AMONG THE FLORIDA KEYS 
39 
splendid bird does not now breed within our limits, if indeed 
it ever did. Even Audubon never saw a nest. 
The time had now come for our party to disband. All but 
myself had to return home, and were to keep on eastward in 
the schooner for Miami. It was my jDrivileg-e to remain for 
further exploration. So that morning we said our farewells, 
and with one of the guides, in a frail little centre-board skiff 
with a leg-of-mutton sail, I started back on a fifty-mile beat 
to Cape Sable in a blustering west wind, across and down 
Barnes’s Sound and Florida Bay. Indeed, we had a lively time 
of it, now drenched, then becalmed, by day studying birds 
and the formation of the curious mangrove keys, at night 
cooking supper upon some uninhabited key or projection of 
the mainland, eating in a smudge, and then seeking refuge 
from the fierce mosquitoes under our nets. On a certain 
peninsula where we camped one night the pests were simply 
unendurable. They settled upon the net literally in quarts, 
and, despite all care, many of them found their way inside. 
All night long they kept up an angry roar. In the morning 
when we crawled out they attacked us with so terrible an 
onslaught that we could not think of delaying for breakfast, 
I:)Ut made sail immediately. 
First and last I made a quite complete exploration of the 
more remote and inaccessible portion of the Florida Keys, 
where birds would be most likely to resort. I ascertained that 
most of the water-birds have been driven bv persecution from 
the keys, and now breed on the mainland, in the morasses 
of the Everglades and the tangles of the great mangrove 
swamp, whither I followed them. Then it was I encountered 
the real hardships of the trip. While the cruise among the 
Keys had its inconveniences, it was a most interesting and 
delightful experience. The weather was mostly fine, with 
equable temperatures, the climate healthful, the quaint man- 
