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MEXICAN GULF COAST ILLUSTRATED.
With a climate unsurpassed, if it is equalled iu the Republic, the wonder is not that people in the South seek the Coast in summer for comfort, or that northern people court its friendly temperature, and escape the rigors and discomforts of a long, tedious winter, but that there is not ascore of capacious hotels and sanitariums, with every modern convenience and appointment demanded by exacting guests. Where, with these supplied, can men and women of means and leisure get more real comfort and enjoyment out of life? Does the man of business, worn and weary from the daily wear and tear of commercial or professional pursuits, desire to lay off the harness fora while, fly from the rush and roar, the care and friction of the city, and seek some quiet and restful spot where nature w’ears her loveliest garb, where with boating, fishing, bathing, riding or rambling, he may repair his failing strength, bring back his wonted elasticity of spirits, and return to his home and business with a new zest for labor? There is no place where the conditions are more favorable for recuperating jaded energies and failing powers than the northern boundary of the Gulf of Mexico.
Thousands ',of people from the northern States,—sometimes entire families—annually spend from six weeks to six months somewhere in the South; and the number is constantly increasing. The “tourist crop” of Florida long has been and still is worth more iu dollars aud cents to the State every year than the aggregate profits obtained from all the fruit aud vegetable crops raised iu that State. The Savannah News says that more than 30,000 northern tourists stopped in that city during the past winter on their way to and from Florida. Savannah was not the objective point of these visitors, but only a place where they stopped to sojourn in going to or from the great Florida resorts, but the hotels there have been full and the people overflowed into Savannah. For a dozen years a tide of human beings has surged into California every Autumn from the Northern aud Eastern States. Fruits — the orange, the grape especially, judging from the effluent tone of the printed matter scattered broadcast over the States east of the “great divide”—were so delicious and plentiful in California that the traveller and tourist would revel in a paradise of food “fit for the gods.” It has been found, however, that this is another instance wherein—
“ Instance lends enchantment to the view.”
California fruits are often more plentiful and less expensive in Chicago than at the place of production. Health-seekers learn that sudden changes of temperature are not unfrequent and that their pains are, in some instances, augmented instead of alleviated. And another drawback