Florida is divided into two parts; the one to the north, more populous and less abandoned, has Tallahassee for capital, and Pensacola, one of the principal marine arsenals of the United States; the other, lying between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, is only a narrow peninsula, eaten away by the current of the Gulf Stream—­a little tongue of land lost amidst a small archipelago, which the numerous vessels of the Bahama Channel double continually.  It is the advanced sentinel of the gulf of great tempests.  The superficial area of this state measures 38,033,267 acres, amongst which one had to be chosen situated beyond the 28th parallel and suitable for the enterprise.  As Barbicane rode along he attentively examined the configuration of the ground and its particular distribution.

Florida, discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1512, on Palm Sunday, was first of all named Pascha Florida.  It was well worthy of that designation with its dry and arid coasts.  But a few miles from the shore the nature of the ground gradually changed, and the country showed itself worthy of its name; the soil was cut up by a network of creeks, rivers, watercourses, ponds, and small lakes; it might have been mistaken for Holland or Guiana; but the ground gradually rose and soon showed its cultivated plains, where all the vegetables of the North and South grow in perfection, its immense fields, where a tropical sun and the water conserved in its clayey texture do all the work of cultivating, and lastly its prairies of pineapples, yams, tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugarcanes, which extended as far as the eye could reach, spreading out their riches with careless prodigality.

Barbicane appeared greatly satisfied on finding the progressive elevation of the ground, and when J.T.  Maston questioned him on the subject,

“My worthy friend,” said he, “it is greatly to our interest to cast our Columbiad on elevated ground.”

“In order to be nearer the moon?” exclaimed the secretary of the Gun Club.

“No,” answered Barbicane, smiling.  “What can a few yards more or less matter?  No, but on elevated ground our work can be accomplished more easily; we shall not have to struggle against water, which will save us long and expensive tubings, and that has to be taken into consideration when a well 900 feet deep has to be sunk.”

“You are right,” said Murchison, the engineer; “we must, as much as possible, avoid watercourses during the casting; but if we meet with springs they will not matter much; we can exhaust them with our machines or divert them from their course.  Here we have not to work at an artesian well, narrow and dark, where all the boring implements have to work in the dark.  No; we can work under the open sky, with spade and pickaxe, and, by the help of blasting, our work will not take long.”

“Still,” resumed Barbicane, “if by the elevation of the ground or its nature we can avoid a struggle with subterranean waters, we can do our work more rapidly and perfectly; we must, therefore, make our cutting in ground situated some thousands of feet above the level of the sea.”