302 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



on either side the water varies in depth from a 

 few feet to six or seven fathoms. 



In May, 191 5 I was on the dredging yacht Eolis 

 on which her owner, Mr. John B. Henderson, with 

 a small party of friends were cruising among the 

 keys. One night we anchored just north of 

 Caesar's Creek bank. On the following morning 

 the sky was clear and the water of Hawk Channel 

 was dead calm. Henderson proposed we visit 

 Ajax Reef in the launch to set traps for moUusks 

 and collect on the shoals. It was a wonderful 

 run across the channel; standing in the bow and 

 gazing down it seemed as though we were in an 

 aeroplane, swiftly skimming through the air thirty 

 or forty feet above the ground, so clear being the 

 water we could see the bottom as through a plate 

 glass. Only the ' ' bone in the teeth ' ' of the launch 

 and the wake of white water following made us 

 realize we were not actually fljiing. 



In places the bottom was carpeted with a bottle- 

 green growth consisting of a couple of grasslike 

 plants, a Cymodoce or "manatee grass" and a 

 Thalassia or "turtle grass." Both are washed 

 ashore on our coasts in great abundance and are 

 wrongly called seaweed. Here and there we saw 



