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t I [Entered at the in Atlanta, Qa., tor Transportation through the United States Mails at Second Class Rates. J twice a '"'ToWI YOL. m. ATLANTA, GA., APRIL 15, 1884. . NO. 12. [FLORIDA] * 1 * * * * * * ii' ON THE UPPER ST. JOHN’S. Florida. " e Present on this page a picture of the e egant steamboat Florida, the only one ° the Mississippi river pattern in Flori- * a - It runs between Palatka and Enter prise in connection with the Iron Steam- K>at Line. The St. John’s river is nar row and crooked, and extremely pictur- esime. With such a boat as the •‘Flori- ' a to travel in, we do not wonder at e glowing descriptions by tourists of a ri P up the St. John’s. Florida was dis covered on Easter Sunday, and derives 1 s name from the Spanish words for that a > > I’ascua Floridia or Feast of Flow- * rs ‘ I* 8 popular name is the Peninsula j' ate ’ because the greater portion of it j? r | ns a Peninsula stretching toward the aiamas, having the Atlantic on one '' and the Gulf of Mexico on the .., er ‘ ^ greatest breadth, from the mi! 1 ? to the p erdido river, is 360 es i its greatest length, 400 miles; e average breadth of the peninsula lion, 120 miles; area, 60,000 square es. Florida was first made known to ropeans by Ponce de Leon, who land- near St. Augustine in 1512. The ,andof Flowers” is attracting more ention every year, and the influx of mlation and capital increases with iry season. Florida has a magnificent iral influence of the Cocoanut. uch is the quaint title of an article in May issue of the Popular Science nthly, by Grant Allen. That distin- shed author says: 1 But the worst thing about the cocoa- ; palm, the missionaries always say, he fatal fact that, when once fairly rted, it goes on bearing fruit uninter- ,tedly for forty years. This is very moral and wrong of the ill-conditioned e, because it encourages the idyllic [ynesian to lie under the palms all r long, cooling his limbs in these* lasionally, sporting with Amaryllis w the shade, or with the tangles of Neiera’s hair, and waiting for the nuts to drop down in due time, when he ought (ac cording to European notions) to be kill ing himself with hard work under a blazing sky, raising cotton, sugar, indi go, and coffee, for the immediate benefit of the white merchant, and the ultimate advantage of the British public. It doesn’t enforce habits of steady industry and perseverance, the good missionaries say; it doesn’t induce the native to feel that burning desire for Manchester piece goods and the other blessings of civili zation which ought properly to accom pany the propaga ionof the missionary in foreign parts. You stick your nut in the sand; you sit by a few years and watch it growing; you pick up the ripe fruits as they fall from the tree; and you sell them at last for illimitable red cloth to the Manchester piece goods merchant. Nothing could be more simple or more satisfactory. And yet it is difficult to see the precise moral distinction between the owner of a cocoanut grove in the South Sea Islands and the owner of a coal mine or a big estate in commercial England. Each lounges decorously through life after his own fashion; only the one lounges in a Russia leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, while the other lounges in a nice soft dust heap beside a rolling surf in Tahiti or the Hawaiian Archipelago.” Our young friend, Alex. S. Thweatt, editor of the Railway and Steamthip Ga zette, is making a decided success of his journal. The last issue contains hand some cuts of conductors Harry Hill, of the Georgia Railroad; W. D. Sandwich, of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad, and B. B. Cubbage, of the Central. Success to the Gazette and its progressive editor. Small farms are in demand. Those having them for sale will find our col umns an excellent advertising medium.