A Guide-Book of Florida and the South, for Tourists, Invalids, and Emigrants
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A Guide-Book of Florida and the South, for Tourists, Invalids, and Emigrants A Guide-Book of Florida and the South, for Tourists, Invalids, and Emigrants Daniel G. Brinton LibraryPress@UF Gainesville, Florida Cover: Map of the West Indies, published in Philadelphia, 1806. From the Caribbean Maps collection in the University of Florida Digital Collections at the George A. Smathers Libraries. Reissued 2017 by LibraryPress@UF on behalf of the University of Florida This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. You are free to electronically copy, distribute, and transmit this work if you attribute authorship. Please contact the University Press of Florida (http:// upress.ufl.edu) to purchase print editions of the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the University Press of Florida. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. ISBN 978-1-947372-52-8 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-947372-53-5 (ePub) LibraryPress@UF is an imprint of the University of Florida Press. University of Florida Press 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 http://upress.ufl.edu The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series In 2016, the University Press of Florida, in collaboration with the George A. Smathers Libraries of the University of Florida, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mel- lon Foundation, under the Humanities Open Books program, to repub- lish books related to Florida and the Caribbean and to make them freely available through an open access platform. The resulting list of books is the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series published by the Li- braryPress@UF in collaboration with the University of Florida Press, an imprint of the University Press of Florida. A panel of distinguished schol- ars has selected the series titles from the UPF list, identified as essential reading for scholars and students. The series is composed of titles that showcase a long, distinguished history of publishing works of Latin American and Caribbean scholar- ship that connect through generations and places. The breadth and depth of the list demonstrates Florida’s commitment to transnational history and regional studies. Selected reprints include Daniel Brinton’s A Guide- Book of Florida and the South (1869), Cornelis Goslinga’s The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580–1680 (1971), and Nelson Blake’s Land into Water—Water into Land (1980). Also of note are titles from the Bicentennial Floridiana Facsimile Series. The series, published in 1976 in commemoration of America’s bicentenary, comprises twenty-five books regarded as “classics,” out-of-print works that needed to be in more li- braries and readers’ bookcases, including Sidney Lanier’s Florida: Its Scen- ery, Climate, and History (1876) and Silvia Sunshine’s Petals Plucked from Sunny Climes (1880). Today’s readers will benefit from having free and open access to these works, as they provide unique perspectives on the historical scholarship on Florida and the Caribbean and serve as a foundation upon which to- day’s researchers can build. Visit LibraryPress@UF and the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/librarypress . Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series Project Members LibraryPress@UF Judith C. Russell Laurie N. Taylor Brian W. Keith Chelsea Dinsmore Haven Hawley Editorial Advisory Board Gary R. Mormino David R. Colburn Patrick J. Reakes University of Florida Press Meredith M. Babb Linda Bathgate Michele Fiyak-Burkley Romi Gutierrez Larry Leshan Anja Jimenez Marisol Amador Valerie Melina Jane Pollack Danny Duffy Nichole Manosh Erika Stevens This book is reissued as part of the Humanities Open Books program, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION OF FLORIDA. Governor Reubin O'D. Askew, Honorary Chairman Lieutenant Governor J. H. Williams, Chairman Harold W. Stayman, Jr., Vice Chairman William R. Adams, Executive Director Dick J. Batchelor, Orlando Johnnie Ruth Clarke, St. Petersburg A. H. "Gus" Craig, St. Augustine James J. Gardener, Fort Lauderdale Jim Glisson, Tavares Mattox Hair, Jacksonville Thomas L. Hazouri, Jacksonville Ney C. Landrum, Tallahassee Mrs. Raymond Mason, Jacksonville Carl C. Mertins, Jr., Pensacola Charles E. Perry, Miami W. E. Potter, Orlando F. Blair Reeves, Gainesville Richard R. Renick, Coral Gables Jane W. Robinson, Cocoa Mrs. Robert L. Shevin, Tallahassee Don Shoemaker, Miami vi Mary L. Singleton, Jacksonville Bruce A. Smathers, Tallahassee Alan Trask, Fort Meade Edward J. Trombetta, Tallahassee Ralph D. Turlington, Tallahassee William S. Turnbull, Orlando Robert Williams, Tallahassee Lori Wilson, Merritt Island GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE. Ponce de Leon was likely Florida's first mod ern-day tourist, but native Americans—Indians —from what is now Georgia and Alabama prob ably were visiting Florida for countless decades before Europeans arrived in the sixteenth cen tury. Trading, hunting, and perhaps just curios ity were motivating factors, just as they are today. These earliest visitors left no written ac counts of what they saw in Florida, so the first descriptions of the landscape, vegetation, sandy beaches and rivers, and birds, animals, and other wild things that lived on the land and in the water had to wait until the publication of ac counts by Fontaneda, Cabeza de Vaca, and the followers of de Soto. Rene de Laudonniere's account of the French settlement on the St. Johns River in the 1560s provides rich detail of that part of Florida. From the settlement of St. Au gustine in 1565, letters, memoranda, and reports went out to Spain, with voluminous information about all aspects of Florida, both the land and its people. Unfortunately, most of this material has viii been inaccessible except to the most industrious and persistent researchers. Accounts of the Flor ida Indians and details of missionaries' activities, shipwrecks, trade, weather, social activities, and a variety of other things are to be found in the great archives of Europe, particularly in Spain and England. An increasing quantity of this important source material is now being copied for American li braries as photographs or on microfilm. The P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History in Gainesville is a treasure house of material dealing with the First Spanish Period. The Stetson Collection alone contains 120,000 documents covering all as pects of Florida history from the 1520s to 1818. The Jeanette Thurber Connor Collection, the Lockey Collection, the East Florida Papers, the Buckingham Smith Collection, and the Papeles de Cuba are among the major collections now avail able for research purposes. The Spanish docu ments in the P. K. Yonge Library are being calendered under grants provided by the Went- worth Foundation, Inc., the Winn-Dixie Founda tion, the National Endowment for the Humani ties, and the Florida Bicentennial Commission. Once this annotated index is complete, a task that will take about three years, it will reveal the huge amount of material relating to early Florida ix history which will enhance our knowledge of that era. Another major research project now under way concerns the activities of the eighteenth- century British firm Panton, Leslie, and Company, which traded with the Indians in North and West Florida. With Professor William M. Coker of the University of West Florida as editor, this work is being carried on cooperatively with the Uni versity of Florida and the Florida Historical So ciety. Funding has been made available by the Florida Bicentennial Commission and the Na tional Historical Publications Commission to pro duce a microfilm copy of all of the papers and to publish selected documents and a narrative his tory of the company. All of the early books about Florida were lim ited in their scope. Except for Fontaneda, the writers were in Florida for only a few weeks or months, and they described what they saw as they moved through the area as members of the early Spanish exploring and colonizing expeditions. There was no attempt made to map Florida sci entifically until William Gerard De Brahm was appointed surveyor general of British East Flor ida in 1764. William Roberts' An Account of the First Discovery, and Natural History of Florida, published in 1763, was the first reliable source of information on the province which had been ac- X quired by Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris ending the French and Indian War. A year ear lier, Thomas Jefferys, the king's geographer, pub lished a book containing some data about Florida and a few of his maps of the area. The British, anxious to attract settlers to Flor ida, launched a publicity campaign, and a series of books were published extolling the virtues of the area. One enthusiast called the newly ac quired province "the most precious jewel in His Majesty's American dominions." Florida was hailed as an agricultural El Dorado, a place where all the fruits and products of the West Indies could be raised: "Oranges, limes, lemons, and other fruits grow spontaneously over the country." Other eighteenth- and nineteenth-cen tury writers, like Daniel G. Brinton whose travel book on Florida is being reprinted as a facsimile, also described in rapturous prose the physical characteristics of the East and Gulf coasts of Florida. Brinton talks of the cities and towns that he visited, the hotels and boardinghouses where he lodged, and some of the people whom he met.