34 TRANSACTIONS OF THE WAGNER FREE 



THE OKEECHOBEE WILDERNESS. 



Almost immediately after passing out of the cut which the Caloosa- 

 hatchie has excavated in the limestone at Fort Thompson our schooner 

 was fouled on one of the banks that obstruct the upper channel, and 

 we were compelled to lie over for upwards of an hour. The current 

 was here particularly swift, and it was only after a most determined effort 

 on the part of our captain, who succeeded in beaming up the ship by 

 wedging one of our dingeys under its bow, that we were able to get off 

 at all. We had suddenly missed the channel proper, but the stranding 

 was the first indication we received of our having gone astray, an expe- 

 rience which we had already lived through on more than one occasion 

 during our Florida campaign. The water was literally alive with coots, 

 whose break through the surface echoed from far and near over the 

 solitudes. Large numbers of ducks were also hidden in the sedge. 



Prior to the operations of the Florida land improvement company, 

 whose dredgings have succeeded in opening a navigable channel of a 

 few feet depth of water, this point was practically the head of navi- 

 gation of the river, which here emerges from a vast expanse of almost 

 impenetrable sedge and saw-grass. Light boats, after being transported 

 over the rapids, could still ascend the stream for a distance of several 

 miles, winding tortuously through the mazes in which the stream is 

 ultimately lost. The newly excavated canal follows for some distance 

 the actual line of the river, being merely an extension of the stream, but 

 after passing through Lake Flirt at the time of our visit scarcely more 

 than a swamp tract largely overgrown with grass, flag, and various water- 

 plants almost completely leaves the bed of the old stream, which appears 

 here and there meandering through the wilderness of morass, and pur- 

 sues a more nearly direct course to Lake Hikpochee, over a total distance 

 of some seventeen miles. 



The depth of water in the canal varied from about four to six feet, 

 while the current was running at the rate of probably not less than two 

 miles an hour, if not more. We had the advantage of a favorable wind, 

 and made the passage before nightfall, keeping hard on to the bank over 

 which our boom felled the grass like so much broken chaff. As far as 

 the eye could reach this almost boundless expanse of grass, relieved at 

 intervals by oases of the most luxuriant verdure of palms and cypresses, 



