4(1 



AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



to be any, were both carried outside on either extremity of the projecting platform, 

 and if inside space were by chance overcrowded, the trunks and boxes afforded 

 convenient sittings for tourists who were fond of forest scenery and a quiet smoke 

 in the open air. In that respect the improvised vehicles resembled the modern 

 observation cars, though outriders were wholly unprotected from sun or rain. 

 It usually occupied three hours to make the run of fifteen miles across the neck 

 from the St. Johns river to the ocean. When special dispatch was demanded an 

 old white horse was substituted to run as express. He would make the transit in 

 two hours and a half. Of course, the train went light at such times. The 

 Tocoi railroad was the first railroad in Florida. It existed before the war. 

 Without such a railroad St. Augustine was practically isolated. The land between 

 it and the river was virtually a swamp, in many places without a bottom, and a 

 tramway was much cheaper and more easily constructed than a wagon road of dirt. 

 No vestige of the old plant remains. 



EARLY RAILROAD TRAFM iMDA. 



The next fall I found the persistent canoe man, N. H. Bishop, on the Indian 

 river with Fred A. Ober. Both were naturalists. One was especially in quest of 

 fancy feather birds of all colors along the shore and among the swamps and 

 timber, and up the Oclawaha, including snake birds (plotar anhinge), with a neck 

 longer than its body, which could swim better than they could fly. When a small 

 excursion steamer carried tourists up stream at night with a fire power on the 

 bow to help shove the boat around the bends, lots of native birds would be 

 scared off their roosts from the overhanging branches when the flashlight passed 

 underneath "chugging." It was an exciting scatteration. Ober had a wiry working 

 partner with him named Jim Russell, who was a keen alligator hunter for their 

 hides. One time he dove to the bottom of a lagoon and knifed one which had 

 sounded. The trio were exploring the everglades, and about this time shoved 

 their houseboat four miles up the Kissimee-choked morass waist deep, with 

 alligators and snakes all around them, to say nothing of swarming mosquitoes, 

 red bugs and tormenting insects innumerable. His object was to find the 

 Okechobee once more after the Seminole War closed in 1838. He was the first 



