24 WILD WINGS 



interested in the boat he was building than in our talk of 

 Audubonian antiquities. 



Years after Audubon's visit, this island was occupied by 

 a Dr. Perrine and his family, who were raising tropical fruits. 

 At the outbreak of the Seminole War a band of Indians 

 murdered the doctor, but failed to find his family, who were 

 concealed in a turtle-well. Later on an enterprising individual 

 — according to tradition — set up on this lovely key with its 

 waving palms a saloon and gambling place, to which resorted 

 all sorts of desperadoes. Shade of Audubon ! 



Audubon tells that immediately after landing on Indian 

 Key, he was conducted by his host across to a neighboring 

 long key, where he and his party inspected a large rookery 

 of nesting Florida Cormorants. From his account I should 

 judge that this was Lower Metacombe Key, which we could 

 see about a mile to the westward, a dark strip of mangroves, 

 some four miles long. We did not \isit it, as the guide said 

 the Cormorants did not now resort there, but fretjuented 

 some smaller islands farther back in the bay. So, hoping to 

 happen upon the route of Audubon's second-day excursion 

 (which he says he made between three A. M. and dusk), to 

 a key, evidently some miles away, where he found the Man- 

 o'-War Birds beginning to nest, we got under way about 

 eight A. M., after further photographing on Indian Key. 

 Our course lay between Lcnver Metacombe and Lignum- 

 Vitae keys, and out into the wilderness of "soapy mud-flats," 

 or "soap-flats," as Audubon called them. The term is an 

 apt one, for the sticky, whitish clay mud had a very soapy 

 appearance, and the tide running over it stirred up a whitish 

 lather that was suggestixe of soapv dish-water. 



Before long it was our lot to form a very intimate acquaint- 

 ance with these same soap-flats which the great naturalist had 

 crossed. We had passed several keys, and were approaching 



