Middletown transcript., 1870-07-23
DESCRIPTION OF FLORIDA.
SENTENCE EIGHT HUNDRED WORDS LONG,

tanned one of the longest sentences on re-
cord, consisting of over eight hundred
words, The sentence in question is found
in well written article on Florida, we
append it,
:" propose, then, to give my readers
some description of this old yet still strange
and wild country. that has been settled
for three hundred years, and is not yet
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
dcep--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 tickle it with hoe. it will laugh
with an abundant harvest" of sugar, cot
ton, rice and fruit-a land of oranges,
lemons, pomegranates, pineapples, figs,
and bananas, whose rivers tccm with fish,
its 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, mild
climate, and bountiful nature affording
every table luxury, live on corn grist,
sweet potatoes, and molasses where many
mon possessing forty thousand head of cat
tie never saw a glass of milk in their
lives, using only the imported article when
used at all, and then calling it conSecratcd
milk =; where the very effort to milk COW
would probably scare her to death, as
well as frighten a 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 l5cM
becomes o large tree of several years
growth, and a 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 pur-
chase of a yoke of oxen is not considered
valid if the animals will not cat in a sta
BILE; and where in the mild winter, when
the land grass is dried up horses and cat
tie may be seen wading and swimming in
the ponds and streams, plunging 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 they will
sometimes shrink away to 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 saltness of the sea;
where in times Of low water, during long
exhaustive, dry seasons, men have gone
under ground in one of these subuterra
mean rivers, from lake to lake, distance
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; whore 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 sum-
mer, and four months winter weather.
where the winter is the dry season, and
the summer almost daily rain; where
in order to take 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 making and
people bald houses without chimneys;
where to make living is so easy task,
that every one possesses the lazlness of
ten ordinary men, and every one you wish
to employ in labor says that he 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
ranges-lcaves, buds, blossoms, half
grown, full-grown fruit, all at once-and
every twenty-five feet square of sand will
sustain such a tree where, in many parts,
cold weather is an impossibility and per-
petual verdure reigns; where the Ever
glades are found covering many large
counties with water from one to six feet
deep, with bottom undiscovered, 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
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 aud even penetrating in their at
tentions to strangers"
There must be accorded to the writer
of this passage considerable skill in the
as in no instance in the sense
rendered ambiguous by the prolongation
of the sentence. The phrases are short
apt, and disentangled.-Ne York Meth
odiSt.