22 WILD WINGS 



tropical fruits. Inside this natural breakwater is a vast shal- 

 low bav with immense flats of sticky, white clay mud, and 

 dotted with mangrove islets. New " keys " are continually 

 started by mangrove shoots which, drifting about, take root 

 on these flats- and, multiplying, form islets by the soil which 

 the tide lodges around their roots. A very few of these keys 

 have beaches of finely ground shell-sand. 



In Audubon's time this great inaccessible wilderness was 

 the resort of pirates and wreckers, and even now it is so 

 inaccessible and difficult of navigation that a sail, other than 

 of the few native fishermen, is seldom seen. Few naturalists 

 have ever penetrated the mazes of its shallows, and many 

 of the keys are still nameless. Even indefatigable Audubon 

 only entered the portals of Florida Bay and Barnes's Sound, 

 and no other ornithologist has given to the world any ex- 

 tended account of the region and its contents. Naturally it 

 was a very enthusiastic company that went to sleep on the 

 borders of the promised land, harassed though they were by 

 mosquitoes and by troops of great two-inch-long cockroaches 

 that perambulated ()\-er their prostrate forms. 



Earlv the next morning we sailed out through the gap in 

 the coral reef into the open sea, to cruise outside the keys, 

 since the Maggie, drawing four feet of water, was too deep 

 for the flats of Card's and Barnes's Sounds. Following the 

 shore a couple of miles off Key Largo, the greatest of the 

 kevs, — some thirty miles in length, — we varied matters by 

 lingering at one point along the reef to catch a few fine fish 

 for dinner. 



Another diversion, as we sailed along, was the ever-wonder- 

 ful migration of the birds, that seemed now to be at its height. 

 Thousands of litde land-birds were making their long, weary 

 flight from the West Indies, or even farther, to our shores. 

 Most that I saw were Water-Thrushes, Redstarts, Black-poll 



