A CANOE TRIP TO OKEECHOBEE. 



C. O. MOSELEY. 



The 20th of March, 1898, found my 

 friend E. and me, with our guns and camp- 

 ing outfit loaded in 2 home-made cypress 

 canoes, leaving Ft. Myers, Florida, for a 

 trip up the Caloosahatchee river to the 

 Okeechobee lake region. We had little 

 tents, extending the length of our boats, 

 which could be easily put up or taken 

 down, and we also had mosquito bars. I 

 advise anyone who travels in that region 

 to provide himself with a bar if he has to 

 sell his hat and shoes to get it. There is 

 little to see along the river until Ft. De- 

 naud is reached. From there beautiful 

 hummocks line both sides of the river all 

 the way to Ft. Thompson, the last settle- 

 ment up the river. E. and I thought we 

 were embarking on a pleasure trip, but if 

 ever 2 mortals worked as hard as we did 

 under the impression that it was fun I 

 wish they would send their address. I 

 want to compare notes with them. It was 

 all right at first, paddling up the myste- 

 rious river, where the Indians used to 

 drift in their dugouts, but we had some- 

 thing to contend with that never troubled 

 the Seminoles. The Okeechobee Drain- 

 age Company several years ago cut a 

 canal, draining the big lakes into the 

 Caloosahatchee, and the result is a cur- 

 rent against which paddling is about as 

 much of a pastime as splitting rails. How- 

 ever, we got along very well until we 

 reached Thompson. At night we would 

 tic up and cook supper in the good old 

 3-legged bake oven, the best thing to cook 

 in ever invented. Sometimes we had a 

 mess of fish to fry; sometimes we landed 

 in time to stroll among the beautiful live 

 oaks and cabbage palms, which form most 

 of the hummocks along the river, and kill 

 a mess of squirrels before dark. 



We were several days paddling up the 

 river to Ft. Thompson, and every mile the 

 current became swifter. From below Ft. 

 Denaud to Ft. Thompson the banks are 

 high and beautiful, but just above the lat- 

 ter place the river, previously only 40 or 

 50 feet wide, merges into Lake Flirt, a cu- 

 rious combination of shallow ponds, saw- 

 grass and bogs, cut up by little channels, 

 and full of catfish, bass and perch. This 

 lake has no banks, apparently, but gets 

 shallow so gradually it is hard to tell 

 where the shore begins. It was then very 

 low, and there was a flat meadow y 2 mile 

 wide, stretching from the water to the 

 timber and covered with blanket grass. 

 On this meadow large numbers of sand- 

 hill cranes were feeding and marching 

 about, splitting the air with their cries. 



From Thompson to Lake Flirt the river 

 runs like a freshet, between rocky banks, 

 and there I enjoyed a laugh at E.'s ex- 

 pense. The current ran so swiftly pad- 

 dling was an impossibility, so we had to 

 pole. That was something E. had never 

 tried, although he was a good hand with 

 a paddle. Instead of shooting ahead as it 

 should, the stern of his canoe would shove 

 around broadside, when the current would 

 catch it, and around it would go. E. said 

 something about damming the river, but I 

 couldn't catch all he said. However, after 

 straining every nerve for half an hour try- 

 ing to get around a bend, he finally got the 

 hang of it. I thought he talked unneces- 

 sarily loud, though, while he was learning 



The people at Ft. Thompson build their 

 houses 3 or 4 feet above the ground, as the 

 river has a queer habit of flooding the sur- 

 rounding country when it takes a notion. 

 Everybody who is not in the cattle busi- 

 ness hunts alligators for a living, and they 

 have the reptiles cleaned out so thorough- 

 ly we seldom saw one. We made Lake 

 Flirt a little before sundown and struck 

 camp. I killed a sandhill with my .38 

 Winchester and fried him for supper. I 

 wish I could add that we ate him, but he 

 refused to be chewed. We sadly threw 

 him away, nursed our aching jaws, and 

 wished we had been younger. 



Thousands of coots make their home in 

 Lake Flirt; also a good many teal and 

 wood ducks. From that lake to Okeecho- 

 bee the river runs mostly through the 

 canals cut by the Drainage Company, and 

 is the best place I know for black bass, or 

 trout, as we call them. The water is very 

 swift and the fish are good. I had a cheap 

 rod and a cheaper reel, but I had more 

 fun than many a man gets with a costly 

 outfit. We could stand on the bank and 

 see the bass in swarms and watch them 

 strike the spoon. There were many very 

 large ones, but thev were slower to strike. 

 The majority would weigh 2 to 8 pounds 

 each. On the bottom was a constant stream 

 of catfish, from 3 feet in length down. The 

 worst trouble was in stopping when we 

 had as many as we could use. but we did. 

 for yours truly is an enthusiastic reader of 

 Recreation. " 'Ntiff sed." 



There is a stransre kind of long legged 

 bird, about half the size of a sandhill 

 crane, and looking like a small edition of 

 one, that inhabits the sawgrass along the 

 canal. They make the most dismal, cack- 

 ling sort of cry that "was ever heard from 

 throat of bird." Every little while one 



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