176 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



interesting, cool and free from risk, and to one who 

 loves the sea and holds all railroads anathema it 

 could not have failed to be a delightful start on the 

 long voyage that would eventually land me in 

 England in six weeks' time. As it happened, the 

 ruthless slaughter of specimen tarpon that week 

 made the taxidermist more than usually busy, so 

 that he could do no more than put me down at the 

 nearest railway ddpot. By the skin of my teeth, 

 and the courtesy of the booking-clerk, I just caught 

 the last train for Port Tampa and settled down to 

 three or four comfortless hours in one of the 

 crowded human cattle-trucks alone available on 

 those unsophisticated Southern roads. 



Port Tampa was reached at midnight, so that I 

 may perhaps have missed its beauties, as well as 

 those of its greater neighbour. My only memory 

 of it is a huge jewfish, weighing 335 lbs., which, 

 though caught on the quay that morning, was still 

 breathing fitfully, poor devil, when removed at mid- 

 night to the ice-house. Tampa itself, so far as 

 could be judged from its illumination, is, as the 

 Americans say, "quite a place." 



The mail steamer Olivette, belonging to the 

 Peninsular and Occidental Company, known in that 

 unsophisticated region as the real and only P. & O., 

 was alongside the quay and seemed well able to 

 accommodate an immense crowd of American 

 tourists disgorged by the train. Of these the greater 

 number joined at Tampa, and they were bound for 

 Havana to see the celebrations on Independence 

 Day. To see? I ought rather to have said to 

 hear. But this is anticipating the horrors of that 

 function. 



