manner of aquatic creatures. The smaller fish come right up to 

 your nose and peer at you. The gars, some of which are alarm- 

 ingly large, tend just to move aside but always cautiously, and 

 then move in your direction of travel without any apparent 

 effort. They glide along beside you at a discreet distance until 

 your breath gives out. 



The alligators are the most fascinating of all, since they seem 

 to be totally indifferent to one. Most of them that I have met 

 underwater have been either just lying on the bottom or walking 

 along it with a kind of measured pace. At first the larger ones 

 startled me, but it seems that they are so sated with their natural 

 foods that they will not bother to grab for any larger, colorless 

 object that comes by. The more dangerous things — and these 

 include hungry or alarmed alligator snapping turtles— lurk in 

 muddy, vegetation-obscured, or other darker places. Wading 

 about in this you may get "chopped," as the local people put it. 



Here is a world apart, a wonder world under water that is 

 altogether unique. You can go swimming in the Okefenokee, the 

 Suwannee, and any place else in Florida if the weather has been 

 fine for a period and if the water is low and has had time to 

 deposit its turgid silt and to clean itself. There is tremendous 

 scope here for the skin divers, since vast accumulations of 

 Amerindian dejecta, like pots and stone tools, are assembled in 

 the bottom of these waters, not to speak of more ancient fossils. 



The limestone ridge coincides with the position of the first 

 islands that formed during the initial retreat of the ice. At this 

 time, all the rest of the area was covered by a sea which has 

 been appropriately called the Okefenokee Sea, but these islands 

 may have survived from the earlier land mass that existed prior 

 to the "ice age." 



^ 



■•^ 





..'•<' 



i 



CACTUSES THAT PADDLE 



Some authorities regard all of peninsular Florida down to the 

 region of Lake Okeechobee as a mere southward extension of the 

 great Southern Pine Belt, and the portion south of that point as 

 a distinct province which is usually described as "subtropical." 

 However, others have wisely, though somewhat hesitantly, 

 pointed out that there is really little marked difference between 

 central Florida and southern Florida, and have suggested that 

 the two should be combined. With this I disagree, for central 

 Florida has not only a great deal of natural open grassland but 

 much artificial pasture that supports tremendous herds of cattle 

 typical of the prairie, while botanists have long puzzled over the 

 occurrence of prickly pear and other cactuses and western scrub 

 and desert-type plants in southern Florida, where they grow 

 happily in saturated as opposed to desiccated soils. This presents 

 no mystery, for southern Florida is but an eastern outlier of the 

 Northern Scrub Zone. The triangle south of the Caloosahatchee 

 River, Lake Okeechobee, and Juno Beach is another matter. 

 This is a complex that starts on the Gulf with a wide belt of 

 mangroves and mangrove-covered islands; then plunges into the 

 Big Cypress Swamp; then out onto the seemingly never-ending 

 area of open waving saw grass, or "everglades"; and finally dips 

 slightly to the Atlantic coast. 



Today, central Florida presents rather a dreary picture to the 



U: 



Right: Cypress swamps have a glassy beauty in winter 

 when the trees have lost their pale leaves; but the waters 

 are still full of small life. Far right: The famous Everglades 

 are not glades but expanses of saw grass dotted with "is- 

 lands" or hummocks on which palms and large bushes grow. 



^h 



176 



>r51ii 



