Alligators will not appear till warm weather—that is, till the middle of January—by which time the tourists will think he has got into the dog days, but fish are abundant in all the fresh-water streams. In that very Juniper Creek we caught so many big-mouthed bass with fly and spoon that we not only gave up fishing, but had to salt down dozens. And, by the way, these fish are much more of game fish than they are at the North; the smallest fight well, take the fly freely and jump out of water as frequently and fiercely as the small-mouthed variety in our waters.
Before leaving the instructive branch of my subject I wish to advise the yachtsman against giving too much weight to the appearance of the Southern sky. This will often cloud up toward evening in the most threatening way. Such a heavenly monitor at the North would warn us to make everything snug and get the best bower over, but in the South these appearances signify nothing. After a most frightful-looking evening the morning will break clear and warm and quiet. There are few storms in Florida during the winter, a “norther” occasionally and possible a thunder storm, but no fierce northeasters and no hurricanes. As to the comparative advantages of working through the tortuous creeks with changing tides, or running outside for short stretches, a preference might be given to the latter were it not that the shoals off the mouths of the inlets extend so far to sea. Many of the rivers have carried down so much sediment that they have made shoals ten or fifteen miles off shore. So that apart from questions of safety and comfort, the distance by the inside passage is the shortest.
In going South the yachtsman will pass large and numerous flocks of bay snipe on all the marshes south of Charleston. These marshes are muddy islands and of a peculiar nature. On the surface when dry they are firm enough for walking, but their shores are unfathomable ooze beneath which a man would sink at once out of sight and into which an oar can be run for its entire length without an effort. Curlew, willet, marlin, all varieties down to the tiny ox-eye, and in immense flocks, frequent these islands, where they seem to find food without stint. To stool them you can set out your decoys in the thin grass and make a stand near by from reeds or bushes. They are quite wary, however, and seem to have learned the evil significance of a gun. These marshy islands are honeycombed with the burrows of the fiddler crab, and mussels grow on their surface in soft mounds of earth. They are covered by very high tides and are always more or less damp. The bay snipe, however, do not seem to winter here. They leave a small proportion of their numbers, but the main body goes further South, possibly beyond the equator. There are no such myriads as the Northern flight would require, and they grow fewer and fewer as the season advances, till in March they are almost scarce. Let the sportsman take his toll from them while he can; stopping amidst the lonesomeness of these islands where it is certain death to pass a summer, and few of which are inhabited, and where he may sail tens of miles without seeing a man, white or black. Let him try the deep holes alongside of bluffs or where two creeks meet for sheepshead, using for bait the Southern prawn, that gigantic shrimp, with its body six inches long and its feelers ten; and if he can catch no fish and misses the birds, let him rejoice in knowing that there are millions of both in Florida.
In describing my trip to Florida, I do not intend to pursue any consecutive plan, or follow the positive order of events. It is not important to know that we turned out—to use the proper nautical term—at a certain hour in the morning of a certain day, and that we turned in again at night at some other division of mean sidereal or solar time, nor that we went a certain course or made so many miles one day and so many more or less the next. That is, the reader does not want to have too much of this, although a little now and then may tend to give a general idea of the trials, difficulties, and enjoyments of a yachtman’s life. But whether we arrived at a place at five P.M. or five A.M., important as it may have been to us at the time, cannot, so far as I can judge, interest the reader as deeply as I hope to interest him. For all such information I will refer him to the ordinary books of travel. That we did occasionally make fast time in our little half scow, half yacht, that I built on the scheme of putting a sail in a canal boat, will be proved by this single event; when running across St. Simon’s sound in a fog, we passed a large steamer yacht, called the “Gleam,” one of the largest and finest of Herreschoff’s productions. We found her again in Jacksonville when we reached there. She had left Savannah on the second of January, we had left Charleston on the tenth; she had arrived two days ahead of us, so that by being able to keep inside out of the storms and fogs of the Atlantic, we had actually gone nearly double the distance in six days less time.
The personnel of our party was made up of a sporting medical man, Mr. Seth Green, the famous fish-culturist, the ladies of the families and myself. We went without any restriction as to time, which is a most essential point in a yachting trip, and we stopped where we pleased, and as long as we pleased, we shot where there were birds to shoot, we fished where there were fish to catch, and where there were neither, we lay in the shade of the awning, if the weather was warm, and smoked, or ate those globes of concentrated lusciousness, the grape fruit when we felt too energetic to loaf, and not energetic enough to fish or shoot. Our trip was something of an exploring expedition, and we had possible dangers and inevitable inconveniences to encounter. Other parties had gone to Florida in the same way, but they had left no record of their adventures, no guide-posts for those who should come after them. So far as we were concerned, the country from North Carolina to the Land of Flowers was a terra incognita. We knew that there were birds, and beasts, and fish, in that equatorial region, but where to find them, how to reach them, and by what methods to catch and kill them, were wholly unknown to us. No one, after reading this record, will have the same complaint to make. Several of the Government charts were not completed, notably those of Pamlico Sound, and the corrections of that from Charleston south, so as to show the inside route had not been made in the year 1882, which was the one I had selected for the expedition.
We had sent the “Heartsease” to Norfolk, and were to meet her there, as by so doing we would save time that could be better utilized than by going over ground with which we were pretty well familiar—that of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. At Norfolk, after we had purchased what hard-bread, cake, pies, and other stores and luxuries we needed, and had been through the fish market, and selected an abundance of the largest “spot,” which is regarded as the most delicious native fish, although it is nothing more than what we call the Lafayette fish at the North, we engaged a tow and started on our journey. We had to go through the Albemarle and Chesapeake canal, and made our first mistake in supposing that a tow was a necessity for the operation. The puffy, dirty, fussy, little steamboat ran us against everything that she came near, and were it not that she was unable to attain any considerable rate of speed, our journey might have terminated before it fairly began. She jammed us against the dock when we were starting, banged us into the first vessel we met on our way, bumped us into the banks of the canal when we had entered it, dashed us into the only lock there was to get foul of, and then rammed us against a dredging scow so fiercely, that there was a momentary doubt whether we should not be dredged out as an impediment to travel.
However, in spite of all these misadventures, we made Currituck before night. We determined to stay there some days for duck shooting, but I shall not stop to describe the sport we had. It is enough, that we loaded down our vessel with provisions, which, as the weather came out cold, kept till they were all consumed, and saved us from recourse to those last resources of the way-farer, the insipid canned meats, which, somehow, the manufacturers manage to make taste so nearly alike, that one will answer for the other, whether it is called mutton, beef, or fowl. Then we sped away south, running into Kittyhawk Bay for a harbor and a turkey, for no one must imagine that it is necessary to starve in the South, even amid the desolation of the desolate Eastern Shore. Not only does the proverbial hospitality of the Southern people still exist as far as the effect of a desolating war has left it a possibility, but there are certain kinds of food to be got there more readily than even at the North. It has heretofore been a reproach to our Southern colored brother, that the attractions of a hen-roost and lusciousness of a fat turkey gobbler were too much for his virtue. But this state of facts and morals is changing, the darkey is turning poultry fancier, he is getting to raise chickens and sell eggs, he is fast becoming a bloated fowl holder, and regular goose and turkey wing clipper; in his eyes the chicken is assuming a different status, and hen-roost marauding is fast becoming a heinous crime, than which there is none more unpardonable. He will soon be the fowl monopolist, and when that day comes I predict that the chicken will be regarded as a sacred bird, and placed in the same category as the ibis of Egypt. As it is, eggs can be obtained almost anywhere, and wherever there is a darkey’s hut, there the voice of the cackling hen ascends in welcome and suggestive music to high heaven, resonant of omelettes plain, omelettes aux fines herbes, with ham or with onion, of scrambled eggs, boiled, roasted eggs, of pan cakes and sweet cakes, of custards, egg-nog, and all the thousands delicacies towards which the hen contributes with enthusiastic zeal, and greatly to the happiness of man.
The course of the contraband can be exemplified by that of the milk farmer, if the story which I once heard from an eminent retired politician is true, as I think it may be. Many of the farmers living in the neighborhood of Utica were in the habit of supplying that city with milk from the herds of cows that the magnificent meadows of the vicinity easily supported. Those careful and conscientious gentlemen, aware of the heating properties of milk in its strong and crude state, felt it was but a duty they owed their fellow beings, and especially their customers, to make sure that they did not incur the evils which were certain to arise from the unguarded use of so deleterious a beverage. They mixed the dangerous fluid with a sufficient proportion of water to kill the germs of disease, and lest their motives should be misunderstood, they did not mention their thoughtfulness to the consumers. Hence it was that Utica enjoyed unexampled health, and it would no doubt have continued in the same enjoyment except for a change in the methods of milk culture. Milk, instead of being converted into butter or sold in its natural state, came in time to be manufactured into cheese. Great cheese dairies were established, to which the farmers sent their milk, in place of disposing of it by local trade. Now it was essential that the milk so delivered should be absolutely pure, for the excellence of the product not only depended on this, but also in order that the amount might be fairly credited to each of the persons furnishing a share of the supply. Then the bucolic view that had heretofore obtained in that neighborhood was modified, and of all the sins in the decalogue, none was quite so heinious as the adulteration of milk. I do not vouch for this story, although a long course of lactic experience in the city of New York gives it an air of possibility. Certain it is that since the introduction of cheese factories, the health of Utica has declined, but then no one can positively say that this change is due entirely to the purity of the milk.
On our way to Kitty Hawk, we had passed a number of nets which the local fishermen were hauling, and Mr. Green, who had a mania for interviewing every one he met, had promptly boarded the first of the boats, obtained all the statistics, and even helped make one haul. He found out that they caught what they called chub, the big-mouthed bass (Grystes salmoides), as large as eight pounds; white perch; the robin, which is our sunfish; red fin, our yellow perch; bull sucker, our black sucker; sucker-mullet, our mullet, which were taken in the creeks and up in the swamps, and nanny shad, which seemed to be our gizzard shad, known in Baltimore as bream. As they did not have all these varieties in the boat at the time, we were not quite sure as to the last. The fishermen knew nothing of the spawning season, but we found roe three inches long in a seven-pound big-mouthed black bass.
There is a club house at Kitty Hawk Bay, belonging to the Kitty Hawk Ducking Club, but it was deserted when we were there by the club, and given over to the possession of Captain Cain, who runs the principal fishery in that part of the country. He told us that the bass spawned in March, and that the same kinds of fish were caught near there which I have described. While we were ashore enjoying his hospitality, a sudden squall came up and blew most of the water out of the bay, so that the small boat in which we had come ashore was left a hundred feet from the edge of the water.