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 privilege 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, 

 but 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 by 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- 



