The Grass-Water 
The Florida Everglades—A Mystery of Three 
Centuries 
By WILLIAM PERRY BROWN 
S OMEWHERE, not many years ago, I 
came across what seemed to me to be 
a rare curiosity, a pen-and-ink copy of 
an old Spanish map of the Peninsula of Florida. 
I had lived many years in Florida, and had 
sailed, fished and hunted from St. Augustine to 
Key West and up to Tampa and Cedar Keys. 
I had fraternized with the remnant of Seminoles 
living in and about the Everglades and the big 
Lake Okeechobee on their northern edge, but 
like other white men who live, hunt and trap 
along that key-lined, lagoon-studded, limestone 
wilderness border, which forms the coast rim 
of that interior watery waste, I knew little of 
the real heart of the Everglades. 
One thing about this replica of an ancient 
map surprised me; and the surprise kept grow¬ 
ing when, in memory, I compared it with other 
maps, many of them modern. This was to see 
how little in three centuries the maps have 
changed as regards the southern third the ex¬ 
tremity of Florida. Around portions of the 
coast and along the northern border, towns had 
sprung up, some of them growing into cities; 
railroads had pushed here and there, belting 
the keys of the east coast to Key West, and 
forming networks along the Gulf with Tampa 
as a sort of starting point. But the vast inter¬ 
ior, beginning with Okeechobee, and confront¬ 
ing civilization south of that on every hand 
with an invulnerable wall of high sawgrass and 
shoal waterways, more infinite and perplexing 
than the Saharan Desert was for centuries, 
though in a different way—the Everglades still 
held their potent and mystic sway, much as they 
did when they confronted the old explorers, 
Ponce de Leon, De Soto and others, searching 
for gold and the fabled fountain of youth. 
The old map showed the coast line and gen¬ 
eral topography with some detail, and indicated 
certain rivers much as they are indicated to¬ 
day. It demonstrated a curious fact; while 
this Peninsula of Florida was one of the first 
parts of North America to be accurately mapped 
four centuries ago, the southern tip of it is one 
of the last to be intimately explored, at least 
by white men. The interior of the Everglades 
is to-day almost as little known as when the 
early navigators first contoured what they 
called the Cape of the End of April. The Ever¬ 
glades are happily named; the sunny recesses 
of such a region should surely be glades of life 
and beauty, with a promise of almost endless 
summer. A mere remnant of Indians share its 
hidden life, thread its mysterious waterways, and 
have always been at home in the heart of it, 
but the white man does not follow to any ap¬ 
preciable extent. These Seminoles vanish from 
his sight as he stands on its brink gazing al¬ 
most helplessly after them. Why is this so? 
What is out there under the sunrise or sunset, 
according as one looks forth from the hum¬ 
mocks, swamps and koomtie-studded scrub of 
its enveloping rim? 
This region—the glades proper—is not ex¬ 
actly land and it is not exactly water. You can¬ 
not travel by land, because water interferes, now 
shallow and again rather deep. You cannot 
travel freely by water for the land is every¬ 
where there. It is a land of bog and high, 
close grown, saw-edged grass which, owing to 
its impassable nature, bars progress by boat and 
by land. The Indian’s ability to penetrate this 
labyrinth is surely a very remarkable thing. 
Some key the Seminole undoubtedly has to the 
mysterious paths, for he crosses the Grass- 
water at will in four days. When the water is 
high he can pole his dugout canoe from Fort 
Lauderdale or Miami, across the sawgrass waste 
to the edge of the Big Cypress Swamp. 
How is it that he slips through so easily 
where the white men—old hunters, trappers, so- 
called guides and the like^-find the way barred? 
The red man will not tell his secret. For years, 
since the old Seminole wars, when white sol¬ 
diers drove them into this, his last refuge, he 
has exercised his mystic knowledge for his own 
use and behoof alone. Though the exigencies 
and stress of war finally drove most of the 
tribe to a surrender that meant expatriation, the 
remnant still lingering have kept the Glades 
mainly to themselves, regarding the sporadic 
efforts of the all conquering paleface to do 
what the Seminole does when he wants to, with 
the silent tolerance that marks his behavior 
toward that which he despises yet cannot help. 
Consequent upon all these hindrances, what we 
have learned about the Everglades during three 
centuries has been learned in fragments. 
Various schemes have been devised for a vast 
drainage system, more or less of which either 
has been or is being executed in a more or less 
comprehensive manner. It is recognized that 
the Glades, once thoroughly drained, would be 
of great agricultural value; and if the water 
was once withdrawn and kept out, the battle 
with so far unconquerable sawgrass would be¬ 
come comparatively simple and easy. There 
are good physiographic reasons for believing 
it to be feasible to drain them, or at least parts 
of them. Eventually this huge Nature fortress 
that has so long resisted the white man’s as¬ 
sault, will be taken by siege. 
Aside from the practical aspects, the mystery 
of the Glades is always fascinating. What is 
out there under the pale, rose gray or torpid 
blue of the semi-tropic sky? This mystery is part 
of our historical inheritance. Early geography 
captivated our fancy in telling vaguely yet al¬ 
luringly of this water-wild. It had its place 
among the country’s wonders like Niagara, the 
Yosemite, the Grand Canon, the Natural 
Bridge and so on. All these others have been 
explored in various ways, but the Glades still 
elude us as partially unknown. Here the old 
discoverer’s charm is still potent; for much of 
the Glades is still marked on the late maps as 
“unexplored.” Even the North Pole can hardly 
boast its mystery in that way now. 
The various attempts by white men to search 
the mystery of the Glades, form a singular ser¬ 
ies of disconnected episodes. The first recorded 
one to enter the silent country of the Grass- 
water, was Escalente de Fontenada, who, ship¬ 
wrecked in the Florida Strait, became the cap¬ 
tive of a cacique named Calos. By reason of 
ruling over all the Indians in that region he 
was called, said the Spaniard, Lord of the 
Everglade.” By the Calos Indians that whole 
region was named Lake Mayaimi, a name that 
still persists in the designation of Miami River. 
Fontenada told a few brief, meager tales of his 
experiences during fifteen years of mild slavery 
among these savages. Like most adventurers 
of that era, he was after gold and the rejuven¬ 
ating spring that would renew his youth. No 
gold did he get; and though he bathed in every 
spring he came across, his youth did not come 
back and old age eventually sent him to the 
grave. 
After this for a century or two the whole re¬ 
gion was unvisited so far as tradition records. 
Then the Seminoles, the cast-off vagabond of 
the Creeks, found the Pah-hay-o-kee (Grass- 
water), a safe and silent abode, and settled 
in the Glades, moving from island to island 
through pathless waterways that left no trail, 
while the high, bristling sawgrass stood guard 
about them always. After that came difficulties 
with the white men, and during these came sun¬ 
dry active efforts by the military forces pursuing 
the Indians to explore the watery waste in which, 
after their various forays against the paleface, 
these Seminoles always vanished. 
