But if the lake bottoms of southern Florida are thus pure and send only clear water down the St. Johns, the condition of clarity does not last long. The St. Johns, as the tourist knows it, from Sanford to Jacksonville, is a dark and muddy stream that winds through an interminable succession of swamps, miry and forbidding at the surface, but brilliant above with foliage, flowers and strange birds and beasts. Beyond these swamps are higher ground and many pretty villages, groves and farms, but one sees little of this from the river. Except for the occasional landing, the occasional razorbacks and range cattle, one might as well be coming down the stream in the days before Florida knew the white man, and the river’s only boats were the narrow, artistic dugouts of the Seminoles, built by fire and hatchet from a single cypress log. Through the energy of many bold real estate men and many patient gardeners Sanford is rapidly becoming known to the world as “The Celery City,” a title once held alone by Kalamazoo, Michigan, though it might well have been disputed by Arlington, Massachusetts. If you travel back and forth enough in Florida you can come to know certain spots in it, spots favored or otherwise, by their odors, also favored or otherwise. I know haunts in the upper part of the State toward which the fond, free scent of jasmine will lure you through many a sunny mile of stately, long-leaved pines, themselves giving forth a resinous aroma for a solid foundation on which the airy jasmine scent is built. Farther south where the jasmine hardly dares the beat of the summer sun the orange groves send out messengers that beguile you through long distances in the same way. None of these calls you to Sanford. There the homely fragrance of crushed celery leaves drowns all else and salutes your appreciating nostrils from afar. I am told that Sanford people carry these odorous bunches of translucent golden-green beauty at weddings just as other, custom-bound folk carry bride roses, but I think the tale is persiflage. Certainly you have but to step from the train there in April to be accosted by a demure and smiling young woman who says, “Won’t you try some of our celery?” holding up a tempting stalk or two, “We grow celery here and we are very proud of it. We want all strangers to taste it and see how good it is.” This is an excellent custom, both for Sanford and the strangers. I have been to places in the North where mine host, who produced verses, always proffered me these, to read or to hear, soon after my arrival. I much prefer Sanford.