146 



THE OOLOQI8T 



scenery along the Ocklawaha and you 

 see several stately palm and cypress 

 towering above the lower trees and 

 vegetation, where coons, otters and 

 other animals and reptiles roam ga- 

 lore. 



The river water is clear as a crystal 

 and you can see all the way to the 

 bottom where it bubbles up in some 

 places. 



The small passenger boat from Sil- 

 ver Springs to Palatka, passed us on 

 several occasions and we were pretty 

 crowded sometimes as the Ocklawaha 

 isn't much wider than a mill canal. 



I think we rowed against the swift 

 current for about 35 miles, and after 

 awhile became completely exhausted 

 and a little nervous in thinking we 

 would never get to Moss Bluff. And 

 we never did! 



One morning after a record horrible 

 night's sleep we crawled out of our 

 blankets in the boat, in a good place 

 for malaria, and Worthington was as 

 red as a wild Indian, and I guess I was 

 the same. 1 forgot to say I felt like a 

 wild man and he looked like one We 

 looked at the "Ocks" little, old current 

 for a while and then I saw changes 

 rapidly coming over Worthington's 

 face and I knew in an instant what 

 was on his mind but never once did 

 I open my "peeper." 



After a while he sprung "Let's go 

 back down to Welaka and get a 

 shack?" I held back a while and then 

 answered very reluctantly, "Just as 

 you say." 



Now, I can't blame Mr. Worthington 

 as he is an old man and did his share 

 of the rowing and we might have be- 

 come mad-men in rowing against that 

 ever increasing swift current to Moss 

 Bluff, a good 60 or 70 miles off, still 

 in the first place if we had known 

 what the "Ock" and surrounding coun- 

 try was, we would never have been 

 there. Anyway gas is the stuff. 



We might have camped and rested 



but it was all a wet, muddy, treach- 

 erous swamp and our grub was getting 

 low, so we evacuated at once and 

 leaped (not slow leaping either) aboard 

 our skiff pushed out into the current 

 and went down it like a shot. 



First Worthington would take up a 

 paddle and steer and then I and when 

 we were losing velocity we would take 

 up the oars and soon gain momentum. 



I will have to confess that we 

 wished we had never seen Florida, 

 but since then the old Florida fever 

 has come back on me and away I go 

 again the first opportunity. 



We hired a shack from a "Cracker," 

 near Welaka and stayed there until 

 February 11th. There was a grape 

 fruit grove right over the :ence ana 

 an orange one not far away, that I 

 made look sick. No wild one either! 



The owner of the grapefruit grove 

 got a little suspicious and Worthington 

 advised me to rid the neighborhood of 

 parings in haste one day, which I did 

 after much exertion. 



While in Welaka I saw a fine shell 

 mound, a solid mass 20 feet thick. 1 

 guess the contents are a species of 

 snail as I haven't studied conchology 

 much. There was an orange grove 

 planted on top of some of them. 



We had Northern people for com- 

 pany in Welaka and were happy as 

 there were a few birds around there, 

 but after a while it got to be pretty 

 wet weather. 



Just before coming North we had 

 an awful season of rain that lasted 

 ten days and nights. It poured into 

 our shanty and as we had a lot of 

 stuff and outfit we had to work some 

 to keep things dry. Natives said it 

 was the worst spell in years and I 

 guess it was as it washed away the 

 ground and made small brooks where 

 there were none before. The St. 

 John's rose rapidly and just a little 

 more would have carried off our 

 shanty. 



