X 



GOOD-BYE TO FLORIDA 



As already related, anxious to catch the steamer 

 from Port Tampa to Cuba, the first stage in the 

 homeward voyage, I had to leave Florida a few 

 days before the rest. Florida had been a happy 

 holiday-ground for a little more than a fortnight. 

 Of its 1 200 miles of coast-line I saw only a frag- 

 ment and that on the west side, and from this 

 restricted glimpse I had to form my idea of the 

 character of this dreamy but fascinating land. Yet 

 those who had known the rest of it all their lives 

 gave me to understand that the scenery is the same 

 east and west, north and south, from the cross- 

 ing of the border even to Key West, where I had 

 my last sight of it. Coral-keys and low shores 

 fringed with mangrove, not unlike such scenery as 

 I remembered many years earlier in the estuaries 

 of Queensland, watery wastes, silent swamps and 

 desolate jungle are the keynote of the land- 

 scape. 



The Naturalist, on which I had last embarked 

 in quest of alligators, was now commissioned to 

 convey me back to Punta Gorda. Our original 

 programme was more ambitious, envisaging a start 

 at daybreak and a run of nearly a hundred miles, 

 part of it in the open Gulf, but most inside the 

 keys, to Port Tampa. This would have been 



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