Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1885 — The Islands Off the Southern Coast of Florida. [ARTICLE]

The Islands Off the Southern Coast of Florida.

In the St. Lawrence there are the Thousand Islands. Whether they fail by one or two that complete roundness of ten times one hundred Ido not know. On the southern end of the Gulf State there may be seen on the map a stretch called the Ten Thonsand Islands. He was a very unimaginative person, niggardly, having a dread of exaggeration, who named these wonderful islands. He skimped his nomenclature. There -are not ten thousand islands, there must be a million of them, and more to spare, almost all of them covered with mangroves. To describe them were a difficult task. I may succeed, perhaps, in giving a faint idea of their number by asking the reader to think of one of those old mosaic floors the Homans delight in. The infinite countless little bits of Btone are the islands, the cement the water. Island after island appears emerging out of these blue bays. Some are but a few acres in size, then there are others with an area of several square miles. Now the channel between them is so narrow that a boat can not pass, and then it expands to a mile wide. Beautiful silent harbors are entered, with peninsulas jutting into them, and behind comes labyrinth. It is an endless archipelago, all green and smiling. A man might hide himself here, providing he could only live, and remain uncaught forever; tracking him Would be impossible. Only here and there on soifl<s ot the islands is there the appearance of land, perceptible by a thin ridge. You can tell it by .the hard wood growing on it. Centuries ago this island might have been on the sea-front, and some storm threw up the sea-bottom. Stretching then out in every direction, these intricate islands block the way. Thero may be eight, ten, or twenty miles to cross before the mainland would be reached, that is, if you had the wings of a man-of-war bird, and could fly. In a boat, working in and out through this maze, you would have to row maybe one hundred miles, then finally you might fetch up on Florida proper. This would be that hazy country which little boys read about on their maps, spelling it out, “The Everglades,” the “Ever” describing capitally the .constant appearance of a great deal of water, occasional hummocks, the true home of the alligator, a God-forsaken region, where the saw-grass impedes progress.—Barnet Phillips , in Harper's Magazine.