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A PEEP AT
THE EVERGLADES MY first
stroll in Miami was taken under the pilotage of a lady who had already spent
several winters here. In the course of it we came suddenly upon a colored man
lying face downward in the grass, under a blazing sun, fast asleep. It was no
uncommon happening, my friend remarked; she was always stumbling over such
dusky sleepers. But in this Southern clime the luxury of physical inactivity is
not appreciated by black people alone. I was walking away from the city at a
rather brisk pace, one morning, when I passed a lonesome shanty. A white man
sat upon the rude piazza, and another man and a boy stood near. “Are you
going to work to-day?” asked the boy of the occupant of the piazza. “No,” was
the answer, quick and pithy. “Why not?” “I ain’t
got time.” I laid the
words up as a treasure; I do not expect to hear the philosophy of indolence
more succinctly and pointedly stated if I live a thousand years. But though
we Northern visitors may sometimes envy our Southern brethren their gift of
happy insouciance, it is not for our possessing. We were born under another
star. Our lack is the precise opposite of theirs; even in our vacation hours we
have seldom time to sit still. So it
happened that on a sultry, dog-day morning, with a south wind blowing, the sky
partly clouded, — a comfort to the eyes, — the professor and the bird-gazer,
after an early breakfast, set forth upon a reconnoissance of the Everglades. We
took each a boat and an oarsman, planning to go up the Miami River, or rather
its south branch, till we were among the “islands” — small pieces of hammock
woods scattered amid the wilderness of saw-grass. As each of
us had his own boat, so each had his own errand, one botanical, the other
lazily ornithological. The professor expected to see and learn much — especially
about the adaptation of plants to their surroundings; his associate expected to
see and learn little — little or nothing; and according to each man’s faith, so
it was unto him. For the
first mile or so — as far as the tide runs, perhaps — the river is densely
beset on either side by a shining green hedge of mangrove bushes, every branch
sending down “aerial roots” of its own, till landing among them is an adventure
hardly to be thought of. After the mangroves come taller hedges of the cocoa plum,
leafier still, and equally shining. “Aren’t
you glad you know what this bush is?” I shouted downstream to the professor.
“Indeed I am,” he shouted back. Without
this knowledge, which we had acquired within a few days, by a kind of accident,
as before related, our present state of mind would have been pitiable. We were
surprised to find the plant so fond of water, having noticed it heretofore in
comparatively dry situations. Another example of the extreme adaptability of
tropical plants, the professor remarked. By and by
we came to the first cypress trees, the only ones I have seen in this all but
swamp-less Miami neighborhood; beautiful in their new dress of living green. I
rejoiced at the sight. Under one of them we landed, admiring the “knees” that
its roots had sent up till the ground was studded with them. These, the
professor tells me (it is nothing new, by his account of the matter, but it is
new to me), are believed to serve as breathing or aerating organs, supplying to
the tree the oxygen for lack of which, standing in water, as it mostly does, it
would otherwise drown. All visitors to Florida are impressed by the beauty and
majesty of the cypress, and many have no doubt puzzled themselves over the
meaning of these strange, apparently useless protuberances — as if nature had
attempted something and failed — that are so constantly found underneath. “They
never do grow to be trees,” my boatman said. It was at
this point, as nearly as I remember, that the stream grew narrow and shallow at
once, till behold, we were laboring up what might fairly be called rapids.
Here, between the awkward crowding of the banks and the swiftness of the
current (it was good, I said to myself, to see water actually running in
Florida), the men were certainly earning their money. Fortunately, both proved
equal to the task. Then a bend in the stream took us away from the neighborhood
of the trees (not until, in one of the cypresses, I had remarked my first Miami
nuthatch — a white-breast), and into the very midst of the saw-grass. This
densely growing, sharp-edged, appropriately named grass, higher than a man’s
head, standing to-day in two or three feet of water, is said to cover the
Everglades. It must render them a frightful place in which to lose one’s way.
“I should rather be lost at sea in a rowboat,” my oarsman declared. All this
while, of course, I had kept a lookout for birds, but, as I had expected, to
comparatively little purpose. No doubt there were many about us, but not for
our finding. The shallower and quieter edges of the river were covered here and
there with broad leaves of the yellow lily, among which should have been at
least a chance gallinule, it seemed to me; but neither gallinule nor rail
showed itself. Here, as everywhere, buzzards and vultures were sailing
overhead. Many white-breasted swallows, too, went hawking over the grass, and
once a purple martin passed near me. Better still, he allowed me, in one brief
note, to hear his welcome voice. Like the new leaves of the cypress, it
prophesied of spring. At
intervals a heron of one kind or another started up far in advance. One was
snow-white, but whether I was to call it an immature little blue heron or a
white egret was more than could be made sure of at my distance. I recall, too,
a flock of ducks, a cormorant or two, speeding through the air after their
usual headlong manner, a solitary red-winged blackbird, astray from the flock,
and the cries of killdeer plovers. Kingfishers were not infrequent, two or
three ospreys came into sight, and once, at least, I made sure of a Louisiana
heron. A lean showing, certainly, for what might have been thought so promising
a place. And now,
as the grass grew shorter, so that we could survey the world about us, the
water of a sudden turned shallow. The professor’s flat-bottomed boat still
floated prosperously, but my own heavier, keeled craft speedily touched bottom.
The rower put down the oars, took off his shoes and stockings, rolled up his
trousers, and proceeded to lighten the boat of his weight, and drag it forward.
This expedient answered for a rod or two. Then we stuck fast again, and the
passenger followed his boatman’s example and took to the water. So we followed
along, the water now deeper, now shallower, the bottom hard and slimy, till
after a little we were at the end of our rope. If we were to go farther we must
leave the boat behind us. This was
hardly worth while, especially as even in that way we could not hope to proceed
far enough to see anything different from what we had seen already. “We will
go back,” I said, “drifting with the current and stopping by the way.” And so
we did, my boatman and I, leaving the professor — who, as it turned out, went
but a few rods beyond us — to pursue his investigations unhindered. After all,
in spite of our indolent intentions, the return was faster than the upward
journey, as almost of necessity happens, whether one is descending a river or a
mountain. The time for loitering is in going up. One good thing we saw,
nevertheless, though it was only for an instant. “What’s
that?” my man suddenly exclaimed, in the eagerest of tones. “Look! Right
there!” “Oh, yes,”
I said; “a least bittern.” It stood
crosswise, so to speak, halfway up a tall reed, for all the world like a marsh
wren. Then away it went on the wing, and was lost in the grass. It was a good
bird to see, besides counting as “No. 91” in my Miami list. “I never
did see a bird like that,” 1 the boatman said. “Such a little
fellow!” he called it. It was a pleasure to find him so enthusiastic.
The best thing of the whole trip, notwithstanding, was not the sight of
any bird, but our lazy, careless, albeit too rapid gliding down the stream,
with the world so bright and calm about us and above. Here and there, for our
delight, was a tuft of fragrant white “lilies” (Crinum) standing amid a
tuft of handsome upright green leaves. More than once, also, we passed
boatloads of fishermen (and fisherwomen), white and black.
One elderly and carefully dressed, city-coated gentleman I especially
remember. He sat in the stern of the boat (his African boatman with a line out,
also), watching the fluctuations of his bob as earnestly, I thought, as ever he
could have watched the fluctuations of the stock market. His whole soul was
centred upon that bit of cork and the possible fish below. He actually had a
nibble as we passed! What cared he then for “coppers” or “industrials”? He must
at some time or other have been a boy. The lucky man! By the look on his face
he was happy. And happiness, if I am to judge by what I see, is one of the main
things, in Florida. At all events, it was the main thing that I found in the
Everglades. 1 One of
the most striking peculiarities of Southern speech among the illiterate classes
(I have observed it in other states besides Florida) is the almost total
absence of the word “saw.” |
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