14 IN LOiVER FLORIDA WILDS 



somewhat from those of the Lower Keys and the 

 Miami mainland. There was an old landway, 

 now wholly submerged and quite dissolved away, 

 which reached across from Lower Matecumbe 

 Key to the mainland east of Flamingo. Before 

 the Florida East Coast Railway dredged a chan- 

 nel across the mud flat back of Matecumbe it 

 would have been possible by following the tor- 

 tuous shoals actually to wade from it to the main- 

 land near Joe Kemp's Key, a distance of fully 

 thirty miles, in water nowhere more than two 

 feet deep. In fact there is now an extensive 

 series of shoals lying along the inside of the Upper 

 Keys from Duck Key to Largo (a distance of 

 twenty-five miles) which stretches all the way 

 across to the mainland with only here and there 

 an enclosed basin of six or seven feet depth. For 

 the most part, these shoals are continuous. 



East of these shoals at the head of Florida Bay, 

 an uninterrupted body of water from six to seven 

 feet deep extends across from Key Largo to the 

 mainland. This together with the extensive 

 swamp to the northwest of it has acted as a 

 barrier to the passage of dry-land plants and ani- 

 mals from the Upper Keys and also from the ham- 



