On Monday, the first day of March, 1915, about 10:30 a.m., we
came in sight of something which, until I had met Mink, I never had
dreamed existed in southern Florida--a high range of hills.
It had been an eventless journey from New York to Miami, from Miami to
Fort Coquina; but from there through an absolutely pathless wilderness as
far as I could make out, the journey had been exasperating.
Where we went I do not know even now: saw-grass and water, hammock and
shell mound, palm forests, swamps, wildernesses of water-oak and
live-oak, vast stretches of pine, lagoons, sloughs, branches, muddy
creeks, reedy reaches from which wild fowl rose in clouds where
alligators lurked or lumbered about after stranded fish, horrible
mangrove thickets full of moccasins and water-turkeys, heronry more
horrible still, out of which the heat from a vertical sun distilled the
last atom of nauseating effluvia--all these choice spots we visited under
the guidance of the wretched Mink. I seemed to be missing nothing that
might discourage or disgust me.
He appeared to know the way, somehow, although my compass became
mysteriously lost the first day out from Fort Coquina.
Again and again I felt instinctively that we were travelling in a vast
circle, but Mink always denied it, and I had no scientific instruments to
verify my deepening suspicions.
Another thing bothered me: Mink did not seem to suffer from insects or
heat; in fact, to my intense annoyance, he appeared to be having a
comfortable time of it, eating and drinking with gusto, sleeping snugly
under a mosquito bar, permitting me to do all camp work, the paddling as
long as we used a canoe, and all the cooking, too, claiming, on his part,
a complete ignorance of culinary art.
Sometimes he condescended to catch a few fish for the common pan;
sometimes he bestirred himself to shoot a duck or two. But usually he
played on his concertina during his leisure moments which were plentiful.