Biscayne Bay and Its Marvels.
Biscayne Bay is situated far down the east coast of Florida, a little below the settlements of Miami and Cocoanut. It is a magnificent sheet of water, the largest in Florida. If you enter the bay in a boat, you will first notice the crossing of a bar. Then you will naturally look across for the other shore and see groups of white houses seemingly far apart. And then you will look into the water below you and see, far down, "submarine gardens of purple, yellow, and red weeds, bright green moss, and multicolored shells of various shapes and sizes." The water is of the clearness of amber, for it is seldom roughened by storms.
How to reach Biscayne by land. The journey to the bay by stage requires two days, with a stop at Camp Stranahan, on New River. You will obtain more fun, though, if you take the schooner at Lake Worth and sail down the Atlantic, a distance of eighty miles. Going south the boat hugs the shore to avoid the northward flow of the Gulf Stream. During the autumn the band at the Royal Poinciana Hotel, at Palm Beach, can be plainly heard. The freight and passenger boats that run between the lake and the bay generally use Bear Cut entrance to the bay.
The fish found in the bay are remarkable for their great variety. There are the tarpon, the silver king, and the kingfish, all of which afford great sport. They are from twelve to fifteen feet long, and weigh from seventy-five to two hundred pounds. Then there are the bream, Jack, mullet, trout, and salt-water shad, the angel and hogfish, the baracouta, and the Spanish mackerel. There is also a fish which goes under several names. Some call it the cavalier, the negroes, "car-walley," and Dr. Henshall, in his Camping and Cruising in Florida, calls it the crevalle. I forgot to mention that pompano, sheepshead, runners, and mud-fish are also found plentifully. But these are not the only species of fish found. There are the shark, jew-fish, ray, and porpoise, and in the small creeks abound alligators and crocodiles. The manatee, or sea-cow, has just lately found its way here. It came originally from the St. Lucie River. Huge pachyderms are found whose flesh resembles that of bear steak. Of shell-fish you will find clams, oysters, crabs, shrimp, conchs, and the logger-head, hawksbill, and green turtle, and plenty of terrapin. Is not this sufficient to show you what a fine fishing-place Biscayne Bay is?
The population about Biscayne Bay is cosmopolitan, possessing, on one hand, a well-known author, and on the other a pure-blood Indian, called Tiger Tom, or Old Tiger. Kirk Munroe and Old Tiger are good friends. The original inhabitants of this region were English and Bohemian settlers. The Everglades lies to the west of the bay about six or seven miles. A recent poetic writer said of them: "A huge lake, miles upon miles in extent, of cold, clear, pure water, black as night, studded with innumerable small islands thickly grown with moss-draped cypress-trees, nesting and breeding places for millions of birds, hiding-places for deer, bear, panther, alligators, and wild-cats, and the larger ones affording camp, farms, and villages for the Indians. The scenery is beautiful and weird beyond description; the silence is an anodyne that lulls the senses to sleep as irresistibly as the croon of the mother soothes her child.
"The sough of the cypress in the passing breeze, the rocking of the canoe on the all but motionless water, the call of a bird, the dip of a distant Indian paddle, the crack of a rifle, the bellow of a 'gator—these are only occasional sounds. It is a wilderness of silence, beautiful and restful, if just a little aweful sometimes, far away from the world, unmolested nine months of the year, healthful and pure, because natural." A glowing description, is it not?
The islands are fertile, and the Indians make them very productive, raising corn, pumpkins, pease, and melons.
Harry R. Whitcomb.
Umatilla, Fla.