Bird-Life on the Everglades 



By ALANSON SKINNER 



With a photograph by the author 



DURING August, 1 910, it was my privilege to head an Ethnological 

 expedition into the interior of Southern Florida. The purpose of the 

 trip was to visit the remnant of the Seminole Indians who inhabit 

 the region. In order to reach these people in their homes, it was necessary for 

 our party to invade the remote fastnesses of the Big Cypress swamp, and to 

 completely cross the Everglades, a feat only five times before accomplished 

 by white men. We also made a journey of some sixty or seventy miles through 

 the pine barrens. 



My companions were Mr. Julian A. Dimock, the well-known nature 

 photographer, Frank Brown, the son of a Florida Indian trader, and Wilson 

 Cypress, a full-blooded Seminole Indian. Dimock and I met Brown and 

 C3^ress at Fort Myers, on the west coast, near the Gulf of Mexico. From 

 this point we set out for the Big Cypress in a prairie schooner, drawn by two 

 yoke of undersized oxen. 



The first part of our journey lay, for about seventy miles, through alter- 

 nating pine barrens and damp prairies, with occasional morasses, or 'sloughs,' 

 as the 'crackers', or native whites, call them. It was the rainy season, and 

 to a northerner who had never before endured a Floridian summer it was a 

 novel experience. The sun would rise on skies of the deepest, warmest, softest 

 blue imaginable; downy clouds of intense white contrasting markedly with 

 this lovely background. The sun shone with ever-increasing intensity. The 

 water through which we waded, ankle- to knee-deep was so hot that it par- 

 boiled us painfully. Then suddenly, without a moment's warning, there 

 would come down upon us a galloping cohort of inky clouds. The wind blew 

 fiercely, and raindrops pelted down with the velocity of rifle bullets. Thunder 

 roared accompaniment to furious lightning flashes; and then, just as suddenly, 

 the warm blue sky, and cottony clouds again, with the fierce old sun causing 

 the steam to roll like smoke up out of our clothes, and from the watery fields, 

 as though they were on fire. In the distance, perhaps, you might see the 

 storm racing away, and hear the far-off blasting of the thunder. 



All through the pine barrens there was no lack of animal life. We lost 

 count of the vicious water-moccasins that generally refused to flee at our 

 approach. The great diamond-back rattlesnake was not in evidence. Of the 

 small ground rattlers we saw two. Other snakes were abundant, but we gave 

 them a wide berth. 



From every bush, tussock, or tree, our ears w^ere assailed by a deafening 

 chorus of frogs and toads; large pea -green tree-frogs, and tiny ones w'ith 

 the same pea-jackets; big warty toads, reminding one of their northern rela- 

 tives, and all sorts of pond-frogs. Salamanders we did not see, but occasion- 



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