Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

From the Savannah Republican.

EAST-FLORIDA.

East-Florida abounds in internal advantages sufficient to make it one of the most important divisions of North America, and much more so than many that are already opulent. Its level face and mild climate is not exceeded in point of salubrity, by any part of either continents of America. Its extensive lands, fertile in the production of many valuable articles of agriculture-rich in spontaneous high growth and pasturage, and abounding in native quadrupeds, lay waste to the amount of above fifteen millions of acres. Its water courses are numerous, navigable and profusely supplied with a variety of sea fish and shell fish, and their shores at certain seasons well supplied with wild fowl. Its stores of lumber are immense: and the qualities of many of them are preferred in all countries where they have been used, to those of the same classes found elsewhere, particularly its pine, cedar, cypress, and live oak, which are kinds of lumber more universally desired in terrestrial and marine structures, and are the classes in which it most abounds. Florida pine has been purchased in Savannah for ship-building at 50 per cent. higher in price than the pine of Georgia, though but about 2 degrees difference in latitude, and it is well known that the Florida pine has had a preference in the royal dock-yards of England to any other pine that has been used there.

The exportations of Florida, amounting at present to almost nothing, could be very great if it had a sufficient population. For the last twenty years, there has been exported one barrel of turpentine, the produce of this province, whereas when it was an infant colony of Great Britain, one contractor shipped from St. John's river, in one season twenty thousand barrels. Again: in Savannah river, Georgia, which is in no wise superior to the river St. John's, are loaded hundreds of vessels per year, while the whole of this province does not load ten vessels in a year, notwithstanding Florida has many more advantages arising from its local situation—such as extensive fishing streams, superabundantly supplied; large fields for wrecking in the peculiar situation of its coasts and keys—a more southern climate, more genial to the cultivation of some important articles of commerce, and to many valuable spontaneous productions of nature, &c.

Its exportations might consist of many articles, viz: the four classes of lumber already mentioned, and many others; cotton, wool, hemp, indigo, tobacco, pot and pearl ash, myrtle and beeswax, turpentine, tar, rosin, pitch, Indian corn, rice, rye, barley, oats, grape and orange wine, grape brandy, whiskey, malt liquors, pease and beans, a many kinds, a long list of esculent and medicinal roots, culinary, medicinal and manufacturing oils, beef, pork, fish, butter, cheese, lard, peltry, &c. &c. Sugar and flour have not been fairly tried: but in Georgia, lying more north, the former is made in great perfection, and the latter in Louisiana directly west: there is no reason to doubt of the lucrative productions in Florida—and its southern parts will suit the growth of coffee; for forming a long peninsula between the two gulfs, the Atlantic and Mexican, the climate becomes much more southern than the latitude warrants.

These advantages lie dormant only from the want of hands to put them in motion.