PREFACE 



One aim of this book is to set before the English 

 anorler, with some details not, I think, previously 

 published, the practical and descriptive aspects of 

 the increasingly popular holiday among the leaping 

 tarpon of the Florida passes. As of yore, fishing 

 was the pole-star of eleven thousand miles of travel, 

 and when I contemplate the suggested possibility of 

 this passion dying with the rest as the years grow, 

 I am reminded of the fervour with which the good 

 St Augustine, praying for continency, added, " but 

 not yet." 



If, with these records of fishing memories in the 

 Gulf of Mexico and West Indies, I have embodied 

 notes of men and matters by the way, of cities and 

 railroad travel, of scenery and birds and trees, it is 

 with no pretence of having written a handbook to 

 the psychology of the American nation, a disquisi- 

 tion on the Colour question in the States, or a guide 

 to the territories that Mr Davidson has called — 



" Merry England across the seas, 

 Jewelled with isles of the Spanish Main." 



The standpoint from which I have seen our 

 American friends, neighbours, rivals, whatever they 

 are, is as different from the extreme rosiness of the 

 sketches written some years ago by Mr Archer, 

 encouraged by a prominent American resident in 



