This region has been described as a mental quicksand.  There is something in the atmosphere which makes the most industrious man contentedly idle.  Here the nervous, irritable, fussy individual, who for years has never known what rest meant, and who has fidgeted when he could not work, finds himself relaxing, against his will, into a condition of what a celebrated statesman described as “innocuous desuetude.”  The balminess of the air, which is at once warm and invigorating and bracing, without being severe, brings about a natural feeling of rest.  The fascination which this creates soon becomes overpowering.  The longer the visitor remains the more completely and hopelessly does he give away to his feelings, until at last he only tears himself away by a painful effort.

Biscayne Bay stands at the terminus of the peninsula of Florida, and at the extreme southeastern end of the United States.  The visitor who stands here is on what is frequently called the great projecting toe of the Union.  South of him there are a number of islands, but of the main land there is no more.  The bay is almost a lake.  It sets well into the coast, but is not quite enclosed by land.  It is between five and ten miles wide and is forty miles long.  A score of little inlets feed it from the ocean.  The water is blue and clear and of no great depth, making the lake one of the finest cruising places in the world.  All along the shores there are picturesque little settlements, all of them distinctly Southern in their appearance, and concerning each of which the traveler can hear legend without number.

St. Augustine is perhaps the most talked-about city in Florida.  It is a quaint old Spanish city with a great history.  The evidences of the past seem to be disappearing rapidly, the retreat being forced by the introduction of modern ideas and immense sums of modern capital.  Memorial Church is one of the features of the town, and behind it the traveler sees, as he approaches, turrets and towers of every shape and size.  The pavements are almost uniformly good, and as one is driven along the streets for the first time, every turning seems to bring to light some new wonder and some unexpected beauty.  Hedges formed of oleanders, arbor vitae, larches and cedars, to say nothing of masses of roses of all kinds, upset all his preconceived notions of tree, shrub and flower growth, and convince him that he has come to a land flowing indeed with milk and honey, where winters are practically unknown.

The Hotel Ponce de Leon is naturally the great object of his search, and if his purse affords it the tourist certainly stops here, if only for the sake of saying that he has slept, for one night at least, in this extraordinary and marvelously magnificent hostelry.  If the Ponce de Leon were in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis or Chicago, it would excite murmurs of admiration on every hand.  But its existence would not be regarded as something extraordinary, as it certainly