PREFACE 



ONE aim of this book is to set before the English 

 angler, with some details not, I think, previously 

 published, the practical and descriptive aspects of 

 the increasingly popular holiday among the leaping 

 tarpon of the Florida passes. As of yore, fishing 

 was the pole-star of eleven thousand miles of travel, 

 and when I contemplate the suggested possibility of 

 this passion dying with the rest as the years grow, 

 I am reminded of the fervour with which the good 

 St Augustine, praying for continency, added, "but 

 not yet." 



If, with these records of fishing memories in the 

 Gulf of Mexico and West Indies, I have embodied 

 notes of men and matters by the way, of cities and 

 railroad travel, of scenery and birds and trees, it is 

 with no pretence of having written a handbook to 

 the psychology of the American nation, a disquisi- 

 tion on the Colour question in the States, or a guide 

 to the territories that Mr Davidson has called 



" Merry England across the seas, 

 Jewelled with isles of the Spanish Main." 



The standpoint from which I have seen our 

 American friends, neighbours, rivals, whatever they 

 are, is as different from the extreme rosiness of the 

 sketches written some years ago by Mr Archer, 

 encouraged by a prominent American resident in 



