CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CHUMS HAVE TWO CALLERS.
"Perhaps you can tell us how far we will have to go up this river before we find a place where we can cross?" Charley said.
"I can do better than that. I can take you across. I have a canoe but a little ways from here," replied the Indian lad.
"Good," exclaimed Walter, with pleasure. "That will help us out a lot. We were dreading the trip around."
"We can cross as soon as you wish," offered the young Seminole.
"Let's sit a while and rest," suggested Charley, whose curiosity was aroused by the manner and speech of the splendid young savage. "Are there many of your people camped at the Big Cypress?"
"About one hundred. The Seminoles are becoming as the leaves in autumn," said the lad, sadly. "There are only four tribes of us left. One is camped at Fort Lauderdale, one at Indiantown, another tribe is hunting in the Glades, and we are at the Big Cypress. Only four hundred left of a once powerful race." His voice and face took on a deeper tinge of melancholy as he said, "Soon we will all be gone and only be a memory growing dim with the passing years."
"Oh, I guess, it's not as bad as that," said Charley, cheerfully. "The Seminoles will gradually adjust themselves to civilization and begin to increase once more."
"We are a homeless people," declared the lad. "Your race took all, except this swamp. Here we have lived at peace where no white man would live and now even it is being taken from us. Every week from the East Coast, great canals, like rivers, creep further and further into the swamp. And as fast as they creep in follow the whites with ploughs and teams. Houses spring up over night. The forest and deer vanish, and green fields take their place. Soon the great swamp will be no more."