July, 1918 
403 
F O REST A N 1) S T R E A M 
mile of the placid waters of the canal, for 
Seminole canoes. Mr. King still lived! It 
must he so! Her hours of bitter suffering 
would culminate in a great relief. The 
Seminoles in their swiftly moving cypress 
boats were encountered. Yes. They had 
seen three men. Two of them were hunt¬ 
ers and one was a Miami guide. It was 
NOT the King party 1 
★ * * * * * 
The night of the fifth of March was one 
Mr. King never forgot. The horror of it 
was still heavily upon him, when they 
made their triumphal entry into Miami, 
for camp. They could go no further with¬ 
out food and rest. Food! Yes, there was 
the limpkin! That had been saved. And 
in an old tin young John had discovered 
three pieces of unpalatable bacon, a hand¬ 
ful of grits and enough spilled coffee, in 
powder form, to make two cups. This 
represented their sum total of supplies. 
Would the morrow bring starvation? 
A camp fire was built on the extreme 
end of a myrtle clump and by its light the 
tents w T ere put up with more than usual 
care. There had been a steady gathering 
of clouds since four o’clock in the after- 
noted, with ever increasing apprehension, 
that his faculties seemed dull and dispir¬ 
ited. He could no longer think clearly. 
There were intermittent spells of intense, 
suicidal depression. He shook, as though 
with ague. Rest had been broken by vio¬ 
lent chills. The blankets were clammy. 
They had been so for many days and 
nights. 
Finally he raised his glasses to his eyes 
and scanned the murky, misty expanse of 
sloughs. The monotony of it made him 
groan. Would there EVER be relief! 
Oh, for water enough to bear the skiff! 
The craft was adding a ton a day! But 
the trail almost due East must be resumed. 
Every other course had failed. There was 
nothing else to attempt. He rummaged 
through the clump until he came upon 
some cabbage palm and small cabal palms. 
The hearts of these are small and tender 
and of a delicate green—the food of the 
’Glade guide in an extremity, Mr. King 
remembered. There is a species of bud, 
made up of tightly rolled leaves. It is vir¬ 
tually the immature heart of the growing 
stalk. At its base the cabal palm is some 
four inches and tapers at the top to the 
size of a half dollar. Its average length is 
twelve inches. Enough of this was taken 
back by King Sr. to shred and make the 
foundation of a grotesque broth. Nibbled 
green, it was quite as disagreeable. 
The boys were up. Catlow, luckily, felt 
better. Fie had vomited freely and taken 
a few pellets of soda mint from the medi¬ 
cine kit. That this relief was destined to 
be but temporary, was not an immediate 
deterrent of gratification on Mr. King’s 
r 
The new Tamiami Trail Canal. As the muck and silt is thrown up by the dredges, it 
forms a road-bed, which will eventually cut through to Tampa 
long afterward. Of all nights and of all 
suffering, it had been the most poignant, 
since it brought an almost certain realiza¬ 
tion of death. They would never get out 
of the ’Glades alive! They were beaten. 
The net had closed. That last blind alley 
in the mangroves was sufficient to convince 
Mr. King that the struggle was well nigh 
hopeless. His ever increasing uneasiness 
over his personal condition only made the 
situation worse. And Catlow was sick- 
very sick. They were all depressed be¬ 
yond the telling. 
It was late afternoon when a last fateful 
resolution was made. They would strike 
out to the Eastward, almost parallel with 
the Harney. They -would break through 
the slough, some way or other until they 
stumbled upon a flow. Some stream must 
lead them down into Harney—eventually. 
It was a case of hope—of keeping up hope. 
Shark River was not to be. Lossman’s— 
no—not back to Lossman’s and the mad 
blockade in the Coastal opening. They 
were so far South, now—deeper water 
would begin to appear. Harney had a per¬ 
fect capillary system of little tributaries. 
One of these would carry them through 
the mangroves and cypress and bay to Har¬ 
ney proper—or—Tarpon Lake! 
Then began the desperate, weakening 
:ask of negotiating a passage for the glade 
joat through black sloughs of sticky, pu¬ 
trid muck. It was almost dark and they 
had covered less than three-fourths of a 
mile. There was not enough water in any 
of the sloughs to bear the boat. It was 
dragged, lifted, coaxed and pushed over 
and through masses of saw grass. Mr. 
King, grown suddenly dizzy, called a halt 
noon. As Catlow put it: “It’s gathering 
for a week’s session.” Indications pointed 
to a heavy downpour before morning, as 
if their aggregate troubles and discom¬ 
forts were not overwhelming enough. 
But it did not rain. A heavy dew and 
a chill in the air, coupled with weird, un¬ 
reasonable heaviness that weighted down 
the spirit of the most hopeful of the three 
—John—carried on, until morning came; 
bleak, desolate, as the stones of a tomb. 
Mr. King was stirring at daybreak. He 
tiptoed away from the camp and sat upon 
a fallen tree, near the water. He was 
nauseated—sick through and through. He 
~1 
part. He did not care for himself so much 
—he could accept John’s fate. But Catlow 
was his charge—his guest—a friend’s son. 
The responsibility here was of another 
character. 
Catlow had discovered a water pocket 
some two hundred feet from the myrtle 
clump. It was populated by decadent gar. 
One of these the boy had speared and 
brought back alive, twisting and writhing 
on the steel point. A gar is half brother 
to the shark. Its repulsive snout with the 
rows of needle-like teeth and its blood¬ 
shot, staring eyes, make it a poor camp 
chum. But Catlow was hungry, after his 
Down the Tamaimi Canal come the Seminoles in their sturdy canoes, cut from 
cypress logs. It was to these Indians that Mrs. King looked for information 
