It would be misleading to suppose the progress in welfare indicated by these and the foregoing statements to be true of every district at the South. The merely agricultural regions were still far behind. Methods of tilling the soil were the same as prevailed forty years earlier, and it was not unlikely that the colored people, who for the most part had the immediate charge of this work, prosecuted it, as yet, with less skill than did overseers and planters before slavery was done away. Yet in 1890 the farm valuation of the South was found to exceed its highest ante-bellum figure and almost to equal one-fifth of the entire farm valuation of the country. To the general backwardness of southern agriculture there was one quite striking exception. The State of Florida underwent after the war a most astounding transition for the better. Her total railway mileage of 416 miles when the war ended had grown to 2,470 miles by 1890. The farm valuation was, in 1880, $20,500,000. The population in 1890 exceeded that of 1880 by almost 50 per cent. Steamboats were upon every coast and river. This was due not alone to the State's popularity as a winter sanitarium for northern people. Florida was also the early market-garden for the North. Its oranges largely supplied the trade, and were much sought for their excellent quality. The State was excessively rich in the finest ornamental woods, which were rapidly finding their way into the market. Nearly all the crops of the temperate zone and the fruits of the torrid flourished here with the utmost luxuriance, many of them being natives, others taking to the soil with a greater friendliness than they displayed for that whence they were transplanted. The State bade fair to rival Louisiana in the production of sugar, and South Carolina in that of rice, as well as one day to supply the entire American demand for cocoanuts. The mulberry was indigenous to every part of this new Eden, which promised to become at no late date an immense producer of raw silk. Cattle fed and fattened everywhere without shelter, in winter as in summer. [Illustration: Small river reaching the ocean; palm trees in background.] The Mouth of the Miami River, Florida