138 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



torn of the skiff; all were fast asleep. These 

 toughs and outlaws had given their blankets to 

 make a bed for me — a stranger — ^in full expectation 

 of themselves spending a wretched night. Heart- 

 ily ashamed of myself for having suspected them 

 I conceived a feeling of genuine fellowship for the 

 whole lot! After many more vicissitudes I 

 arrived at Rita and eventually home. 



No sketch of the Everglades would be complete 

 without some account of that strange, pathetic 

 remnant of Indian life — the Seminoles. According 

 to a recent estihiate there are only about four 

 hundred of them left, and though once a coura- 

 geous and fierce tribe they are now reduced to the 

 conventional level of very well-behaved and harm- 

 less people. They live, a few families together, in 

 widely scattered camps, located on the pine land 

 amid the cypress strands or on islands in the 

 Glades. Their camps are built without any ordef 

 or accepted plan of arrangement. The dwellings 

 are the merest shelters; they cannot even be 

 called huts. A platform seven or eight feet 

 square is elevated a couple of feet on crotches or 

 posts and the small logs of this are either flattened 

 off into puncheons or left natural. A low span 



