246 THE OKEECIIOBEE EXPEDITION. 



ter of its shores or the productions of its waters. The 

 mystery surrounding it has been unbroken, nothing has 

 been really known of it, until our boat was launched upon 

 its waters. The State engineer of Florida, in 1855, 

 expressed the opinion generally held regarding the coun 

 try about the lake, when he wrote : &quot; These lands are now, 

 and will continue to be, nearly as much unknown as the 

 interior of Africa, or the mountain sources of the Ama 

 zon.&quot; Fabulous stories of beautiful islands, picturesque 

 ruins, and pirate-haunted glens, have been much in vogue 

 with writers upon Lake Okeechobee, and to lift the veil 

 that has so long hung over it, and narrate the plain facts, 

 is to deprive them of a seemingly inexhaustible fund of 

 romance. I must confess that it pains me to do so, but 

 fidelity to truth compels me to write of the lake as it is, 

 and not as it should be. The beautiful groves of trop 

 ical fruits, the monkeys, spiders of gigantic size, and 

 ancient ruins, are among the things that were not. 



There is but one practicable route to Lake Okeecho 

 bee, that via the Kissimmee river. There are, however, 

 two routes to that river, and for the edification of the 

 future traveller to the lake I will describe them. A 

 good boat, provisions, and everything necessary for a 

 month s stay, are necessary by either. The one I adopted 

 was, as stated, from Indian river, at St. Lucie, across 

 the country, to the location of old Fort Bassenger, on 

 the Kissimmee river. The first ten miles is through a- 

 low open pine woods, very wet in the winter months, 

 through which flow two deep creeks, the &quot; Five-mile &quot; 

 and &quot;Ten-mile.&quot; From Ten-mile creek the course is 

 north of west for twenty-four miles, at first over the 

 Alapattie Flats, submerged as late as March, and dry 

 and alkaline in the dry season ; later, a short wiry grass 



