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38
MEXICAN GULF COAST ILLUSTRATED.
PORTERSVILLE, GRAND BAY, Etc.
West of Mobile, and immediately on the Coast, is Portersville, at the mouth of Bayou Labatre, where a number of Mobilians have pleasant sum. mer residences. There the sea-bathing, fishing and boating afford enjoyable recreation. The railway stations on the line of the L. N. are Yene-tia, Fowl River, St. Elmo, Grand Bay, Riverside and Orange Grove. Near Grand Bay, parties from northern States have purchased lauds and are making improvements. One of the most energetic is a progressive settler at Grand Bay, Mr. M. T. Russell, whose energy, enterprise and intelligent efforts are bearing good fruit. The lands at and around Grand Bay average with the best in fertility on the Coast. Good management has been followed bjf highly satisfactory results in growing fruits and vegetables.
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RIVERSIDE.
California has its Riverside, famous for fruits grown in its vicinity, and somewhat noted for its climate. The Coast also has its Riverside—a recent addition on the railroad with ,a climate unsurpassed anywhere: where the pear, the peach, the plum, the pomegranate, the Japanese persimmon, the quince, the grape, the fig, the strawberry, dewberry, blackberry, and other small fruits grow in perfection, and the orange, olive, pecan, English walnut and a long catalogue of .other fruits and vegetables ripen earlier than elsewhere in the Union save limited'areas in Florida and Texas, and possessing an important advantage over such places, in being much nearer the largest and best northern markets, leaving out of view even the two large cities of New Orleans and Mobile. Riverside is about one hundred miles from New Orleans and thirty from Mobile. It is high above the sea level and is at the margin of the great timber belt of long-leaf pine, through which flow the Pascagoula and Escatawpa rivers.
As indicating results in that locality the following letter written by a fruit and vegetable grower there, Mr. W. J. Parker, is given. “The strawberry will give more monej’ here, I believe, than anywhere in the South, as our berries are put on the market almost as early as those of Florida, and at one-fourth the freight charges, and we are protected in this particular locality by the hills to the north. Blackberries, either the wild or the cultivated, yield abuudantlv. Seedling peach trees give fine crops; grapes do well and bring more money than those grown elsewhere, as ours are ripe and marketed before the crops north of us. Pears are the fruit of this country—free from all disease and bear abundantly. I sold my crop of Leconte pears this year at $1.40 per bushel, twenty to twenty-three pears filling a