PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 343 



drainage before they will attain to any value, still, all will be suitable for culti- 

 vatiom when once it has been reclaimed from the water. 



The peninsula has a foundation of coraline limestone, highest in the central 

 divide extending north and south, with a general declivity to southward. 



It has been upheaved very slowly, and as it has emerged from the sea the 

 coral has gradually become covered with grasses, which in time have formed a 

 deep bed of muck, varying in depth from two to fifteen feet. 



The principal growth is the saw grass, growing from four to ten feet above 

 the shallow water, yet there are other grasses, some of which now afford grazing 

 for many cattle. 



Here and there are Keys or small islands, a few inches above the water, 

 which are covered with tropic shrubs and trees. 



When the Keys are four or five feet above the water, such trees as cabbage 

 palm, cocoanut, rubber trees and a few pine trees occur, as well as bay and num- 

 erous shrubs. 



There are fish, alligators, some deer and innumerable birds inhabiting the 

 everglades. 



Along the east coast is a narrow strip of sandy land thrown up by the ocean, 

 outside of which is the Indian River, a long narrow saline channel into which 

 the tides pour through several inlets, while still without this channel is a narrow 

 strip of ocean sand. 



It is along this inner strip of sand that the Florida East Coast Railway 

 Company has built its fine track to Biscayne Bay where the magic city Miami has 

 been constructed within eight years. 



It is along the east coast that this Railway Company has built many hotels 

 which are veritable palaces, and from the railway terminal established steam- 

 ship lines to Cuba and the Bahamas. 



From an uninhabitable sand spit, through the indomitable energy of . this 

 company, the east- coast has been reclaimed and populated with a prosperous 

 class of fruit growers, who are shipping large quantities of oranges, pines and 

 early vegetables to the cities of the northern states. 



But no habitations by white men have been made within the everglades 

 proper, although they are but a few miles away. 



The everglades, with the included Cypress swamps, cover an area of some 

 five million acres, but the entire drainage area which pours its waters down 

 upon the glades is of far greater extent, being seventeen thousand square 

 miles. The precipitation in this region is 54 inches per annum, while the out- 

 lets from the everglades to gulf and ocean are few in number and of insignifi- 

 cant capacity. 



The annual rainfall of this drainage area would be an equivalent of a col- 

 umn of water one square mile in surface, and fourteen and one half miles in 

 height, which must flow over the glades, meander through tortuous channels 

 in every direction, but gravitating generally to southward, while the densely 

 growing grasses and reeds continually retard its progress. 



During the dry season large areas are drained and left so dry they may 

 be plowed and cultivated, but with the recurrence of the periodic rains they 

 again become submerged. 



