“That’s the truth, all right,” said Mark. “A Seminole is as honest as the daylight.”
Whereupon the question was dropped, although Billy could not refrain from whispering in an aside to Mark. “Did you say as the daylight, or in the daylight, sonny?” And Mark grinned a response.
After lunch, with Dave’s canoe leading the way, they continued their inland voyage, marveling at the strange country through which they passed. Sometimes, plunging the pole through several feet of mud that underlay the clear water of the streams on which the canoes glided, Dave and Jim struck the hard rock bottom of limestone. The oceans of saw-grass, the occasional groves of palm, wild fig, mangoe, and rubber trees, the clumps of cypress, all were rooted in a bed of mud of various depths.
Pushing on slowly, they came at last to a good place for a camp that night. It was a small circular island, on the top of which was the framework of an Indian’s lean-to shelter. Covering this with grass, rubber blankets, and netting, they soon had a comfortable “shanty,” fairly well protected from mosquitoes and snakes; and there they spent the night.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FRIENDLY SEMINOLES.
About noon of the next day they arrived at the Seminole town which was their destination.
As they approached the village, which was located on a broad triangle of land slightly higher than the surrounding expanses, they noticed a little wharf along one side, and close to this wharf a number of canoes of different sizes. Standing in one of these canoes, a large one, was an Indian, who was working hard with a curious piece of mechanism. It was a sheet of tin roofing about three feet square, into which holes had been driven, with the rough side up like a nutmeg grater. Across this sheet, back and forth, the Indian was violently rubbing the roots of the coonti plant.
“What on earth is he making?” asked Billy.
“Starch,” replied Mark promptly. “The Indians eat coonti starch like pudding, and it tastes mighty good, when you’re hungry. I’ve been told that it’s very nourishing and healthful, but I’ve never eaten much of it.”
Having landed, the party stood watching the starch-maker, while the two guides made the canoes fast to the wharf. Then Dave and Jim led the way in search of friends in the village.