EVERGLADES. The name given to a vast tract of land and water in the southernmost part of Florida, a region, though under the very eyes of the early pioneers and bordered by our own advanced lines of commerce and travel, remained practically undiscovered until the first decade of the 20th century. It is not a marsh, a swamp nor a stagnant pool; neither land nor water. No white man had penetrated it for any great distance, either by boat or on foot, owing to the variance in the depths of the water and the dense tangle of saw-grass, scrub willow and custard-apple which abounded there. The State of Florida is one immense mountain top of limestone formation, covered with a net work of pot-holes, varying in size from a few feet to thousands of acres; it has countless lakes of fresh water, fed by springs and sub terranean streams, and among these is Lake Okeechobee, named by the Indians Lake May aimi ; at the southern end of the lake began the district known as the Everglades. This vast marsh lay in Dade, Lee, Monroe and Palm Beach counties, extending southward from the lake about 110 miles and having a breadth about 45 miles. Over the rocky bottom of this region lay a layer of muck, formed of alluvial deposit and decayed vegetation, varying in thickness from a few inches to several feet, and in this muck the saw-grass found its origin, took root and sometimes grows to a height of 10 feet. This saw-grass is one of the most peculiar and interesting features of the Ever glades. Shooting up rapidly, pale green in color, as it goes through the water, fading in the sunlight to a dull golden tint, its blades are tough as bainb9o,its,edges sharp and jagged as Toward western end of the lake it is interwoven with wild myrtle and formed an ahnost impassable barrier, running through the entire length of the lake, although there are some passages through it, known familiarly to the Seminole, but which are almost impossible to locate by the explorer.
Scatteted along the eastern and western edges of the marsh are numerous islands, some very small, others hundreds of acres in extent, covered with luxuriant growths of live oaks and bays, interspersed with wild cucumber, lemon and orange trees. The papaya, the cus tard-apple and prickly-ash are of frequent oc currence, and here and there may be seen the cabbage palmetto, the pine and the rubber-tree.
The first white man to enter this mysterious, silent country was a Spaniard, one Escalente de Fontenada, who, after being shipwrecked in the Strait of Florida, was made captive and slave by the great cacique, Calos, but he has left us only a few meagre details of his experi ences during.his 17 years of captivity. Fre quent expeditions of exploration were sent out by the United States goverrunent from 1847 to 1900 to penetrate this wilderness if possible, but all failed, each bringing the explorers, after days of hardships and privations, to the con clusion that the Everglades, though fascinating in its wildness, was a region to be avoided; a forest of trees, rank undergrowth and saw grass, impenetrable and practically valueless; and the lake a mixture of currents which seemed to begin without reason, led nowhere in particular and generally ended in a compara tively still pool, with a labyrinth of passages from which there seemed no direct egress.
Animal life in the Everglades is fairly abun dant, deer being found on both eastern and western shores, otter are plentiful, alligators and crocodile quite numerous while the snalce is there in large nutnbers. the Glades were once the breeding place for the egret, the ibis and the heron, and, while many of them are yet to be found, the plume hunter has made such inroads that all are nearly extinct. Small flies and gnats are found where the foliage is thick, as in all regions.
Probably the most interesting of the deni zens of the Everglades are the Seminole In dians, divided into two clans or families, the Muskokis and the Mikasukes, who for hundreds of years have inhabited this section of Florida, defying all attempts to dispossess them, and in 1835, during the Seminole War, killing a large nurnber of troops, under Major Dade, sent against them. The shores of the streams by which the Glades are entered are covered with the cocoa-plum tree, which also grows about the edge of the Glades, producing a blue fruit on the eastern and a white fruit on the western edge. Wherever the land is sufficiently dry, the coontie-plant, really the Florida arrow-root, grows, and from these the Indian gets his sus tenance, extracting flour and starc.h from the roots.