The next day, March 15, being in want of meat, Colonel Vincent, Dr. Macleod, Morris, and I started for a hunt, taking Pecetti for guide, since nothing is easier than to get lost in this wilderness. We kept up the lake shore to the north on the sandy beach, towards the mouth of the Kissimmee River, which here enters the lake. This is a deep and rapid stream, which drains the great wet prairies to the north, and in the rainy season must carry a large volume of water. Like the lake, it has great patches of water-lettuce, which in some places almost bridge the channel. Much of its course is through swamps, though in some places the pine barrens and live-oak hummocks approach its banks. It contains immense quantities of fish,—pike, bass, and perch.
In the first hummock which we reached the colonel shot a buck, and I got two young turkeys from a flock. As we emerged from this hummock the guide spied a herd of wild cattle feeding on the prairie about half a mile off, and by his direction we crept through the scrub as far as it afforded cover, and then trusted to the high grass for concealment till we got within a hundred yards of the herd, which consisted of about twenty cows and calves, with a couple of bulls. The doctor and colonel fired together and brought down a heifer. A big bull immediately charged towards the smoke and report of the guns, for he could not see us. On he came, head down and tail erect, bellowing with rage,—a magnificent animal of brindled color, with an immensely heavy neck and shoulder, like a bison, but without the mane. When within fifty yards I fired at his head: the ball struck him full in the forehead and staggered him, but he shook his head and kept straight for us. I gave him another shot, which struck him in the chest and turned him, when Pecetti gave him sixteen buckshot in the shoulder from his big double-barrel, which brought him down, dying bravely in defence of his family.
“His carcass is too old and tough to be of any good,” said the guide, “but I’ll take off his hide; the heifer will give us meat enough.”
While he was butchering, Morris returned to the camp and sent out Tom with the wagon to bring in the beef and venison. It was not long before a flock of turkey-buzzards appeared in sight and floated in circles above our heads, waiting for our departure to begin their feast. It was formerly the opinion of naturalists that these birds were guided by scent in the discovery of the dead animals upon which they feed, but later investigations show that they are led by their acute vision; and my own experience convinces me that this is the fact. As we were returning to camp through the hummock, Pecetti killed a large rattlesnake: it was over five feet long, and as thick as the calf of a man’s leg....
On the morning of March 20, Captain Herbert, Pecetti and I went on a fishing excursion up the lake in a canoe. A few casts of the net near the shore procured a supply of small fish of the mullet species for bait, and we paddled up near to the inlet of the Kissimmee. Here we found the alligators and gars too numerous, they having collected probably to prey upon the fish which there enter the lake. In a quiet bay near the fringe of Pistia and water-lilies, where the water was five or six feet deep, we trolled with a spoon for black bass, and took some of very large size,—eight, ten and twelve pounds....
What adds much to the interest of fishing in strange waters is the uncertainty of the sport and the variety of species; and in this lake we could not tell whether the next offer would be from a peaceful perch, a bounding bass, a piratical pike, or a gigantic gar. I put a chub, or a fish resembling it, eight or nine inches long upon a gang of large hooks, and cast it astern with a hand-line. Presently I saw a great roll towards it from out the weeds, and my line stopped short. I had something very heavy, which, however, played in the sluggish fashion of the pike family, and in ten minutes, without much resistance, I had it alongside the canoe, and it was gaffed by Pecetti. It was a huge pike, four feet four inches long, and weighed, when we got to camp, thirty-four pounds. Pecetti called it the striped pike, and said he had seen them six feet long in some of the lakes: perhaps Esox vittatus (Rafinesque) of the Mississippi Basin.
By this time the gars had collected about us in such numbers that the other fish were driven away: we found it impossible to get a hook into their bony jaws or bills, and only succeeded in capturing one of small size by slipping a noose over its head as it followed the bait. This gar-fish is useless as food, but we wanted a few specimens for Dr. White, it being in demand for museums, particularly in foreign countries, as it belongs to a species exclusively American, and represents an order of fishes (the ganoids) of which few families at present exist. This one, Lepidosteus, has a wide range in America, being found from Florida to Wisconsin. Another American ganoid is Amia calva, the dog-fish or bow-fin, which is very numerous in Western rivers. Both are voracious, but unfit for food. They are described by Agassiz as being of an old-fashioned type, such as were common in the earlier geologic periods, and this is one among many proofs that North America is the oldest of the continents.
Morris, Vincent, and the other hunters brought in to-day a large supply of game,—deer, turkeys, and ducks,—but sustained the loss of one of Morris’s deer-hounds, which they supposed to have been taken by an alligator while swimming a lake in pursuit of a deer. They were some miles south of the camp when this occurred. They did not see the alligator, but the dog suddenly disappeared, and was not to be found after a long search. Morris felt so much disgusted by the loss of this valuable dog that he wished to return to the yacht and go down towards the Keys. So we started the next morning, and arrived at the inlet on the 23d. The weather had been delightful, as is usually the case in Florida in winter, but the day we arrived at the inlet we encountered the beginning of the equinoctial storm, which lasted two days and was very violent.