194 
Florida state geological survey. 
east of Lake Okeechobee. The largest tracts of good timber are west 
of the Everglades; Okaloocoochee slough and the Big Cypress are the 
two most important. Both have extremely irregular outlines with 
numerous arms forming strands among adjacent pine islands or 
prairies. The southern boundary of the Big Cypress is not indicated 
on most maps of southern Florida and in many the extent of the 
swamp is greatly exaggerated, the name being printed across a region 
where cypress swamps, prairies, hammocks, and pine islands are inter¬ 
mingled. During high water, boats can pass through the Big Cypress 
from the Everglades to the Gulf north of Cape Romano. The 
maximum east-west width of the swamp may be forty miles. Ten 
miles east of the head of Henderson’s Creek is a cypress swamp six 
miles wide, and east of Everglade is another swamp six to twelve miles 
wide, these swamps being connected with other swamps that form 
arms of the Big Cypress. 
COASTAL SWAMPS. 
As a consequence of the low relief and the gradual slope of the 
land below sea level, southern Florida has wide areas of coastal 
swamp. These areas include the wet lands along the lagoons or 
“rivers” lying back of the barrier beaches of the east coast, a part of 
which is open marsh, a part has a scrubby growth of mangrove, and 
the more extensive swamps of the south and southwest coast, which 
die away in a network of channels and islands. 
On the west coast, these mangrove-covered islands, and the man¬ 
grove swamps behind them, extend from Whitewater Bay, the south¬ 
ernmost arm of which is separated from the Bay of Florida by less 
than five miles of wet prairie and swamp, to Cape Romano. North of 
Marco the coastal islands and the swamp land include pine islands 
and in places pines grow to the Gulf shore. 
The red mangrove most frequently grows as a bushy tree, under 
twenty feet high. The swamp that forms the southern fringe of the 
mainland from Chi’s Cut to six miles east of Flamingo has such low 
trees, as have the many islands in Whitewater Bay and most of the 
patches of swamp along the main line of the Florida Keys from Bis- 
cayne Bay to the Marquesas. But in the Shark River archipelago and 
the southern portion of that unmapped maze of land and water, 
the Ten Thousand Islands, the mangrove forms a noble forest, the 
trees growing to a height of 60 feet or over with clean, smooth trunks 
2 feet or more in diameter at the butt and without a limb for 30 feet 
from the ground. They rise from the Gulf like a green wall and are 
one of the most striking features of the shore lines of southern Florida. 
The majestic appearance of these trees compared with the look of those 
