FLORIDA TRAILS
[Illustration: “The road down Indian River winds always southward toward
the sun”
[_Page 208_]]
FLORIDA TRAILS
AS SEEN FROM JACKSONVILLE TO KEY WEST
AND FROM NOVEMBER TO APRIL
INCLUSIVE
BY
WINTHROP PACKARD
_Author of “Wild Pastures,” “Wood Wanderings,” etc._
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY
THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1910_
BY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
Entered at Stationers’ Hall
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO MY MOTHER
The author wishes to express his thanks to the editors of the “Boston
Evening Transcript” for permission to reprint in this volume matter
originally contributed to the columns of that paper; to Mr. H. E. Hill
of Fort Pierce, Florida, and to Mr. J. D. Rahner of St. Augustine,
Florida, for permission to use certain photographs which so ably
supplement his own; and to very many Florida people, through whose
unfailing hospitality and friendly guidance he was able to see and know
many things which otherwise he would have been unable to find or
understand. This spirit of courtly hospitality and neighborly good will
seems to be as unfailing as the Florida sunshine, and is characteristic
alike of the native and the adopted citizen. It adds one more delight to
the many to be found in this beautiful region.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I GOING SOUTH WITH THE WARBLERS 1
II CERTAIN SOUTHERN BUTTERFLIES 13
III ALONG THE RIVER MARGIN 26
IV BIRDS OF A MORNING 38
V ’TWIXT ORANGE GROVE AND SWAMP 49
VI JASMINE AND CHEROKEE ROSES 61
VII A FROSTY MORNING IN FLORIDA 75
VIII CHRISTMAS AT ST. AUGUSTINE 86
IX IN A FLORIDA FREEZE 96
X DOWN THE INDIAN RIVER 107
XI SPRING IN THE SAVANNAS 118
XII SEVEN THOUSAND PELICANS 129
XIII JUST FISHING 140
XIV PALMETTOS OF THE ST. LUCIE 152
XV INTRUDING ON WARD’S HERONS 163
XVI ONE ROAD TO PALM BEACH 175
XVII MOONLIGHT AND MARCH MORNINGS 186
XVIII IN GRAPEFRUIT GROVES 197
XIX BUTTERFLIES OF THE INDIAN RIVER 208
XX ALLIGATORS AND WILD TURKEYS 220
XXI EASTER TIME AT PALM BEACH 231
XXII INTO THE MIRACULOUS SEA 243
XXIII DOWN THE ST. JOHNS 253
XXIV HOLLY BLOSSOM TIME 264
XXV IN A TURPENTINE CAMP 276
INDEX 287
ILLUSTRATIONS
“The road down Indian River winds always southward
toward the sun” _Frontispiece_
“They line the paths on either side with the gray columns of
their trunks” _Titlepage_
PAGE
“Profuse draperies of moss pendant from each branch and
twig” 10
“To march along this water is to promenade a river side and
a sea beach in one” 30
“Lesser scaup ducks are very tame in Florida waters all
winter” 34
“In the grateful shadow of an orange tree facing sunward in
the grove” 50
“Under the long robes of gray moss at the foot of the ancient
cypress trees” 58
“A wilderness where deer and bear still linger” 78
“Razor-backs do not think it good to live alone” 84
Court of “The Alcazar” at St. Augustine 88
Cathedral Place, St. Augustine 92
“The fort that waits in crumbling beauty the obliterating
hand of the coming centuries” 94
“The first frosts turned the upper leaves of the banana trees
a light brown” 102
The banana tree in bloom 106
“The southeast trade-winds here pass a long line of the
islands which bar off the Indian River from the ocean” 108
“This is a country of pineapple plantations” 114
“Spring and autumn kissed yesterday in the savannas east
of Lake Okeechobee” 118
“All must know when spring comes, whether in the Everglades
or the New England pastures” 124
“The others began nest building and placed some fifteen
hundred nests on the three-acre island” 134
A little group of half-grown young pelicans on the edge of
Pelican Island 138
“Up with the full tide come sometimes the tarpon, rolling
silvery bodies in the dark water” 144
“A manatee, rare indeed nowadays” 148
“Sabal palmettos whose cabbage heads tower often as high
as the pines” 154
“As quick night glooms the river the passing sun caresses
the palmettos last” 162
“A superb dignity of pose, statues of frozen alertness” 164
A little blue heron and her nest, the commonest Florida
heron 168
A Seminole village deep in the flat woods of Southern
Florida 178
The gray of dawn on the Indian River 192
“The tree is lavish to its friends and will produce fruit
almost beyond belief” 198
“Thirty miles across the barrens these have come, from
groves out at Fort Drum” 200
“A rubber tree twined its roots about a palmetto till it crushed
the trunk to a debris of rotten wood” 210
“The river is screened from your view by dense growth of
palmettos” 212
“My first glimpse came at one of these places” 222
“The heat and steam of the sub-tropical swamp hatches the
eggs without further trouble” 224
“There, too, is the mingling of a score of wee, wild scents
from the jungle” 232
The “traveler’s tree” in a Palm Beach garden 234
“It is the cocoanut palms that put the touch of picturesque
adventure on the place” 238
Into the miraculous sea 244
“By and by the road leaves the embankment and winds totteringly
out on piling” 248
“As one holds his breath in suspense the road comes to a
stop at the western tip of Knight’s Key” 250
Gathering turtle’s eggs on a Florida beach 252
FLORIDA TRAILS
CHAPTER I
GOING SOUTH WITH THE WARBLERS
When I left New York, I thought that I had said good-by to the smaller
migrating birds for three days. My steamer’s keel was to furrow nearly a
thousand miles of rough sea before it landed me in Florida, where among
live-oak and palmetto, bamboo and sugar cane, I might hope to meet tiny
friends that I had loved and lost a while. I rather expected flocks of
migrating sea birds, and in this I was disappointed. The usual gulls
whirled and cackled in our wake, kittiwakes and herring gulls, brown
backs and black backs, a horde that thinned with each steamer we met,
taking return tickets to port, seemingly loath to leave the fascinating
region of Coney Island.
The hundreds had dwindled to almost a lone specimen before, just off
Charleston, the pelicans came out to look us over. Not a duck did I see
till the pelicans had approved us. Then we began to drive out scattered
flocks. Perhaps the northwester that had chased us all the way had
something to do with it. For it was almost a blizzard out of New York.
Up in Central Park the English sparrow, like Keats’s St. Agnes’ Eve owl,
for all his feathers was a-cold. The little children of the rich,
parading the walks with bare knees, and nurse maids, were blue with the
chill and might well envy the little children of the poor for whom the
charitable provide stockings. Even out at sea the wind and cold seemed
to chill the water till it was made of blue shivers and gooseflesh
combers.
Yet I had reckoned without my host, so far as the little migrants are
concerned, for, waking the next morning some two hundred miles or more
farther south and far out of sight of any land, the first sound that I
heard was the tchip of a myrtle warbler. Verily, thought I, this is some
trick of the vibrating rigging, quivering under the thrust of the screw.
Then I looked up and saw the bird himself, sitting on the rail, whence
he flew serenely to a passenger’s hat. Then I was quite convinced that
it was high time that I had a change, found fresh woods and pastures
new. Too steady a pursuit of a subject is apt to end in hallucination,
as many a latter day theosophist ought to be able to testify.
However, this specimen of _Dendroica coronata_ was not materialized
through concentrated thought, but was a real myrtle warbler, and there
were a dozen, more or less, hopping about the ship. During the next
thirty-six hours the number of bird passengers carried, summed up,
would, I am sure, far exceed the paying passenger list. We identified
pine warblers, robins, song sparrows, chipping sparrows, fox sparrows,
Wilson’s warblers, juncos, golden-crowned kinglets, ruby-crowned
kinglets, bay-winged buntings and a white-bellied swallow.
With a few exceptions these seemed to be young birds, rather
storm-buffeted and weary. Whether they lighted on the ship as a
convenient resting-place in the regular course of their migration, or
whether they had been blown off to sea by the strong westerly wind, it
is impossible to say. I think the former. The wind was blustering but by
no means a gale, and they could easily fly against it. They seemed most
numerous at daybreak, and I think they were attracted by the ship’s
lights during the night, and stopped on it to feed and rest at morning,
as they do on land. Possibly, also, the younger generation of birds is
finding that it is a good deal easier to go South by steam power than it
is to get there by main strength. Why not? In a century or so chimney
swallows have learned to build in chimneys rather than in caves and
hollow trees. Bluebirds, martins and white-bellied swallows have
learned the uses of bird boxes. Why shouldn’t they adopt steamships? The
wireless operator who pulls all sorts of information out of the
circumambient atmosphere tells me that they have; that at this season of
the year the ships are apt to swarm with tiny songsters, and the young
lady from up the State who sits at the piano in the social hall and
coquettishly sings about “the saucy little bird on Nellie’s hat,” is now
able to do it with illustrations.
This lighting of the myrtle warbler on the passenger’s hat is not
persiflage, either. Several times it happened. Along in the afternoon a
negro, sitting in a sunny corner of the steerage deck, held nevertheless
the very center of the stage for several minutes with a junco perched on
the crown of a well-brushed black soft hat that might have been as old
as he was. It made a rather pretty picture and the old man’s eyes shone
with delight long after the junco had flown. “Ya-as,” he drawled to his
companions after the bird had gone, “dem birds, dey al’ays does laike
dat hat. One day down in Souf Ca’lina ah was sitting in de field a long
time an’ one of dem cuckoo birds des came along and laid an aig in dat
hat. Yessir, it done did.” This may be true. I tell it as I heard it.
All these free passengers seemed far tamer on shipboard than on shore,
and manifested it in other ways than lighting on people’s hats. They
hopped chirping about the decks almost under foot, to the delight of the
ship’s cat, which caught one and escaped the wrath to come by dodging to
some hole below decks with it. They even invaded the dining-room and
picked up crumbs from the carpet, and it was no uncommon thing for one
to flutter from under foot as passengers came along the corridors. Now
and then one would leave his comfortable perch, flit in a wide circle
about the ship, and come back as if loath to leave so firm a foundation
and such good fellowship. I missed the white-bellied swallow first.
Surely his wings should take him to land without serious effort. One by
one the others departed, many remaining until the ship was off the
Hatteras Shoals and the land not more than a dozen miles away.
Even then it seemed as if the little warblers and tiny kinglets were
taking long chances with the stiff wind and the foam-crested billows. In
starting off they flitted down toward these as if they intended to light
on them, swerving upward from the very imminent crest of many a wave and
dipping into the long hollows again in flight that matched the
undulations of the sea. I hope they all reached land. Probably in
migrating time the sea takes toll of all flocks and thus helps nature in
her ruthless weeding out of the weaklings. There were no small migrants
remaining by the time the pelicans came out to inspect ship.
I have great respect for the pelican, a respect which increases each
time I see him, he is such a venerable gaffer of a bird. Even in the
confines of his hen-fenced enclosure at the ostrich farm in
Jacksonville, he does not lose this aspect of dignity. The group sitting
and flitting about their tiny tank always reminds me of the delineations
of the Hebrew prophets in the mural decorations of the Boston Public
Library. They (the pelicans) have a faintly straw-colored top to the
head which reminds one of a bald and massive dome of thought, and they
draw their beaks back against their necks till they are for all the
world like long beards. Then there is an intellectual solemnity about
them that I am sure their character does not belie. Even when they play
at leap-frog, clumsily flopping one over another in the pool, they do it
in a way that convinces you that they have it all reasoned out and are
not entering into it lightly or without due consideration. They are a
clean bird in captivity and are so quaintly awkward in their movements
that one loves them at sight.
But the pelicans are best seen as they fly in an orderly line from
somewhere shoreward, out to the ship inspection. Several flocks of ten
or a dozen came alternately flapping and sailing, their wings all
beating time with those of the leader as if in a careful drill movement.
They sailed over the ship and then settled upon the water, still in an
orderly row, and I thought I saw each flock confer after sitting and wag
bald heads and long beards as if in approval. As we steamed up the St.
Johns we left them there, for the pelican fishes only at sea and
disdains the brackish water of the river which flows miles wide from the
interior of Florida.
As a first glimpse of Florida bird life they are satisfying and of
unusual interest. I recommend them to any who may sail in my wake.
The cormorants came next. The viking bird of which Longfellow jingled,
“Then as with wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden,”
may have been all that the poet’s fancy painted him, but the Florida
cormorant certainly does not fill up to the measure of the poem. Fierce
he may be to little fishes, but to the eye of the passer up the river
his chief characteristic is purely _dolce far niente_. Hardly a river
buoy or a sand-bar marker post but has a cormorant, looking as much like
a black carving at the top of a totem pole as anything else. Usually he
is as motionless. He stretches his slim, snake-like neck as the boat
goes by, sometimes even moves it uneasily, but his body keeps up the
statuesque pose to perfection. No doubt the cormorant dives and swims,
flies and fishes, but so far I have found him only as the topmost
carving on the buoys and marker posts. This Florida variety is slightly
smaller and otherwise different from the birds of the Northern coast.
Chapman describes him as a shy bird. A cursory glance would seem to
indicate that the only thing he is shy of is energy.
The first Florida land bird that I saw was the buzzard. If the cormorant
is the statue of repose, the buzzard is the poet of motion. I suspect
that this bird was the original mental scientist. He moves by
thought-power alone. I am always reminded, in watching his progress, of
the ancient story of the Chinaman watching his first electric car. The
buzzard certainly has no visible “pushee” or any observable “pullee.”
But how silently and beautifully he goes. Never a flap of the broad
black wings and never a quiver of the widespread primary tips. He just
thinks himself along, against the wind or with it, up or down. His broad
wings are like the prayer rug of the Arabian tale. He adjusts himself
upon them, stretches forth his bald red neck and just wishes himself in
some place, near or far, and forthwith he sails swiftly to it. In what
as yet unexplained principle of progress he finds his power no
present-day aeroplanist can say. When he finds out, the flying man of
the future may do away with the motor which so frequently fails to mote
and the propellers which break in mid-air and spill the passenger. Go to
the buzzard, thou Bleriot; consider his ways and be wise.
The little river steamer that takes you up the St. Johns from
Jacksonville to Orange Park soon leaves the uproar of the city, the
skyscrapers and drawbridges, tugs, lighters, and coastwise steamships
behind, and puffs onward into placid reaches that to the eye have
changed little since the days of De Soto. If plantations and villages
exist ashore there is but little indication of them. The banks are lined
with verdure, green and gray,--green with the foliage of century-old
live-oaks and tall, long-leaved pines, gray with exquisite festoons and
dangling draperies of the moss that decorates every tree and fairly
smothers some of them. There is a crinkly grace, an elderly virility
about it that is most engaging. It takes but little effort of the
imagination to see the red cheeks and twinkling eyes of a myriad
disciples of Santa Claus peering through it ready to bring gifts to all
good children. I have yet to see with what costume they simulate the
good saint in this country. If they do not make his beard of this softly
beautiful, crinkly, fatherly gray moss I shall feel that they miss an
excellent opportunity. Here and there through the moss and among the
big, rough tree-trunks a tiny road winds down through the
needle-carpeted sand and leads to a slender long pier, built far out
over the shallow reaches of the river to a landing for the river boats.
The stream is miles wide in its lower course, but only in its channel is
it deep. Shallows stretch far from either bank and fleets of water
hyacinths voyaging seaward with the current strand sometimes far from
shore. The fifteen-mile trip is thus like one into a sub-tropical
wilderness untouched by the chill of approaching winter, little marred
by the hand of man. The miracles of gorgeous autumn coloring which we
left behind in the Massachusetts woods find no echo here. Now and then a
sumac leaf shows dull crimson or the wild grape takes on a somber
yellow, yet these tiny dots of color are no more to be noticed in a
general survey of the forest than the bright hues of the butterflies
that swarm at midday in the bright sun and a temperature of eighty in
the shade.
It is a new land, yet it has beauties that are all its own. The full
moon was rising over the eastern shore of the river as I climbed its
west bank, lighting up the broad central street of the little town with
golden radiance. Here for a moment with the soft sand underfoot and the
stately live-oaks arching overhead I might have thought
[Illustration: “Profuse draperies of moss pendant from each branch and
twig”]
myself in a Cape Cod village. The neat white fences were the same, the
sand was the same with sparse grass growing from sidewalk to wheel
tracks, and the live-oaks that arched till their limb tips touched and
made play of soft shadows and softer light underfoot might well have
been the Massachusetts elms. Only the profuse draperies of the moss
pendant from every branch and twig were new, informing the place with a
golden glamour of grace and mystery.
“Isn’t it wonderful!” exclaimed the lady from Boston.
“Ye-es,” replied the lady from Philadelphia, doubtfully, “I think it’s
nice; all but that ragged moss all over everything. It reminds me of
untidy housekeeping.” Thus points of view differ.
It was perfectly conventional and exactly proper that the first bird I
heard singing here the next morning should be the mocking bird. It is
little wonder either, for these beautiful songsters infest the place, as
numerous and familiar as robins on a Northern lawn. I have an idea that
the mocking bird is just a catbird gone to heaven. He seems a little
slenderer and more graceful. His tail is a bit longer and the catbird’s
earthly color of slate pencil has become a paler, lovelier gray in which
the white of celestial robes is fast growing. Already it has touched his
wing bars, and his tail feathers, and all his under parts. So a bit of
celestial beauty has been added to his song, which is rounder and more
golden, yet holds much of the catbird’s phrasing still. People may say
what they will about the catbird at home. With all his faults I love him
still, and it pleases me to fancy that he becomes a mocking bird as he
becomes good and noble.
After the mocking bird’s whistle came a second melodious note, the
tinkle of passing cow-bells, recalling to mind once more quiet
elm-shaded New England streets and rock-walled pasture lanes. Yet in
this tinkle was a puzzling note as the cattle passed and the sound faded
into the distance, a bubbling change of tone, a liquid drowning
altogether new and delightful. I followed its siren call to find myself
led, as by the sirens of old, to water. Down the streets of a morning
wander the scrub cows of the place, munching live-oak acorns as they
pass to their grazing grounds, the shallow waters of the St. Johns. Into
this they wade fearlessly, often neck deep and a quarter-mile from the
shore, sinking their heads to the bottom to feed on the tender herbage
of aquatic plants. The tinkle of the cow-bells catches its bubbling note
and its drowning fall in its continual submergence and resurgence. It is
as characteristic of a St. Johns River town as the melody of the mocker,
different, but perhaps equally delightful in its musical quaintness.