Westward from Jacksonville, a railway runs through the pine forests
until it reaches the rushing Suwanee River, draining the Okifenokee
swamp out to the Gulf, just north of Cedar Key. This stream is best
known from the minstrel song, long so popular, of the _Old Folks at
Home_. Beyond it the land rises into the rolling country of Middle
Florida, the undulating surface sometimes reaching four hundred feet
elevation, and presenting fertile soil and pleasant scenery, with a
less tropical vegetation than the Peninsula of Florida. Here is
Tallahassee, the capital of the State, one hundred and sixty-five
miles from Jacksonville, a beautiful town of four thousand population,
almost embedded in flowering plants, shrubbery and evergreens, and
familiarly known from these beauties as the "Floral City," the gardens
being especially attractive in the season of roses. The Capitol and
Court-house and West Florida Seminary, set on a hill, are the chief
public buildings. In the suburbs, at Monticello, lived Prince Achille
Murat, a son of the King of Naples, who died in 1847, and his grave is
in the Episcopal Cemetery. There are several lakes near the town, one
of them the curious Lake Miccosukie, which contracts into a creek,
finally disappearing underground. The noted Wakulla Spring, an immense
limestone basin of great depth and volume of water, with wonderful
transparency, is fifteen miles southward.
Some distance to the westward the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers join
to form the Appalachicola River, flowing down to the Gulf at
Appalachicola, a somewhat decadent port from loss of trade, its
exports being principally lumber and cotton. The shallowness of most
of these Gulf harbors, which readily silt up, destroys their
usefulness as ports for deep-draft shipping. The route farther
westward skirts the Gulf Coast, crosses Escambia Bay and reaches
Pensacola, on its spacious harbor, ten miles within the Gulf. This is
the chief Western Florida port, with fifteen thousand people, having a
Navy Yard and much trade in lumber, cotton, coal and grain, a large
elevator for the latter being erected in 1898. The Spaniards made this
a frontier post in 1696, and the remains of their forts, San Miguel
and San Bernardo, can be seen behind the town, while near the outer
edge of the harbor is the old-time Spanish defensive battery, Fort San
Carlos de Barrancos. The harbor entrance is now defended by Fort
Pickens and Fort McRae. Pensacola Bay was the scene of one of the
first spirited naval combats of the Civil War, when the Union forces
early in 1862 recaptured the Navy Yard and defenses. The name of
Pensacola was originally given by the Choctaws to the bearded
Europeans who first settled there, and signifies the "hair people."