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, l)ut 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 j^alms 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 ])arty inspected a large rookerv 
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 visit it, as the guide said 
the Cormorants did not now resort there, but frequented 
some smaller islands farther back in the bay. So, hoping to 
hapjten 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. I\r., after further photographing on Indian Kev. 
Our course lay between Lower Metacombe and Lignum- 
\ 4 fie keys, and out into the wilderness of “soapv mud-flats,” 
or “soap-flats,” as Audubon called them. The term is an 
apt one, for the sticky, whitish clay mud had a verv soapv 
ajtpearance, and the tide running over it stirred up a whitish 
lather that was suggesti^'e of soajtv dish-water. 
Before long it was our lot to form a verv intimate acquaint¬ 
ance with these same soap-flats which the great naturalist had 
crossed. We had passed several kevs, and were approaching 
