Our portage to the sea now loomed up as a laborious task. We needed at least one man to assist us, and we were fully half a day's row from the nearest cabin to the west of us, while we might look in vain to the eastward, where the uninhabited coast-line stretched away with its shining sands and shimmering waters for thirty miles to Cape San Blas. There, upon a low sand-bar, against which the waves lashed out their fury, rose a tall light-tower, the only friend of the mariner in all this desolate region. We could not look to that distant light for help, however, and were thrown entirely upon our own feeble resources.
Going systematically to work, we surveyed the best route across Crooked Island, which was over the bed of an old inlet; for a hurricane, many years before, washed out a passage through the sand- spit, and for years the tide flowed in and out of the interior bay. Another hurricane afterwards repaired the breach by filling up the new inlet with sand; so Crooked Island enjoyed but a short-lived notoriety, and again became an integral part of the continent.
[The portage across Crooked Island.]
Our survey of the portage gave encouraging results. The Gulf of Mexico was only four hundred feet from the bay, and the shortest route was the best one; so, starting energetically, we dragged the boats by main force across Crooked Island, and launched them in the surf without disaster. We then rowed as rapidly as the rough sea would permit along the coast towards the wide opening of St. Joseph's Bay, the wooded beaches of which rose like a cloud in the soft mists of a sunny day. The bay was entered at four o'clock in the afternoon, and, being out of water, we hauled our boats high on to the beach, and searched eagerly for signs of moisture in the soil.
Leaving Saddles to build a fire and prepare our evening meal, I proceeded to investigate our new domain, and soon discovered the remains of a cabin near a station, or signal-staff, of the United States Coast Survey. Men do not camp for a number of days at a time in places destitute of water; and the fact of the cabin having been built on this spot proved conclusively to me that water must be found in the vicinity. After a careful and patient search, I discovered a depression in the high sandy coast, and although the sand was perfectly dry, I thought it possible that a supply of water had been obtained here for the use of the United States Coast Survey party—the same party which had erected the cabin and planted the signal near it.
Going quickly to the beach, I found the shell of an immense clam, with which I returned, and using it as a scoop, or shovel, removed two or three bushels of sand, when a moist stratum was reached, and my clam- shovel struck the chime of a flour-barrel. In my joy I called to Saddles, for I knew our parched throats would soon be relieved. It did not take long to empty the barrel of its contents, which task being finished, we had the pleasure of seeing the water slowly rise and fill the cistern so lately occupied by the sand. In half an hour the water became limpid, and we sat beside our well, drinking, from time to time, like topers, of the sweet water. Our water-cans were filled, and no stint in the culinary department was allowed that evening.
The flames from our camp-fire shot into the soft atmosphere, while the fishes, attracted by its glare, leaped by scores, in a state of bewilderment, from the now quiet water. St. Joseph's Bay has an ample depth of water for sea-going vessels, while its many species of shells make it one of the best points on the northern Gulf coast for the conchologist.
Although sorry to leave our limpid spring, we launched the boats at seven o'clock the next morning, following the north side of the bay until we arrived at the deserted site of the city of St. Joseph. It seemed impossible to realize that on this desolate spot there had been, only thirty or forty years before, a prosperous city, with a large population and a busy cotton-port, accessible to the largest vessels, and threatening a steady rivalry with Apalachicola. Railroads were the enemies of these southern cities as they diverted the cotton, grown in the interior, from its natural channels by river to the Gulf of Mexico.
The system of "time-freights," on railroads to the eastern Atlantic ports of Charleston and Savannah, had reduced the once promising city of St. Joseph to one shanty and a rotten pier. Apalachicola also felt the iron hand of competition, and her line of steamboats lost the carriage upon her noble river of the cotton from the distant interior. Railroads were rapidly constructed running east and west, and the rivers flowing to the south were robbed of their commerce.
Beyond St. Joseph city the scenery became almost tropical in its character, and palmettos grew in rank luxuriance on the low savannas. The long narrow coast on the south side of the bay trended suddenly to the south, and terminated in Cape San Blas, while the sound was ended abruptly by a strip of land which connected the long cape to the main. The system of interior watercourses here came to a natural end; and pulling our boats upon the strand, we landed by a large turtle-pen, near which was a deserted grass hut, evidently the home of the turtle- hunter during the "turtle season." Leaving the boats on the salt marsh, we entered the woods and ascended the sand-hills of the Gulf coast, when a boundless view of the sea broke upon us. The shining strand stretched in regular lines four miles to the south, where the light-tower on the point of the cape rose above the intervening forest. Greeting it as the face of a friend, we rejoiced to see it so near; and standing entranced with the beauty of the vision before us,- -the boundless sea, the most ennobling sight in all nature,—we congratulated ourselves that we had arrived safely at Cape San Blas.