CHAPTER VI. 



A SOJOURN IX FLORIDA. 



MEM., an index, tab or tally, serves as an excellent purpose if one under- 

 takes to retrieve bygone years. Forty years ago seems short to me. One day 

 carries me back instinctively to the time when I went gipsying. Although repeat- 

 edly interrupted by spasms of business activity and speculative ventures, my 

 pursuits were reciprocally subordinated to each other. An active temperament tires 

 a man of the monotony of a permanent tenable home. Well-to-do people are 

 apt to travel. Consequently, when my only son of thirteen years was called by 

 death on February 22, in 1869, I closed my residence in Brooklyn, N. Y., and 

 skipped with my wife to a warmer climate, where nature smiles when mourners 

 weep. Thence forward for the five years previous to my starting my "Forest and 

 Stream" we were always moving about states, provinces and territories, and from 

 one Indian reservation to another, and I would always locate her at available 

 stopping places while I went prospecting. 



In those fallow days, when sportsmanship was not a fine art, and the latest 

 style of a shooting jacket alone gave a man the entry into exclusive clubs, we 

 inevitably carried guns for protection, provender and pastime, depending upon them 

 to keep the camp larder supplied. Hunting for the pot was entirely legitimate 

 and an incident of the outing. Deer meat, squirrels, ducks and quail or any other 

 game all went into the same stew -at each meal. That was old moose hunter 

 Warner A. Wilder's practice and mine in Muskoka or any other part of Canada. 



In the spring of 1870 I put in most of my time with Dr. Chas. J. Kenworthy, 

 of Jacksonville, Fla., on the cruise of his catboat "Spray" from Cedar Keys to 

 Punta Rassa, and later at the Indian river with Fred A. Ober. On the west gulf 

 cormorants lined up like regiments of soldiers on the shores of the wooded isles 

 at Cedar Keyes, and red cedar pencils were plenty. At Homosassa we found 

 Greene Smith and wife, of Albany Journal, keeping a boarding house for sports 

 who caught 25 pounds of redfish in the river, interviewed a great alligator sunning 

 on the river side, alert to slip into the water down his slide like an otter when 

 alarmed. He was said to be seventeen feet in length. Grape fruit, the largest 

 grown, on trees as great as were ever seen, were wonders on premises once 

 occupied by Senator Yulee, before the Civil War, during which period .he became 

 Secretary of the Confederate Navy. 



A tidy excursion steamer one day took us down to Jones' on Sarasota Bay. 

 Coral reefs, channels and nigger heads were traversed all the way when the wind 

 and weather were fair. When it stormed bird fliers were smashed against the 

 glass of Egmont lighthouse by the dozen, and the keeper put in his spare time in 

 taxidermy to set 'em up again. On the way to Tampa we met old John Gomez 

 hauling his boat up the beach. He was a lively old skipper of 87 years of age, 

 who lived until July 23, 1902. He was born in 1791. His age is verified by the 

 church registry at St. Augustine. He died at Tarpon Springs, Fla. He used to 

 take sea anglers out fishing for big fish. 



On the way to Cedar Keys we stopped off at Gainesville and slipped into 

 Gulf Hamik, where cattle run wild, and found a party of sportsmen which had 



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