46 Tarpon Fishing in Florida. 



Fortunately there was an English yacht anchored close to the 

 pass, and the party on board were bent on the same mission as 

 ourselves. It is always pleasant to meet an Englishman in a far 

 country, especially so when one can do something for or get 

 something done by him. As soon as the owner understood our 

 predicament he lent us his steam launch, which we promptly 

 harnessed d la tandem with our rickety old motor, and with the 

 aid of the wind and tide we soon draofored our residence to within 

 half a mile of the fishing grounds. The mosquitoes never broke 

 through our fortifications in sufficient strength to give us any 

 serious trouble, but the tides were undeniably strong ; and owing 

 to the fact that with the changing currents we were continually 

 swinofinof round, we woke one morninsf to find that we had dras"2"ed 

 our anchor almost a mile, but luckily away from the pass. None 

 of us had any wish to deprive the gentleman who went round the 

 world in a canoe of his well-won laurels, by crossing the Gulf of 

 Mexico in a houseboat ; and had we travelled a mile in the other 

 direction we should have found ourselves fairly started on the 

 attempt, and these reminiscences would not have been remembered, 

 or they would have been considerably more thrilling, at any rate 

 to the writer. The natural solution of the difficulty seemed to be 

 to put out an anchor from either end of the boat, and so prevent 

 any swinging at all. But the authorities vetoed this as they feared 

 the upsetting effect of a strong side wind. 



We got our boat back on the next tide, and solved the 

 difficulty by dropping both anchors from the same end of the 

 boat ; and as we did not intend to have anything to do with 

 weighing them or disentangling their ropes, we thought no more 



