Kingsley's Pond. Although an infant of only twenty months, the village
has made excellent growth and gives promise of a bright future. Farming
is not largely followed, the principal industry of these and the other
Northern colonists being orange-culture--a business to which the
climate is wonderfully propitious, the dry, pure air of this district
being alike free from excessive summer heats and from the frosts which
are occasionally disastrous to groves situated on lower ground in the
same latitude.

Though there are few native Floridians in this part of the country, the
neighborhood of the lake rejoices in the possession of a Cracker
doctress of wondrous powers. Who but her knows that chapter in the book
of Daniel the reading of which stays the flowing of blood, or that
other chapter potent to extinguish forest-fires? One does not need a
long residence in the State to learn to appreciate the good-fortune of
the Lakers in this particular.

Not far from the village, on the western shore of the pond, lives the
one "old settler." He met us with the hearty welcome which we had
learned almost to look for as a right, and sitting on his front piazza
in the shade of his orange trees, gladdening our eyes with the view of
his vine-embowered pigpen, we listened to the legend of the pond:

"Yes, I've lived yere four-and-twenty year, but I done kim to Floridy
nigh on forty year ago: walked yere from Georgy to jine the Injun war.
I done found this place a-scoutin' about, and when I got married I kim
yere to settle. The Yankee folks wants to change the name o' the pond
to Summit Lake and one thing or 'nother, but I allays votes square agin
it every time, and allays will. You see, hit don't ought to be changed.
I don't mind the _pond_ part: they mought call it lake ef they think it