The Miami catalogues are a trifle wild when they start raving about the exquisite joy of eating a mango that costs a dollar and a half; but if one can get a good Hayden mango for half a dollar, it will probably strike him as being considerably better than such ordinary matters as oatmeal gruel, baked beans, suet pudding, griddle cakes, fried bananas, bread pudding, or a poke in the eye with a pointed stick.
CHAPTER VIII
OF THE EVERGLADES AND OF THE TWO SEASONS OBTAINING IN THAT DAMP LOCALITY—AND OF GRASS, FANCY AND OTHERWISE
Off to the west of Miami lie the Everglades, first made famous by the Seminole War, when the United States Army spent upward of fifteen years trying to chase the Seminoles out of the Everglades but seldom saw more than three Seminoles at one time. The Everglades, not so long ago, was an enormous shallow lake eight thousand square miles in area, dotted with half-submerged islands out of which grew giant whiskered live oaks and countless varieties of tropical plants. The alligator basked in its shadowed streams; and the graceful panther lurked among the undergrowth, constantly ready to emit a bloodcurdling scream calculated to make the hardiest intruder think longingly of home and mother. Exploration was made almost impossible by a saw-toothed grass which grew throughout the Everglades and extended several feet above the water, so that the person who tried to force his way through it would cut everything to shreds up to and including his eyebrows. People talked for years of draining the Everglades; but such talk was usually received with screams of laughter that rivaled the yells of the Everglades panthers.
Several years ago the State of Florida settled down in earnest to the systematic draining of the Everglades. Canals were cut, giant locks were installed to control the water level, and the land was cleared. Thousands of acres are being reclaimed each year, settlers are moving in constantly, and the reclaimed land is yielding vegetables and fruits of a size and quality to make a Maine farmer shake his head dubiously and wonder whether that last batch of licker that the sheriff sent him had affected his eyes. The soil is a rich black muck which has resulted from centuries of decaying vegetation; and anything that will grow will grow about twice as large and twice as rapidly in the Everglades as it will anywhere else. There used to be only two seasons in the Everglades—wet and wetter; but now there is a dry season; and in the course of a few years, when the fruit-trees begin to bear, the Everglades alone will be in a position to supply every northern city throughout the winter with all the newfangled and oldfangled fruits and vegetables that can be desired.
The thousands of farmers who have retired from active farming and are occupying their winters by absorbing the sun in Miami and pitching horseshoes in Royal Palm Park become fearfully excited over the various varieties of grass that are raised in the Everglade lands. Grass is not a thing that one would expect to mention at any length in a casual dissertation on a winter resort; but the excessive wonderment over it on the part of the horseshoe pitchers requires some mention of grass. It appears that some of the grasses that have come in thick enough to get themselves talked about are Para, Bermuda, Rhodes, Natal, Sudan, St. Lucia, St. Augustine, Napier, Broom, sage, Guatemalan, panicum, crab grass, maiden cane, Billion Dollar grass and several others. There seems to be everything but just plain grass. The chief idea of the farmers seems to be that with all this grass, the Florida stock raisers can have evergreen pasturage, and cattle can be fed on about a third of the space that they need in the North.
This, of course, is important if true; but the average person who comes to Miami is not interested in grass except as something on which to play golf or sit. What he wants is usually holiday relaxation and plenty of it; and if that’s what he wants, he can get so much of it in and near Miami that one week of complete relaxation must usually be followed by two weeks of recuperation.
CHAPTER IX
OF THE OLD MIAMI AND THE NEW MIAMI—OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MIAMI BEACH AND PALM BEACH—OF THE SCENIC POSSIBILITIES IN FLOATING COCONUTS AND THE ACTIVITIES OF JOHN S. COLLINS
The people who knew Miami prior to 1918 have in their minds an entirely different place from the Miami of to-day. The old Miami was a city first and a winter resort afterward. This statement will, of course, offend the touchy Miami folk; but it is true none the less. It was—and is—a hustling, bustling, booming, noisy city with about one automobile for each seven-eighths of an inhabitant, and with perpetual warmth and sunshine. In the long run, however, the big-money tourists don’t want to go to a hustling, bustling, rapidly growing city for their winter holidays, even though the city may boast perpetual warmth and sunshine. What they want is clean air and plenty of sun and sky, and a complete change from the scenery to which they are accustomed in their northern cities, and a surcease from all noises except the noises they make themselves—which are frequently much louder than the ordinary noises of a city. For that reason Palm Beach was in a class by itself. The big-money tourists went to Palm Beach. Miami got a smattering of them, but a very small smattering. Palm Beach sneered at Miami Beach and called it “the Coney Island of Florida.”