ORANGE GROVES AND ALLIGATORS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 335, 19 September 1879, Page 17

ORANGE GROVES AND ALLIGATORS.

Theke are some wonderful orange groves in the town, or " the city," as the inhabitants persist in calling the place. Those most remarkable belong to Dr. Anderson and to the estate of the late Mr. Ball, of New York. This latter place, on which about 80,000 dols. were expended in improvements some years ago, is now for sale. If the plains around St. Augustine were covered with such groves as these, the town would be the most beautiful in the world. The groves of Dr. Anderson and the Ball estate are close together. To wander through them on a fine morning, when a gentle breeze is coming in from the sea, or to sit on a bench in the midst of the fragrant leaves, with the robins, the blackbirds, and the cardinals saucily inviting you to declare your purpose, and with the golden fruit hanging within reach of your arm (and with permission to pick it !) — these are pleasures which no one fails to appreciate. The lemon trees here produce fruit of astonishing size and excellent quality ; and the oranges are exquisite. On the Ball estate there is an avenue of great length bordered by orange trees, the boughs of which bend under hundreds of oranges. To right and left hand lead away to conservatories, gardens and paths swept by fresh breezes and dotted with pretty groups of flowers. This is a little earthly paradise daring the winter months. Dr. Anderson's grove is one of the most famous in the south, and is exceedingly profitable. His residence fronts on a street charmingly embowered in oiange, lemon, and magnolia trees, and lined with handsome cottages. Outside the town a road leads across the marshes on a causeway, and on the marshes snipe abound just now. A northern visitor who was passing these fens with me laughed at the sign, "No tresspassing here," which arose on a pole out of some saspiciously resistable soil, but if he had known that it was a snipe country he would not have laughed. It was in these bottoms that an alligator hunter was nicely caught, as he told me some years since. Coming home from a chase after the skins of the wily saurian, he was wading the marshes wearily, with his gun on his shoulder, when he felt his right leg seizad, and looking down saw a moderate sized alligator had grasped bim. Nothing but his heavy boot leg saved him from being badly wounded. He brought his gun down with terrific force on the creature's head, uttered a fearful yell end managed to jump clear of his adversary. His hair stood straight on end ere he stopped running off the edge of the swamp. The alligator is not sepn so often in this vicinity as in other days, nor does he condescend to show himself much on the waters of the St. John's, as the young men worry him with their pistol shots. On the borders of the small streams tributary to the great river the monsters swarm ; they are not pretty, and their " smile " is so gigantic that one does not feel inclined to dispute the probability of Mr. Boffin's hiding behind it, as that veridical historian, Charles Dickens, informs us that he did in Mr. Venus's work-shop. An alligator is so much in colour like a floating log that people in email boats need to be exceedingly wary. The moccasin snake is another enemy which poisons the tranquility of the wanderer in Florida forests. " Deadly ?" said a sportsman to me ; " I think they are. You are a dead man in five minutes if they strike you, without some remedy, and there are millions of them. Rattle-snakes too." But these interesting creatures are only seen in the town : the habit of the farmers and herdsmen of burning over the ground twice a year destroys a great number of them. The ground is turned up at once after the fire and furnishes food to the halfstarved cows which struggle in the forest. An animated protest against this system has been made by northern settlers, who frequently found that their fences had gone up in a general conflagration. — Edward King in •' Boston Journal."