The winds were indeed sometimes quite bleak, and caused considerable discomfort, but the thermometer was never very low. Fernandina is on Ameila's Island, and is the port of St. Mary's river. This river runs up into the country for one or two hundred miles, through a good cotton country. A lady told me that she had seen ten thousand bales of cotton lying at Fernandina waiting for shipment north and east. There is very deep water in the harbor.
Vessels drawing eighteen feet can come across the bar at high water.
It is by all odds the best harbor south of the James river, except Port Royal. It is far superior to Charleston. The Florida Central railroad runs from here to Cedar Keys, and was designed, in connection with steamers at each end, to be the thoroughfare between New Orleans and New York. This railroad also brought in much cotton and other produce. Under anything like favorable circumstance, with any free stimulus Fernandina would be a place of unlimited prosperity.