22 
WILD WINGS 
tropical fruits. Inside this natural breakwater is a vast shal¬ 
low bay 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 jiortals 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. Naturallv it 
was a very enthusiastic company that went to sleep on the 
borders of the promised land, harassed though they were bv 
mosc|uitoes and by troops of great two-inch-long cockroaches 
that ]ierambulated over their prostrate forms. 
Early 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 cou|:)le of miles off Kev Largo, the greatest of the 
keys, — 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 little 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 
