OF THE EVERGLADES AND OF THE TWO SEASONS OBTAINING IN THAT DAMP
LOCALITY--AND OF GRASS, FANCY AND OTHERWISE
Off to the west of Miami lie the Everglades, first made famous by the
Seminole War, when the United States Army spent upward of fifteen years
trying to chase the Seminoles out of the Everglades but seldom saw more
than three Seminoles at one time. The Everglades, not so long ago, was
an enormous shallow lake eight thousand square miles in area, dotted
with half-submerged islands out of which grew giant whiskered live oaks
and countless varieties of tropical plants. The alligator basked in its
shadowed streams; and the graceful panther lurked among the undergrowth,
constantly ready to emit a bloodcurdling scream calculated to make the
hardiest intruder think longingly of home and mother. Exploration was
made almost impossible by a saw-toothed grass which grew throughout the
Everglades and extended several feet above the water, so that the person
who tried to force his way through it would cut everything to shreds up
to and including his eyebrows. People talked for years of draining the
Everglades; but such talk was usually received with screams of laughter
that rivaled the yells of the Everglades panthers.
Several years ago the State of Florida settled down in earnest to the
systematic draining of the Everglades. Canals were cut, giant locks were
installed to control the water level, and the land was cleared.
Thousands of acres are being reclaimed each year, settlers are moving in
constantly, and the reclaimed land is yielding vegetables and fruits of
a size and quality to make a Maine farmer shake his head dubiously and
wonder whether that last batch of licker that the sheriff sent him had
affected his eyes. The soil is a rich black muck which has resulted
from centuries of decaying vegetation; and anything that will grow will
grow about twice as large and twice as rapidly in the Everglades as it
will anywhere else. There used to be only two seasons in the
Everglades--wet and wetter; but now there is a dry season; and in the
course of a few years, when the fruit-trees begin to bear, the
Everglades alone will be in a position to supply every northern city
throughout the winter with all the newfangled and oldfangled fruits and
vegetables that can be desired.
The thousands of farmers who have retired from active farming and are
occupying their winters by absorbing the sun in Miami and pitching
horseshoes in Royal Palm Park become fearfully excited over the various
varieties of grass that are raised in the Everglade lands. Grass is not
a thing that one would expect to mention at any length in a casual
dissertation on a winter resort; but the excessive wonderment over it
on the part of the horseshoe pitchers requires some mention of grass. It
appears that some of the grasses that have come in thick enough to get
themselves talked about are Para, Bermuda, Rhodes, Natal, Sudan, St.
Lucia, St. Augustine, Napier, Broom, sage, Guatemalan, panicum, crab
grass, maiden cane, Billion Dollar grass and several others. There seems
to be everything but just plain grass. The chief idea of the farmers
seems to be that with all this grass, the Florida stock raisers can have
evergreen pasturage, and cattle can be fed on about a third of the space
that they need in the North.
This, of course, is important if true; but the average person who comes
to Miami is not interested in grass except as something on which to play
golf or sit. What he wants is usually holiday relaxation and plenty of
it; and if that’s what he wants, he can get so much of it in and near
Miami that one week of complete relaxation must usually be followed by
two weeks of recuperation.