FOREST AND STREAM 
July, 1920 
368 
DR. JAMES A. HENSHALL IN FLORIDA 
THEDEAN OF AMERICAN ANGLERS TELLS OF A TRIP IN THE EVERGLADES DUR- 
ING THE WINTER OF 
I N 1880 I again became a citizen of Cin- 
cinnati in order to superintend the 
publication of my Book of the Black 
Bass, which was issued from the press 
the next year, 1881. This edition was ex- 
hausted almost entirely by subscriptions 
in advance, so that additional printings 
became necessary during the next few 
years. Having more leisure now I be- 
came a member of the Cincinnati Canoe 
Club, whose clubhouse was at Ross Lake 
about five miles from the city. The club 
was a member of the Western Canoe As- 
sociation which held an annual regatta 
on Lake Erie, at Ballast Island, near 
Put-in-Bay. 
The Cincinnati and Dayton Canoe 
Clubs pulled off a paddling cruise from 
Dayton, Ohio, to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 
down the Miami and Ohio rivers, a dis- 
tance of some hundred and twenty miles. 
This distance was covered in three days, 
July 2, 3, and 4th, 1881, during one of 
the hottest spells of weather :ver known 
in that section ; the thermometer ranging 
from 100 to 110 degrees for ten days. 
There were fifteen canoes, entirely decked 
over except for a manhole in the center. 
The double-blade paddle was used. 
During the first day we arrived at the 
town of Franklin where we learned the 
sad news that President Garfield had 
been assassinated that morning by a dis- 
appointed office seeker. 
There were quite a number of dams on 
the Miami river, and as the weather was 
exceedingly hot, the shooting of the dams 
was attempted wherever there was water 
enough going over to float a canoe, ex- 
cept the two canoes that carried the 
duffle and provisions. Most of the canoes 
came to grief in the attempt, but several 
succeeded in landing right side up on the 
water below. It was a brave and gal- 
lant sight, worth going miles to see, when 
fifteen highly-polished canoes with ma- 
hogany decks, propelled by the rhythmic 
stroke of the double blades, gleamed and 
glistened as they reflected the rays of 
the bright July sun. 
Along the course there were often 
groups of admiring beholders on the bank 
enjoying the novel sight. And, occasion- 
ally, when the audience was a large one, 
the “precentor” or rather “Chanticleer,” 
struck up a chantey, or fo’castle song, in 
which the others came in strong on the 
refrain or chorus, keeping measured time 
with the paddles; when suddenly, at a 
given signal, every canoe, except the two 
mentioned, was capsized and went float- 
ing, keel upward, around the bend, to 
the wonder and amazement of the folk 
on shore. In the meantime the canoeists, 
each -with his head within the body of 
his canoe went floating along with it, 
like a frog under a lilypad, there being 
air enough in it to supply his lungs for 
a quarter of an hour or longer. After 
this subaqueous stunt the boys emerged, 
1881-2 BEFORE THE ADVENT OF 
FIFTEENTH PAPER 
and righting the canoes climbed in over 
the sterns, and proceeded on their way 
well pleased with the excitement they 
had caused. 
At night each man beached his canoe 
and slept in it, and without rocking. We 
camped one night near a level, flat bank, 
thickly strewn with an accumulation of 
rocks of various kinds, as sandstone, 
limestone, conglomerate and what not. 
The next morning one of the boys had 
just cooked a large panful of nicely 
browned and crisp bacon and laid it on 
a convenient slab of pudding-stone to 
cool. Suddenly there was a loud explo- 
sion, the pan soared heavenward, a 
shower of bacon filled the air, and pieces 
of rock went whizzing by our heads. The 
confined air in the cellular rock had be- 
come suddenly heated, and expanding, 
For one night only 
exploded with great force. The frying 
of bacon before a hot fire, with sunburned 
hands and faces, was no trifling matter, 
and it goes without saying that the 
scattered slices of bacon were collected 
and eaten, after being rinsed in the river. 
A little added grit or sand might yet be 
necessary to hearten the boys for the re- 
mainder of the cruise during such hot 
weather; but, notwithstanding, it was 
finished within the allotted time, and a 
good time it certainly was, and thorough- 
ly enjoyed by all. 
D URING the winter of 1881-2 I made 
another trip to Florida. One of 
the young men from Eau Gallie 
who camped with us on the San Sebas- 
tian River, as mentioned in the preceding 
paper, owned a small two-ton schooner, 
the Rambler, in which we cruised from 
Titusville along Indian river and Lake 
Worth. I found a few more settlers, but 
otherwise the country was much the 
same as three years before. 
Before leaving Lake Worth for Bis- 
cayne Bay we tightened up the shrouds 
and bobstay, looked to the strapping of 
blocks, and made everything snug and 
NORTHERN TOURISTS 
shipshape for a sail of forty miles to 
Hillsboro’ Inlet, the first harbor south of 
Lake Worth. We had a good passage 
with a land breeze, and reached Hills- 
boro’ Inlet before dark, and just as the 
tide was ebbing, but managed to get in 
ail right and anchored for the night. 
The next morning we sailed for New 
River Inlet, twenty miles south, with an 
easterly breeze, which increasing in vio- 
lence kicked up quite a sea, and before 
we made New River Inlet became very 
lumpy and dusty. As we crossed the bar 
and sailed into the narrow inlet, I was 
reminded of the time, three years before, 
when I crossed it on a frail raft exposed 
to the tender mercies of the sharks which 
even now thronged about the Rambler. 
New river is narrow but very deep, 
and is parallel with the sea-coast for 
eight miles where a small bay is formed, 
into which empty two or three branches. 
At this point it is but a hundred yards 
to Life Saving Station No. 4, on the sea 
beach. I made arrangements with the 
superintendent to take us in his cypress 
canoe to Little Tiger’s Indian village in 
the Everglades. Hoisting the lugsail we 
sailed across the bay, and lowering the 
sail, we each took a paddle and went up 
the South Fork at a merry clip. We soon 
reached the great cypress belt that sur- 
rounds the Everglades through which 
the amber-colored stream poured silently 
and swiftly, though so clear that great 
ledges of white limestone rock, seamed, 
fissured and lying in endless confusion, 
the result of an upheaval or earthquake, 
could be seen plainly at the bottom, 
through the crevices of which were grow- 
ing the most beautiful and curious 
aquatic plants and grasses. These rocks 
were formed many millions of years ago. 
At one time the peninsula of Florida 
was supposed to be of recent origin, but 
it is as old as the eternal hills. The 
same vertebrate fossils are found in its 
phosphate beds as in the Rocky Moun- 
tains. And its antediluvian fishes were 
not to be sneezed at. I have seen fossil 
shark’s teeth fully six inches in length 
that must have belonged to one fully 
fifty feet long. The blanket of sand 
that covers the peninsula of Florida has 
been carried from its shores by the 
winds of the Atlantic and Gulf for un- 
told ages. 
The tall cypress trees with pale and 
grizzled trunks, stood in serried ranks 
like grim snecters, ornamented in fan- 
tastic fashion with the scarlet plumes 
of epiphytes, while their long arms 
reaching overhead were draped in heavy 
folds and festoons of gray Spanish moss. 
Passing through the cypress belt we 
came to the “sloughs,” where the stream 
divided into several smaller ones. The 
sloughs form a margin of tall grasses 
and shrubs of very luxuriant growth, in- 
tersected by numerous small streams, 
