded to the command of East Florida, and, as usual, issued a proclamation, offering, as far as he could, encouragement to settlers. (See Appendix.) But the conditions were relished only by such inhabitants of the United States as looked more to convenience than to the munificence of Spanish authority, which was supposed to afford but a precarious protection or security, although devoid of equivalent taxation.

The extraordinary price to which the peculiar properties of Sea Island Cotton raised that valuable plant, stimulated several southern planters to extend their production of it to the islands on the coast of Florida. The Americans, viewed as invidious neighbours, had great difficulty in persuading Governor White that the zeal manifested towards settling the province under his government, was favourable to the Spanish crown.

This gentleman, of Irish descent, had all the roughness peculiar to that nation, without the suavity so predominant among the higher classes. His instructions, or the prejudices of his government, rendered him inimical to American settlers; yet the inhabitants from the Bahamas were more fortunate, in being permitted to form agricultural establishments, near the Musquito.

SITUATION AND CLIMATE.

EAST FLORIDA lies between lat. 24 54, and 30 N. having St. Mary's river for its northern boundary, and Cape Florida for the southern. It is 350 miles in length, not including the Keys; and varies in breadth at the centre of the peninsula, owing to its tapering form, from 200 to 240 miles. It contains about thirty-two millions of acres, and is ventilated alternately by the Atlantic and Mexican Seas, to which circumstance its great salubrity is ascribed. The change of seasons is hardly felt, except in the northern parts of the province, where vegetation receives a check, and in some instances, an entire stagnation, for a short time. Snow is rarely seen, even in those parts; yet the cold north and north-west winds are not without their influence.

The winds are less changeable in the peninsula than farther north, being between the east and south-east during the spring, summer, and beginning of autumn, when the rains commence, and fall heavily for a short time each day. There is frequently, perceptible in the northern parts of the Province, in the months of July and August, a thick and heavy air, which proceeds from the west and south-west

winds, occasioning sultry weather at those periods, when the less of strangers expose themselves the better, until they obtain relief from the eastern and north and south-eastern winds, which afford a coolness and an elasticity, by which the system is agreeably invigorated. In those months, at the period of the day most oppressive, between eight and ten in the morning, before the sea breeze sets in, the thermometer has rarely exceeded 94. In St. Augustine, and south of it, the winter is scarcely perceptible at mid-day, at which time the ice previously formed melts. On the 3d of January, 1766, frost destroyed all the tropical productions in the country, except oranges. But this does not happen more than twice, perhaps, in half a century.

The climate in East Florida is more uniform than in any part of the continent, without either extreme; being too remote from the north to admit the dominion of the cold winds to prevail long enough for any sensible effect, while its proximity to the south affords the mild and refreshing coolness of the trade winds.

Accounts from all quarters correspond in representing the capital (St. Augustine) as the Montpelier of North America, to which the healthy repair for refreshment, and invalids for health. This does not depend on bare round assertion, but can be substantiated directly by facts.

One of these facts, to be relied upon, was the extraordinary healthiness of the 9th British regiment, which quartered and performed garrison duty there, for eighteen months, and never lost a man by natural death.

A detachment of artillery, which arrived from the West

Indies in a sickly state, soon recruited, and left no traces of

the contagion.

The great age attained by the Spaniards and others who have resided in the province, are undeniable proofs of the general salubrity of this country. Among these were Mr. Jesse Fish, of New York, already mentioned; Mr. Fatio, a gentleman of much respectability and information from Switzerland; Clementi, an honest fisherman; and Don Solano, a worthy farmer, now living: these last are Spaniards.

In 1765 there was a white frost on the 19th of December, and in 1765, a fall of snow in the northern part of the province, which was of short duration, and of no material detriment to the agricultural interests.

Cardena, in his history, says, that the soldiers who arrived in Spain from Florida, in 1569, were healthy and strong, attributing it to the use of the sassafras tree. Such was the confidence in its virtues, confirmed by Doctor Nicholas Monavedas, who wrote upon the medicinal properties of plants in the West Indies, that each soldier carried a piece of sassafras in his pocket, which he would exhibit and say, This is the tree which we have brought to cure us if we should be taken ill, as was done in Florida ;—each recounting it as a prodigy.

By reference to Bartram's Journal, while on St. John's river, the following observations are found. In 1765, the thermometer was, on the