All about among these islands are well beaten trails of other creatures than alligators. The range cattle make some of them, but not all. In some you may see the duplex-pointed hoof-marks of deer. Some are scratched out by the hurrying claws of raccoons. In many, along the grassy edges I found the wide, dignified print of that king of wild birds, the wild turkey. Long and stealthily I prowled these trails hoping to come upon this majestic bird when feeding and thus see him at his work, but in this I was unsuccessful. The turkey feeds mainly in early forenoon and late afternoon, not leaving his perch as a rule till the sun is above the horizon, lurking among the bushes on high ground during the heat of the day, filling his crop again before sundown and flying heavily to his roost before dark. Just now his food is mainly succulent new grass with which he fills his crop until it will hold no more, fairly swelling him up in front like a pouter pigeon. There were a gobbler and two or three hens near-by—how near we were not to suspect until later; but we saw only the trail of these, not a feather of them did we glimpse, follow their tracks as we might.
It was late in the afternoon and we were a mile and a half from camp when we heard the first turkey voice. It was that of a lone gobbler and, just by chance, we stopped knee-deep in the grassy lagoon on the margin of an island which held his favorite roost, a limb of a big pine standing among deciduous trees. To this, from the other side he came. No doubt he had been picking grass on the other margin of the lagoon in which we stood, now he was headed for home and calling.
At this time of year there are great battles between gobblers for possession of hens. This gobbler seems to have been a defeated and compulsory bachelor, yet he gobbled away as if a whole barnyard was at his back, lifting his twenty-five pounds of live weight with rapid beats of his short, strong wings from the ground to lower limbs, thence higher and finally to his roost. Never yet, I believe, grew a more magnificent gobbler than this one, scorned of the fair sex though he was. The level sun shone upon his bronzed feathers till the radiance of their beauty fairly dazzled, seeming to flash from him in molten rays as if from burnished copper. He looked this way and that for those missing hens that surely ought to be lured into following such radiance. He gobbled to right and he gobbled to left in mingled defiance and entreaty, but there was no reply. Then he strutted and displayed all his magnificence. He spread the wide fan of his copper-red tail, drooped his wings till they hung below the limb and puffed out all his feathers, silhouetted against the pale rose of the sunset. Then he said “Pouf!” once or twice in a half-hissing, sudden grunt that sounded as if it came from the bunghole of an empty barrel. It had that sort of contemptuous hollow ring to it. This he varied with gobbling for some time. If afterward he put his head beneath his wing and forgot his loneliness in slumber I cannot say, for the south Florida sun whirled suddenly beneath the horizon and took his roses and gold with him. The night was upon us and only the thinnest of new moons lighted our way in the long splash back to camp.
CHAPTER XXI
EASTER TIME AT PALM BEACH
Man has set Palm Beach as a gem in a jungle, which is itself as beautiful in its way as the nacre of the oyster in which we find the pearl. The gem is cut and polished till all its facets and angles flash forth not only their own brilliancy but the reflected glory of all around them. These blaze upon you from afar and draw you with a promise of all delights till you stand in their midst bewildered with them. The beauty of the surrounding jungle you must learn little by little, for it does not seek you, rather it withdraws and only subtly tempts. Yet when you come away you do not know which to love most, the gem or its setting. And all this you find upon a ribbon of island between the muddy blue of Lake Worth and the unbelievable colors of the transparent sea beyond. Unlimited resources of wealth have brought from the ends of the earth tropical trees and shrubs and set them in bewildering profusion. Wild nature in the setting, the landscape gardener in the gem, have done it all.
Not so long has man been banished from Eden that he need feel lonesome on returning. Here is the air that breathed over that place in the old time floating in over the miraculous sea, seemingly transmuting its swift-changing coloration into a symphony of perfume that now soothes in dreamy languor and again stimulates to the delight of action. Bloom of palm and of pine are in it and the smell of miles of pink and white oleanders that grow by wayside paths. There, too, is the mingling of a score of wee, wild scents from the jungle, and beneath it all the good, salty aroma distilled by the fervent sun of late March from crisping leagues of sapphire sea. It prompts you to breathe deep and long and look about with proprietary gladness as Adam and Eve might could they return for Old Home Week and tread again the well remembered primrose paths.
To appreciate fully this garden redivivus one must not dwell in its midst too long. Had Eve been permitted to come only occasionally, there had been no dallying with the serpent. I dare say those unfortunates who reach the place in December and do not leave it until April get to look upon its beauties with as lack-luster an eye as that with which the home-tied New Yorker looks upon Fifth Avenue. I have known Bostonians to pass the gilded dome of their State House, and go by way of the Common and Public
“There, too, is the mingling of a score of wee, wild scents from the jungle”
Garden through Copley Square into the Public Library without looking about and expanding the chest. Such a condition does familiarity breed.