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MEXICAN GULF COAST ILLUSTRATED.
consists in the fact that the Pacific Slope is a very long distance from the Atlantic and Great Lakes, and the States adjacent, involving a, long and tedious journey; a great inconvenience in cases of sudden and unforeseen disaster requiring the immediate return of the tourist or invalid. Quick transit is impossible. To reach the Gulf Coast requires little more than a day’s time from Chicago or Cincinnati or Louisville, and but a few hours longer to travel to or from New York. The difference in the cost of trans-poration is an item of some importance. Here the tourist and invalid will find that rest and comfort they so much desire, and not experience that uncomfortable feeling of isolation which is present, oftentimes, when half a continent separates them from home and friends.
At several of the Coast resorts the hotel accommodations have been much increased within a few months past. Additions have been and are being made to the rooming capacity of a number of these caravansaries, and their arrangements and appointments for the comfort and covenience of guests much improved. But the fact remains that more first class hotels with a capacity for several hundred guests, equipped with the latest and best conveniences and appointments for the comfort and satisfaction of patrons are required. “ The Coast is the greatest natural winter resort, (says a prominent railroad official,) in the country—the United States— and it will command an immense patronage when these accommodations are supplied. A letter from the manager of one of the Coast hotels informs me that at that hostelry enough people were' turned away during the season to fill three large hotels. * * * Besides that, if many of the people who come were entertained and pleased, many of them would build homes in the vicinity, prices of property would be enhanced and these points made more attractive and valuable in general. * * * There is no necessity for going farther South than this for a mild climate, a beautiful and attractive country.”
These are significant suggestions. Capitalists may take a hint from them and put money in their purses, by investments which cannot fail to yield large returns.
A southern metropolitan journal recently contained the following: “Northern people who are wealthy must escape their own severe winter climate. Advertising judiciously, in connection with fine hotels, will secure an enormous patronage from winter visitors who would from choice come to this Coast. There are no attractions in Florida, except the climate, the magnificent hotels, and facilities for fishing and hunting. “Mobile, to say nothing of New Orleans, has these and besides every attraction of a metro-