“Traveling through this aquatic jungle in a light canoe, the motive power of which is plenty of muscle, a broad-blade paddle and a push pole about eighteen feet long, we enter a trackless waste of saw grass and water, with scattering islands and lagoons, channels running in all directions. These channels often terminate in what is called a pocket and then trouble begins, as these pockets are so shallow that a canoe or skiff has to be pulled by rope or pushed by hand through the mud and grass, until deep water is found. All signs fail in the Everglades, as often to go north you will take the other three points of the compass.”
“There is nothing quite so aggravating,” continues the writer, “as to get sewed up in one of these pockets, in the open saw grass with deep water in plain view and fine shady trees to welcome you, but tired and disgusted you stand as high as possible in the canoe and see only one chance in a hundred to find the right channel to go through.”
“There is no use for a compass, and it is a waste of time to think about it. There is a sure thing of going overboard in the mud or going back and starting over again.”
“When the water is high the trouble is not so great, but when it is low, the traveler can lay aside his Bible, quote a chapter from Dante’s Inferno, and plough through the mud until his energy is exhausted and wonder if Dante ever heard tell of the Everglades.”
The channels running through these Glades are alive with fish, while the saw grass ponds provide homes for thousands of alligators. The myrtle and cypress clumps are the winter homes of the heron and migratory birds.
From this vast morass, with an elevated position, and a rare atmosphere, the view that would meet the eye would differ from any other on the globe. Ballou says: “A thousand square miles of saw grass would be seen spreading out in the shape of an artist’s palette. Towards the end would be seen a series of little inland lakes, fed by minute rivers. Interblending with the lakes, thousands of islands would be visible, far beyond the saw-grass sea. The flutter of bird life would be like the milky way, and the swarm of insects like a distant sand storm on the Sahara.”
Bordering the sedgy lagoons, are dense cypress forests, with here and there cabbage palms, Indian rubber and mangroves, while tangled vegetation weaves itself in chaotic style over underbrush and tree. These are the primeval woods of the United States. To be lost in these great marshes means more than death. They are the paradise of the serpent and the alligator. It is said in old slavery days, slaves who ran away to the swamps, were entered on the books as dead.
Except the few points touched upon by adventurous botanists and hunters, this entire region has remained terra incognita until within the past two or three years, when the subject of drainage has caused deeper and more scientific investigation. These explorers have brought interesting accounts of the great swamp.
The subject of drainage of this vast aquatic jungle is causing many disputes and many opinions, but under the Legislature of 1907, with the imperturbable Governor Broward in power, the work of drainage was begun.
Those engaged in the reclamation of this rich soil look upon the enterprise as being one of the most colossal of American ingenuity and one that will made the Okeechobee region the Egypt of America. While it is not the object of the writer to enter into the question of reclamation—still, the thought comes, “Is it worth while to make this region fit for habitation?”