20 
WILD WINGS 
learning somewhat of “ the lay of the land ” in that morass, 
which even yet in part remains a blank upon the map, and in 
securing the services of two ideal guides, men brought up 
in the unsurveyed and trackless wilderness of the Keys and 
Cape Sable, who knew every islet, channel, and lake, and the 
wonderful rookeries of the herons, ibises, egrets, and other 
interesting birds. 
It was on a glorious bright morning, the twenty-third of 
April, 1903, at Miami, at that time the terminus of the railway, 
that we began our cruise in the old battered seven-ton 
schooner, the Maggie Valdez, which one of the guides had 
brought from Cape Sable to meet us, as a substitute for his 
hner craft, which had recently been wrecked. With a snap- 
jring breeze from the east we ran down Biscavne Bav, past 
the flat, densely wooded Florida mainland on our right and 
low wooded islets well to seaward on the left. By early after¬ 
noon we had traversed the wider part of the bay, and were 
now at last fairly among the Florida Keys. That foreign 
word had hitherto savored to me a good deal of mysterv, 
though not to such a degree as to a certain New England 
villager, who, when I told him that I was to visit the Florida 
Keys, remarked, with an air of entire innocence, that there 
must be /or/:s down there too. 
Our vessel was now gliding along in calm, shallow water, 
which was dotted here and there with the far-famed keys. 
These were of the mangrove tvpe, little round bunches of 
dark, shiny foliage which seemed to spring directly from the 
water, as indeed is often the case. Sometimes the low flat 
upon which they grow is entirely under water. Even when 
it is not, the trees grow out from the shores, leaving no beach 
at all. The rounded mass of dark foliage gives the islet the 
appearance of a fortification out in the water. But such water ! 
Should a painter faithfully produce upon his canvas that 
