"It Is A Scandal," Said The Pilot, "That This Coast Is Not Better Lighted. A Few Light-Houses Would Make Its Navigation Much Safer, And They Would Be Built, If Florida Had Any Man In Congress To Represent The Matter Properly To The Government.

I have long been familiar with this coast - sixty times, at least, I have made the voyage from Charleston to Havana, and I am sure that there is no such dangerous navigation on the coast of the United States.

In going to Havana, or to New Orleans, or to other ports on the gulf, commanders of vessels try to avoid the current of the gulf-stream which would carry them to the north, and they, therefore, shave the Florida coast, and keep near the reefs which you see yonder. They often strike the reefs inadvertently, or are driven against them by storms. In returning northward the navigation is safer; we give a good offing to the reefs and strike out into the gulf-stream, the current of which carries us in the direction of our voyage."

A little before nine o'clock we had entered the little harbor of Key West, and were moored in its still waters. It was a bright moonlight evening, and we rambled two or three hours about the town and the island. The hull of a dismasted vessel lay close by our landing-place; it had no name on bow or stern, and had just been found abandoned at sea, and brought in by the wreckers; its cargo, consisting of logwood, had been taken out and lay in piles on the wharf. This town has principally grown up since the Florida war. The habitations have a comfortable appearance; some of them are quite neat, but the sterility of the place is attested by the want of gardens. In some of the inclosures before the houses, however, there were tropical shrubs in flower, and here the cocoanut-tree was growing, and other trees of the palm kind, which rustled with a sharp dry sound in the fresh wind from the sea. They were the first palms I had seen growing in the open air, and they gave a tropical aspect to the place.

We fell in with a man who had lived thirteen years at Key West. He told us that its three thousand inhabitants had four places of worship - an Episcopal, a Catholic, a Methodist, and a Baptist church; and the drinking-houses which we saw open, with such an elaborate display of bottles and decanters, were not resorted to by the people of the place, but were the haunt of English and American sailors, whom the disasters, or the regular voyages of their vessels had brought hither. He gave us an account of the hurricane of September, 1846, which overflowed and laid waste the island.

"Here where we stand," said he, "the water was four feet deep at least. I saved my family in a boat, and carried them to a higher part of the island.

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