Four Months in a Sneak-Box / A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico

by Nathaniel H. Bishop

We left the kind people of Apalachicola, and crossed the bay to St. George's Sound, with a cargo of delicacies, for Captain Fry had filled our lockers with various comforts for the inner man, while our friend, the cattle-owner, whom we had met at Cape San Blas, and who had now returned to his home, stocked us with delicious oranges from his grove on the outskirts of the city.

Four miles to the east of Cat Point we saw the humble homes of Peter Sheepshead and Sam Pompano, two fishermen, whose uniform success in catching their favorite species of fish had won for them their euphonious titles. We camped at night near the mouth of Crooked River, which enters the sound opposite Dog Island, having rowed twenty-four miles. If we continued along the sound, after passing out of its eastern end, we would be upon the open sea, and might have difficulty in doubling the great South Cape; so we took the interior route, ascending Crooked River through a low pine savanna country, to the Ocklockony River, which is, in fact, a continuation of Crooked River. The region about Crooked and Ocklockony rivers is destitute of the habitation of man.

About midway between St. George's Sound and the Gulf coast we traversed a vast swamp, where the ground was carpeted with the dwarf saw palmettos. A fire had killed all the large trees, and their blasted, leafless forms were covered with the flaunting tresses of Spanish moss. The tops of many of these trees were crowned by the Osprey's nest, and the birds were sitting on their eggs, or feeding their young with fish, which they carried in their talons from the sea. So numerous were these fish-hawks that we named the blasted swamp the Home of the Osprey. We spent one night in this swamp serenaded by the deep calls of the male alligators, which closely resembled the low bellowing of a bull.

About noon the next day signs of cultivated life appeared, and we passed the houses of some settlers, and the saw-mill of a New Yorker. At dusk our boats entered a little sound, and by nine o'clock in the evening we arrived at the Gulf of Mexico, in a region of shoal water, much cut up by oyster reefs. The tide being very low, the boats were anchored inside of an oyster reef, which afforded protection from the inflowing swell of the sea. We shaped our course next day for St. Marks, along a low, marshy coast, where oyster reefs, in shoal water, frequently barred our progress. From South Cape to St. Marks the coast, broken by the mouths of several creeks and rivers, trends to the northeast, while for twenty miles to the east of the light house, which rises conspicuously on the eastern shore of the entrance to St. Marks River, the coast bends to the southeast to the latitude of Cedar Keys, where it turns abruptly south, and forms one side of the peninsula of Florida.

The great contour of the Gulf of Mexico, into which St. Marks River empties, is known to geographers as Apalachee Bay. On that part of the coast between the St. Marks and Suwanee rivers, the bed of the Gulf of Mexico slopes so gradually that when seven miles away from the land a vessel will be in only eighteen feet of water. At this distance from the shore is found the continuous coral formation; but nearer to the coast it is found in spots only.

While traversing this coast from St. Marks to Cedar Keys, I observed the peculiar features of a long coast-line of salt marshes, against which the waves broke gently. With the exception of a few places, where the upland penetrated these savannas to the waters of the sea, the marshes were soft alluvium, covered with tall coarse grasses, the sameness of which. was occasionally broken by a hammock, or low mound of firmer soil, which rose like an island out of the level sea of green. The hammocks were heavily wooded with the evergreen live-oaks, the yellow pine, and the palmetto. From half a mile to two miles back of the low savannas of the coast, rose, like a wall of green, the old forests, grand and solemn in their primeval character.

The marshes were much cut up by creeks, some of which came from the mainland, but most of them had their sources in the savannas, and served as drains to the territory which was frequently submerged by the sea. When the southerly winds send towards the land a boisterous sea, the long, natural, inclined plane of the Gulf bottom seems to act as a pacifier to the waves, for they break down as they roll over the continually shoaling area in approaching the marshes; and there is no undertow, or any of the peculiar features which make the surf on other parts of the coast very dangerous in rough weather. The submarine grass growing upon the sandy bottom as far as six or eight miles from shore, also helps to smooth down the waves.

When the strong wind blows off the coast on to the Gulf, it is known to seamen as a "norther," and so violent are these winds that their force, acting on the sea, rapidly diminishes its depth within twelve or fifteen miles of the marshes. A coasting-vessel drawing five feet of water will anchor off Apalachee Bay in eight feet of water, at the commencement of a "norther," and in four or five hours, unless the crew put to sea, the vessel will be left upon the dry bottom of the Gulf. After the wind falls, the water will return, and the equilibrium will be restored.

We ascended St. Marks River; and passed the site of a town which had been washed out of existence in the year 1843 by the effects of a hurricane on the sea. These hurricanes are in season during August and September. The village of St. Marks consisted of about thirty houses, the occupants of which, with two or three exceptions, were negroes. The land is very low, and at times subjected to inundation. A railroad terminated here, but the business of the place supported only two trains a week, and they ran directly to the capital of Florida, the beautiful city of Tallahassee, eighteen miles distant.

The negro postmaster courteously presented me with my package of letters, and I had an opportunity to observe the way in which he fulfilled his duties. When the mail arrived, it was thrown upon a desk in one corner of a small grocery store, and any person desiring an epistle went in, and, fumbling over the letters, took what he claimed as his own.