Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1886-02-03
Ice in Balmy Florida.

Many people go to Florida, believ-
ing that by so doing they escape frosts,
and have a delightful time eating
oranges; have no drawbacks, and that
life is a continual bloom. The fact is
that there is no country in the world
but what has objectional features.
Take Florida, for instance, this win
ter. It's principal crop is oranges.
This crop, last month, was immensely
damaged by frosts. Oranges were froz-
en- on the trees, and what is still worse,
the orange trees were frozen so badly
that an immense amount of them are
killed. A dispatch to the New York
Tribune, of January 26th, estimates
the damage at s50,O0O,0OO. What
the real damage to the trees is can
not be fully known until the winter
is over. If the trees are killed, then
the damage to the Florida farmers
will be the same as if the crops in
this country were destroyed and rem
dered worthless for several years. If
you have a good farm in this country
and you are making good, comforta-
bic living, do not sell il and move to
Florida or anywhere else. We be-
lieve the advantages offered by Alpc-
ma county, taken altogether, are equal,
if not superior, to those offered by
any other portion of the country.
The following extract from COM
munication to the New York Sun,
from Green Cove Springs, Florida.
will give the reader an idea as to how
frosts visited that southern State last
month.
Ice half an inch thick had formed
on Friday night. The river steamers
had come up to the wharf that even.
ing with coatings of ice on their bows
and forward decks, an almost unpre-
cedented circumstance, and it had
been freezing throughout the day
With the going down of the gale on
Saturday evening film of ice formed
quickly on pools that were sheltered
from the breeze that was still blowing.
BY midnight the temperature had
fallen several degrees below the freez
ing point. In some of the orange
groves smudges had been made by
putting fire to heaps of rubbish, in
the hope that the smoke would keep
off the dew and save the trees from
freezing. But no dew fell during the
night. 1t was black freeze, and the
fires lighted in the groves did little if
any good. Two hours after midnight
the temperature had risen couple of
degrees, probably in consequence, of
a temporary veering of the wind to-
ward the south. Then the mercury
began to fall again, and it went down
past the mark where it stopped in the
black freeze of two years ago, down
past the level reached in the blizzard
of 1850, and down to very nearly, if
not quite, the point touched in the
great freeze of 1885, when, according
to general belief. every orange tree in
Florida was killed.
Almost everybody arose early on
Sunday morning. Almost everybody
had been lying awake with the shivers,
and waiting impatiently for daylight.
The first thing almost everybody did
after getting up was to look into pals
and tubs in which water had been left
standing, and the next thing was to
get an axe and chop out the ice, north
ern fashion, if there were horses or
cattle to be watered. From the tub
at which my pony drinks l cut block
of ice, transparent as lens, and held
a pocket rule to its edge. An inch
and nine-sixteeths was the thickness
of the block. That was an inch
thicker than the ice made by the freeze
that did so much damage here in the
winter of 1874. In the metal buck
cts on the deck of the steam yacht
Leila, lying at the city wharf, ice
three inches thick by actual measure
ment was formed. In cane-boiling
caldron lying on the wharf some four
inches Of water was frozen solid and
"bulged"-a term which Northerners
will understand. There was margin
of ice along the river bank where the
water was sheltered from the wind.
A volume of vapor steamed up from
the little channel where the water
of the warm sulphur spring is poured
into the St. Johns. The temperature
of this spring never varies much from
78 degrees, winter and summer, and
it was not perceptibly changed by this
cold snap. To immerse the hand in
the pool on this icy morning seemed
like putting it in water drawn for a