The Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia all have large areas of coast marshes—"pocosons" they call them—only a small part of which has been reclaimed. Formerly these were the property of the general government; then they were given to the States with the understanding that they were to be reclaimed. Large tracts were sold to speculators for a few cents an acre, and there you are! Few States are rich enough to handle extensive reclamation enterprises, and so the general government stepped in again and assumed the responsibility. That means that the work of reclamation will be skilfully and honestly done. Uncle Sam may play some questionable politics, but he never mixes politics and government business.

Of all the swamp lands of the United States, the region in Florida known as the Everglades is the most interesting and the most romantic.

Ponce de Leon, an aged Spanish governor of Porto Rico, who was seeking the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, discovered—not the long-sought fountain, but a peninsula decked with such a profusion of flowers that he named the country Florida.

From that time until years after it was ceded to the United States Florida was repeatedly baptized in blood. From the first there were encounters between the Spanish and Indians in which no quarter was given on either side. Later, an exterminating warfare broke out between the French and Spanish when a Huguenot colony was massacred and not a man, woman, or child spared. In 1586 St. Augustine was burned by Sir Francis Drake, and a century later it was plundered by English buccaneers. Still later, frequent contests were waged between the English colonies and the Spanish in Florida.

Previous to the acquisition of Florida by the United States hostile Indians, together with fugitive whites and renegade negroes who had joined them, made many raids upon the settlements in Georgia, robbing and burning plantations, murdering the whites, and carrying off the slaves. Retaliation to a certain extent was meted out to the blood-thirsty savages until Spain was glad to cede the peninsula to the United States in 1819 for five million dollars. Thereby she ridded herself of her troublesome protégés. The Indian raids still continued after the acquisition, and the United States Government therefore sent troops into Florida to punish the treacherous savages, who gradually retreated southward until they reached the Everglades. There they made their final stand.

In these almost inaccessible sinuous water passages and the dense island vegetation for a long time the Indians baffled our ablest military officers. A seven years' contest followed which cost the United States fifteen hundred men and nearly twenty million dollars.

Group of Seminole Indians in the Everglades of Florida
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After much negotiation and no end of trouble the Indians—they were the Seminoles—ceded their lands to the United States on the promise of an annuity of twenty-five thousand dollars and suitable lands in the Indian Territory. About four thousand of the Seminoles were then removed to their new homes; a small remnant refusing to emigrate were left behind.