The banyan tree has to be seen to be understood.  It is really an exclusive product of Florida and is found in the Key West country, where sea island cotton will grow all the year around, indifferent to changes of season.  The banyan is almost a colony of trees in itself, having, apparently, a dozen trunks in one.  All the upper boughs are more or less united, and the old proverb of “In union there is strength,” seems to have in it a unique illustration and confirmation.

Lake Worth is one of the prettiest lakes in the South.  It is a very beautiful sheet of water, broken only by Pitts’ Island, which is located near its northern end.  The most useful and desirable products of the North have here a congenial home, alongside those most loved in the region of the equator.  A New Englander may find his potatoes, sweet corn, tomatoes and other garden favorites, and can pluck, with scarcely a change in his position, products that are usually claimed as Brazilian.  He finds in his surroundings, as plentiful and as free as the water sprinkling before him, such strange neighbors as coffee, the tamarind, mango, pawpa, guava, banana, sapadillo, almond, custard apple, maumec apple, grape fruit, shaddock, Avadaco pear, and other equally new acquaintances.

And these are all neighbors, actual residents, natives of the soil, not imported immigrants or exacting visitors to be tenderly treated.  Giant relatives, equally at home, are the rubber tree, mahogany, eucalyptus, cork tree and mimosa.  All these, within forty hours’ travel of New York, to be reached in winter by an all-rail trip, and to be enjoyed in a climate that is a perpetual May.  It was but a few years ago (less than a dozen) that the beauties of Lake Worth were at first dimly reported by venturesome sportsmen, who had gazed upon its unspeakable loveliness.

To-day the taste and labor of wealthy capitalists from East and from West, have lined its fair shores with elegant homes.  One of these, the McCormick Place, has for the past two years been famous for its wondrous beauty.  It is situated at Palm Beach, on the eastern shore of the lake, and faces westward or inland.  It thus receives the cool air from the lake and the breezes from the Atlantic, which is but a stroll distant.  The entire estate comprises 100 acres, all under high cultivation.  It has a water front on both lake and ocean of 1,200 feet.  In this lovely spot Mr. McCormick built a castle, so handsomely finished, inside and out, so tastefully designed and so elegantly furnished, that one would imagine he expected to entertain royalty within its walls.

It is said that nowhere on the continent is so great a variety of vegetable growth presented in one locality, as is here to be seen in the full perfection of lusty growth.  The cacti at this point are marvels of variety and beauty.  One’s idea of what a cactus is can never be complete until one has witnessed a scene such as this, and a collection of this magnitude.  The fruit trees form a mass of groves.  In some of these, huge cocoanuts tower away above all other growth, while alongside of these monarchs of arbory culture there are groves of dwarf trees, less tremendous but quite as interesting.