The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1870-06-16
DESCRIPTION OF FLORIDA,
A SENTENCE EIGHT HUNDRED WORDS LONG

Last week we informed our readers
that an article in Lippincotfs JfaQasinc
contained one of the longest sentences on
record, consisting of over eight hundred
words. The sentence in question is found
In well written article on Florida. we
append it:
81 propose, thon, to give nv readers
some description of this old yet still strange
and wild country, that has been settled
for three hundred years, and is not vet
inhabited-a land of shifting sand and
OF deep mud-a land Of noble rivers. that
rise In swamps, and consist merely of
chains OF shallow lakes, some of them
twenty miles across and only twelve feet
deep-of wide, sandy plains, covered with
solemn sounding pines-of spots so barren
that nothing can be made to grow upon
them, and yet with soil so fertile that
If you ''tckle it with hoe, it will laugh
with an abundant harvest of sugar cot
ton, rice and fruit-a land cf oranges.
lemons, pomeeranates, pineapples, figs,
and bananas, whose rivers TEEN with fish.
It's forests with game, and its very air
with fowl; where everything will grow
except wheat and apples where every
thing can be found except ice yet where
the people, with productive soil, a mild
climate, and bomtiful nature affording
every table luxury, live on corn grist,
sweet potatoes, and molasses, where many
men possessing forty thousand head of
cattle never saw a glass of milk in their
lives, using only the imported article when
used at all, and then calling it consecrated
milk where the very effort TO milk a COW
would probably scare her to death, as
we'll as frighten whole neighborhood by
the unheard of phenomenon where cab
bages grow on the tops of trees, and you
may dig bread out of the ground where
below the frost~line the caster>oil piaRt
becomes large tree of several years
growth, and pumpkin or bean vine will
take root from its trailing branches, and
thus spread and live year after year;
where cattle do not know what hay is.
and refuse it when offered, so that the
purchase of a yoke of oxen is not consid-
cred valid if the animals will not eat in a
stable; and where in the mild winter,
when the land grass is dried up horses
and cattle may be seen wading and swim
ming in the ponds and streams, plungine
their heads deep under the surface TO bite
the water grasses and moss where many
lakes have holes in the bottom and under
ground communication, so that thev will
sometimes shrink away 10 a mere cupful,
leaving many square miles of surface Un>
covered, and then again fill up from below
and spread out over their former area
where some of them have outlets in the
ocean far from shore, and bursting up a
perpetual spring of fresh water in the
very midst of the briny sadness of the sea;
where in times of low water, during
long exhaustive, dry seasons, men have
gone under ground in one of these SUBJ
teTranean rivers, from lake to lake, a dis
tance of eight miles where the ground
will sometimes sink and the cavity
fill with water, until tall trees, that had
stood and sunk upright, will have their
topmost branches deeply covered where
rivers will disappear in the earth and rise
again, thus forming natural bridges, some
of them mile in breadth where, instead
OF spring, summer, autumn and winter,
there are two seasons only-eight months
summer, and four months warm weather;
where the winter is the dry season, and
the summer almost daily rain where
in order TO take a walk, you first wade
through light sand ankle deep, and then
get into mud puddle, and some of these
mud puddles cover whole country
where no clay is found fit for brick mak~
ing, and people build houses without
chimneys; where to make living is so
easy a task, that every one possesses the
laziness Of ten ordinary men, and every
one you wish to employ in labor says that
be is tired, and would seem to have been
born so where agues would prevail If the
people would take the trouble TO shake !;
where large orange-tree will bear seven
thousand oranges-leaves, buds, blossoms,
halfgrown, full grown fruit, all at once
and every twenty-five feet square of sand
will sustain such tree where, in many
parts, cold weather is an impossibility and
perpetual verdure reigns where the Ever
glades are found, covering many large
counties with water from one TO six feet
deep, with bottom mud>cUvered, yet
underneath solid and firm, from which
grasses grow up TO the surface-a sea of
green, and with islands large and small
scattered over the surface, covered with
live oaks and dense vegetation where
allgators, or gators, as they are called
! in Florida parlance, possess undoubted alb
original rights of citizenship; and mos
quitoes pay constant visits, and are in
trusive and even penetrating in their
attentions to strangers
There must be accorded TO the writer
of this passage considerable skill in the
phraseology; as in no instance is the sense
rendered ambiguous by the prolongation
of the sentence. The phrases are short,
apt, and disentangled,- ,-[New York Meth
odist.