INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE, PHILADELPHIA. 41 



PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE LAKE. The lake may perhaps best be 

 described as a vast shallow pan of freshwater, which probably nowhere 

 much exceeds twenty feet in depth. We took numerous soundings all 

 along our course, probably fifty or more, which gave an average depth 

 ranging from about seven to ten feet. The deepest sounding, made on 

 the diagonal connecting Taylor's Creek and the mouth of the canal, 

 about four miles S. W. of Eagle Bay, gave fifteen feet, but this is the 

 only instance where we obtained this depth. Captain Strobhar, however, 

 informs me that on a previous occasion, and not very far from the same 

 spot, he obtained 22 feet. There is good reason to believe, seeing the 

 general uniformity of the bottom, that this figure represents the approxi- 

 mate extreme depth of the lake, and that only at very exceptional inter- 

 vals does this amount of depression in the basin obtain. 



Practically, therefore, the bottom represents a flat plain, elevated 

 some 7-15 feet in places less above sea-level. The same plain is 

 manifestly continued into the floor of Lake Hikpochee which, as has 

 been seen, has the approximate depth of Lake Okeechobee and, doubt- 

 less, forms also the true fundament to the vast series of swamps and 

 everglades which on all sides surround these two larger bodies of water. 

 We sounded at many points in the channels running into the grass and 

 in the cypress thickets, and usually found a considerable depth of water, 

 6-8 feet, or even more, and where the bottom was reached in these 

 shallows it consisted almost invariably of vegetable muck, of which 

 there appears to be a heavy accumulation, and not of the solid siliceous 

 sand which we everywhere found to constitute the floor of Okeechobee. 

 I think it may be safely assumed that this vast lacustrine plain of 

 the Floridian peninsula represents, practically unmodified, the surface 

 of the country as it appeared at the time of its latest (or only) emergence 

 from the sea. Whether or not a salt-water lake was formed immediately 

 after the elevation of the land, from which through gradual alteration 

 and a steady indraught of fresh-water, the present lacustrine system of 

 waters was ultimately developed, I am unable to say, although the 

 presumption would probably be that there was no such formation. 

 Yet it is not exactly impossible that the reverse was the case. We failed 



published in "Camp Life in Florida" (1876), states that "Taylor's Creek, and another 

 smaller, empty into the lake within ten miles of the Kissimmee, but their channels are so 

 choked with water-lettuce and lilies that an experienced eye is required to discern them " 

 (p. 251). What the "smaller" stream may be it is difficult to say; but surely Mr. Ober 

 could not have properly identified Taylor's Creek, when he refers to the difficulty of 

 determining its channel. The high belt of cypress on either side marks it out absolutely. 

 The broad sheet of water at the time of our visit was entirely destitute of lettuce at its 

 mouth, imr does it seem possible that it could ever be seriously clogged at its junction with 

 the lake. Mr. Ober's references to the contours of the lake are exceedingly vague, and in 

 a manner contradictory, so that little dependence can be placed upon them. Fish-Eating 

 Creek is erroneously said to empty into the lake almost opposite Observation Island ! 



