16 Naturalist at Large 



mother thrilled me with tales of how, as a little girl, she 

 would come down early in the morning to dig out the pine 

 knot which was buried in the embers each evening so that 

 the fire could be easily kindled the next day. She would 

 sometimes find three or four Indians sleeping on the floor 

 in front of the hearth. They would leave a haunch of veni- 

 son, or fish from Oneida Lake, or berries, out of gratitude 

 for the hospitality. The time, of course, was well over a 

 hundred years ago. 



Grandmother and I went down to Miami from Eau 

 GaUie. The railroad had only been built a short time 

 before, and we stayed at the Royal Palm Hotel, which was 

 then only partly built. A day or two after we arrived, a 

 gray-haired gentleman in the dining room came over and 

 spoke to Grandmother. He was Henry M. Flagler, who had 

 been an usher at her wedding. He suggested that we go 

 with him to Nassau, where he was to buy some property. 



So it happened that I got in Nassau my first glimpse of 

 the tropics — an iron which entered so deeply into my 

 soul that it is still completely embedded. The specimens of 

 snakes and lizards which I secured at that time became the 

 nucleus of my own collection and are now part of the 

 collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 

 Harvard. Imagine a timid, introspective youngster thrown, 

 at the most impressionable moment of his life, into the one 

 spot most ideally framed to arouse imagination to the 

 fullest. Grandmother was as keen as I to sail over the Sea 

 Gardens and peer at their wonders through a water glass. 

 I don't remember glass-bottomed boats in Nassau at this 

 early date. We sailed among the little cays which surround 

 New Providence Island, picnicked, and collected shells. 



