THE INLAND PASSAGE. 37 



where it is certain death to pass a summer, and few 

 of which are inhabited, and where he may sail tens 

 of miles without seeing a man, white or black. 

 Let him try the deep holes alongside of bluffs or 

 where two creeks meet for sheepshead, using for 

 bait the Southern prawn, that gigantic shrimp, 

 with its body six inches long and its feelers ten ; 

 and if he can catch no fish and misses the birds, 

 let him rejoice in knowing that there are millions 

 of both in Florida. 



In describing my trip to Florida, I do not intend 

 to pursue any consecutive plan, or follow the posi- 

 tive order of events. It is not important to know 

 that we turned out — to use the proper nautical 

 term — at a certain hour in the morning of a cer- 

 tain day, and that we turned in again at night at 

 some other division of mean sidereal or solar time, 

 nor that we went a certain course or made so many 

 miles one day and so many more or less the next. 

 That is, the reader does not want to have too much 

 of this, although a little now and then may tend to 

 give a general idea of the trials, difficulties, and en- 

 joyments of a yachtman's life. But whether we 

 arrived at a place at five p. m. or five a. m., important 

 as it may have been to us at the time, cannot, so far 

 as I can judge, interest the reader as deeply as I 

 hope to interest him. For all such information I 

 will refer him to the ordinary books of travel. 

 That we did occasionally make fast time in our little 

 half scow, half yacht, that I built on the scheme of 

 putting a sail in a canal boat, will be proved by this 



