20 WILD WINGS 



learning somewhat of " the lay of the land " in that morass, 

 which even yet in part remains a blank upon the map, and in 

 securing the services of two ideal guides, men brought up 

 in the unsurveyed and trackless wilderness of the Keys and 

 Cape Sable, who knew every islet, channel, and lake, and the 

 wonderful rookeries of the herons, ibises, egrets, and other 

 interesting birds. 



It was on a glorious bright morning, the twenty-third of 

 April, 1903, at Miami, at that time the terminus of the railway, 

 that we began our cruise in the old battered seven-ton 

 schooner, the Maggie Valdez, which one of the guides had 

 brought from Cape Sable to meet us, as a substitute for his 

 finer craft, which had recently been wrecked. With a snap- 

 ping breeze from the east we ran down Biscayne Bay, past 

 the flat, densely wooded Florida mainland on our right and 

 low wooded islets well to seaward on the left. By early after- 

 noon we had traversed the wider part of the bay, and were 

 now at last fairly among the Florida Keys. That foreign 

 word had hitherto savored to me a good deal of mystery, 

 though not to such a degree as to a certain New England 

 villager, who, when I told him that I was to visit the Florida 

 Keys, remarked, with an air of entire innocence, that there 

 must be locks down there too. 



Our vessel was now gliding along in calm, shallow water, 

 which was dotted here and there with the far-famed keys. 

 These were of the mangrove type, little round bunches of 

 dark, shiny foliage which seemed to spring directly from the 

 water, as indeed is often the case. Sometimes the low flat 

 upon which they grow is entirely under water. Even when 

 it is not, the trees grow out from the shores, leaving no beach 

 at all. The rounded mass of dark foliage gives the islet the 

 appearance of a fortification out in the water. But such water ! 

 Should a painter faithfully produce upon his canvas that 



