safe to go to bed in southern Florida without looking between the sheets,
to see if there be not a scorpion waiting to be your bed-fellow, nor to
put on a garment that has been hanging up in your room, without turning it
wrong side out, to see if a scorpion has not found a lodging in it." I
have not, however, been incommoded at St. Augustine with these "varmint,"
as they call them at the south. Only the sand-flies, a small black midge,
I have sometimes found a little importunate, when walking out in a very
calm evening.

Of the salubrity of East Florida I must speak less positively, although it
is certain that in St. Augustine emigrants from the north enjoy good
health. The owners of the plantations in the neighborhood, prefer to pass
the hot season in this city, not caring to trust their constitutions to
the experiment of a summer residence in the country. Of course they are
settled on the richest soils, and these are the least healthy. The pine
barrens are safer; when not interspersed with marshes, the sandy lands
that bear the pine are esteemed healthy all over the south. Yet there are
plantations on the St. John's where emigrants from the north reside
throughout the year. The opinion seems everywhere to prevail, and I
believe there is good reason for it, that Florida, notwithstanding its low
and level surface, is much more healthy than the low country of South
Carolina and Georgia.

The other day I went out with a friend to a sugar plantation in the
neighborhood of St. Augustine. As we rode into the inclosure we breathed
the fragrance of young orange-trees in flower, the glossy leaves of
which, green at all seasons, were trembling in the wind. A troop of negro
children were at play at a little distance from the cabins, and one of
them ran along with us to show us a grove of sour oranges which we were
looking for. He pointed us to a copse in the middle of a field, to which