It is pleasing to know, when one is far away, that he is not entirely forgotten by his friends; but you are slightly mistaken when you say I own a large orange plantation near Jacksonville. I am located on the Manatee River, some eight miles above its entrance into Tampa Bay, on the Gulf coast of South Florida, in latitude 27-1/2°, and below "frost line." I visited Jacksonville and all the towns and landings on the St. Johns, Halifax and Matanzas Rivers, and also "did" the Suwanee pretty thoroughly before locating in Braidentown. I prefer this part of Florida to the Atlantic coast for the following reasons: Healthfulness of climate, purity of water and immunity from frost and insects. My health has improved wonderfully since my arrival in the Land of Flowers, and I am pretty thoroughly convinced that I have obtained a new lease of life. The sea breezes that fan my brow at morning, noon and night, act as a tonic on my enfeebled constitution, and I am daily gaining strength and muscle. I have to-day worked six hours in my banana grove, with the thermometer at 90° in the shade, without experiencing any inconvenience from the heat. The heat is so modified by the constant sea breeze that one can work in the sun at all hours of the day and at all seasons of the year. Sunstroke and hydrophobia are unknown here. This statement can be taken _without_ salt. In midsummer the nights are invariably cool. Blankets at night are the rule, not the exception. This much about location and climate; now, a few words about _that_ orange grove. My _ranch_ is new, and consequently rather crude. When I located here in November last, a large portion of it was a "howling wilderness." Since that time, I have felled the trees, piled the logs, burned the brush, grubbed and fenced fifteen acres, on ten acres of which I am now setting out 500 two-years-old sweet seedling orange trees, which I hope to live long enough to see bear fruit. Some two months since, I set out 200 banana plants, and they are doing remarkably well; many of the stalks are six feet in height. They will bear fruit in about eighteen months. I also have a patch of sixty pine-apple plants which will bear fruit next year. I have a few coffee and tea plants, Japan plum and persimmon, pomegranate, almond and olive trees that are growing luxuriantly. I brought with me from Philadelphia, half a dozen cocoa-nuts, which I planted on the 1st of November last, and had given up all hope of ever seeing them sprout, when, to my great surprise, some two weeks since, two of them threw up sprouts. They are now one foot high, and are growing vigorously. The guava thrives admirably here. I have several trees, and expect soon to luxuriate on guava jelly of my own manufacture. I will send you a few sample boxes.