MACCAULEY.} PHYSICAL SURROUNDINGS. 529 
lie the Everglades proper, a wide district with only deeper water and 
better defined islands than those which mark the ‘* Bad Country” and 
the “Devil’s Garden” I had entered. 
The description I have given refers to that part of the State of Florida 
lying south of the Caloosahaichee River. It is in this watery prairie 
and Everglade region that we find the immediate environment of most 
of the Seminole Indians. Of the surroundings of the Seminole north 
of the Caloosahatvhee there is but little to say in modification of what 
has already been said. Near the Fish Eating Creek settlement there 
is a Somewhat drier prairie land than that which I have just described. 
The range of barren sand hills which extends from the north along the 
middle of Florida to the headwaters of the Kissimmee River ends at 
Cat Fish Lake. Excepting these modifications, the topography of the 
whole Indian country of Florida is substantially the same as that which 
we traversed on the way from Myers into the Big Cypress Swamp and 
the Everglades. 
Over this wide and seeming level of land and water, as I have said, 
there is a subtropical climate. I visited the Seminole in midwinter; 
yet, for all that my northern senses could discover, we were in the 
midst ofsummer. The few deciduous trees there were having a midyear 
pause, but trees with dense foliage, flowers, fruit, and growing grass 
were to be seen everywhere. The temperature was that of a northern 
June. By night we made our beds on the ground without discomfort 
from cold, and by day we were under the heat of a summer sun. There 
was certainly nothing in the climate to make one feel the need of more 
clothing or shelter than would protect from excessive heat or rain. 
Then the abundance of food, both animal and vegetable, obtainable 
in that region seemed to me to do away with the necessity, on the part 
of the people living there, for a struggle for existence. As I have 
already stated, the soil is quite barren over a large part of the district; 
but, on the other hand, there is also in many places a fertility of soil 
that cannot be surpassed. Plantings are followed by superabundant 
harvests, and the hunter is richly rewarded. But I need not repeat 
what has already been said; it suffices to note that the natural envi- 
ronment of the Seminole is such that ordinary effort serves to supply 
them, physically, with more than they need. 
MAN. 
When we consider, in connection with these facts, what I have also 
before said, that these Indians are in no exceptional danger from wild 
animals or poisonous reptiles, that they need not specially guard against 
epidemic disease, and when we remember that they are native to what- 
ever influences might affect injuriously persons from other parts of the 
country, we can easily see how much more favorably situated for phys- 
ical prosperity they are than others of their kind. In fact, nature has 
made physical life so easy to them that their great danger lies in the 
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