The vessels freighted for the transport of the metal and the workmen had given unparalleled activity to the port.

Soon other vessels of every form and tonnage, freighted with provisions and merchandise, ploughed the bay and the two harbours; vast offices of shipbrokers and merchants were established in the town, and the _Shipping Gazette_ each day published fresh arrivals in the port of Tampa.
Whilst roads were multiplied round the town, in consequence of the prodigious increase in its population and commerce, it was joined by railway to the Southern States of the Union.

One line of rails connected La Mobile to Pensacola, the great southern maritime arsenal; thence from that important point it ran to Tallahassee.

There already existed there a short line, twenty-one miles long, to Saint Marks on the seashore.

It was this loop-line that was prolonged as far as Tampa Town, awakening in its passage the dead or sleeping portions of Central Florida.