A Dredging Excursion in the Gulf Stream: Ii

THE “Old Rhodes ” of Florida reef is hardly known even by name out of its immediate neighborhood, but it was our misfortune to make a closer acquaintance with it than we cared to do, —a misfortune which the reader may share unless he take timely warning and refuse to enter with us the quiet harbor into which we were driven by stress of weather.

Still pursuing the objects of which I gave some account in a former article, we had started, on the 20th of March, from Key West for a second cruise in the Gulf, had successfully pursued our way up the reef to Carysfort, and had had a day or two of sounding and dredging between that point and Orange Key on the Bahama Bank. A strong wind and a rough sea made it necessary, however, to abandon the work until the weather moderated, and, returning to Carysfort, we ensconced ourselves near Key Largo and Eliot Key. Here is the enclosed harbor, almost surrounded by islands, known on the chart as the “ Old Rhodes.”

There could hardly be a better place for studying the formation of the Florida Keys, and indeed of Florida itself, than this very spot, and we made several boat excursions with that purpose. Passing through “ Cæsar’s Creek,” one of the narrow passages dividing the smaller islands between Key Largo and Eliot Key, we found ourselves in a perfect labyrinth of keys, lying behind these larger islands, and intersected by countless bays and inlets. Here, in immediate juxtaposition, may be found every stage of the process by which, in these outposts of nature, land is redeemed from ocean and gradually fitted for the habitations of men. There are the shoals of coral sand and fragments just beneath the surface of the water, and side by side with them are the flats, hardly visible above the surface, where the little mangrove plants, a few inches high, have established themselves in the soft bottom, and are putting out shoots. In many places on the flats these mangrove plantations may be seen in numbers ; presently they will begin to throw out their strange airroots by hundreds from the branches, thus building a close network, within which sand, shells, weeds, and débris of all sorts will be caught and may accumulate so as gradually to fill in this rampart with a sandy soil. Next come the mangrove keys, where these singular trees have grown to a greater height, some twenty or twenty-five feet perhaps, and stand up, supported on their aerial roots. Looking at such a key from a little distance, you would say that it was a green wooded island, and you would approach it with the expectation of landing, and perhaps of having a ramble beneath its shade. Draw a little nearer and you will find that it is standing out of the water on innumerable stilts, as it were: there is not a spot of dry land in its whole extent; nor can you enter it in a boat, for its forest of roots is absolutely impenetrable. We are told by those who have lived on the coast of Florida many years, that the mangrove keys do not change their character with time. They never acquire a solid basis, the soil they accumulate being always marshy and unstable. Next come such keys as Largo, Eliot, and Pumpkin, which seem to have been formed by a different process. They have a rocky foundation, and along the margin are broken masses of coral, evidently thrown up by storms or high tides. The soil here is of an entirely different character from that which gathers about the mangrove-trees. It is the result of the gradual accumulation, decomposition, and re-cementing of coral growth and of all the materials which accompany it, — shells, Crustacea, and the like, — forming in the end a compact limestone. On this there springs up a varied vegetation, the seeds of which may be brought in many ways, — dropped by birds, for instance, or drifted or blown from the land. After sailing through this labyrinth and seeing the connection of its parts, one can hardly doubt that all the keys, mudflats, and reefs lying outside the present coast of Florida will one day run together by a natural process of consolidation and be absorbed into the mainland, as has already been the case with the keys, mud-flats, and reefs of centuries gone by, known now as Shore Bluffs, Everglades, and Hummocks.

We landed on Pumpkin Key; the edge was fringed with fragments of coral rock so worn and gnarled that it was difficult to walk upon them. Beyond this rocky margin was a belt of high grass bordering the wood, which latter was itself a tangled mass not easily entered. Having made a vain effort to force my way into its recesses, and being driven back by brambles and mosquitoes, I found a crooked old buttonwoodtree at the water’s edge, which gave a pleasant shade, while its overhanging branches framed the picture of the bay with its wooded islands. Here, while the others made collections along the shore, I sat and rested, pondering dreamily the old stories of pirates and robbers connected with these regions. Numerous traditions, of piratical bands haunting the keys and hiding their treasures, still buried, underground, abound in this neighborhood. The very “ Black Cæsar’s Creek,” through which we had entered this tortuous wilderness of land and water, is said to be named after a negro pirate who once made his headquarters there. Unquestionably there is some foundation for these stories. Captain Platt, told me that, many years ago, his father was attacked by a party of cutthroats, who put out from these keys as he was passing the reef, and boarded his vessel. They had, however, the worst of it, for he and his crew, chiefly ship-carpenters, who had been building a vessel on the Florida coast and were carrying her North, killed several of the ruffians and carried the others to New York, where they were executed in the Brooklyn Navy-Yard.

With boating expeditions in the neighborhood, or an occasional fishing excursion to vary not only our mode of life, but our bill of fare also, the days of enforced inaction wore away. Though we could not go on with our deep-sea soundings while wind and wave continued inexorable, the study of Natural History was by no means at a stand-still. Sometimes we captured from the deck a Portuguese man-of-war, with his attendant convoy of little fishes. It is a singular fact that this animal is often thus accompanied, the fishes sheltering themselves among his long appendages. From the deck of a vessel one can form no just idea of the Portuguese man-of-war. You must capture him in a net and plunge him at once into a deep glass vase filled with seawater : then you will see the full beauty of his pearly float, shining and transparent as thin glass, with its ruffled crest sometimes of bright crimson, sometimes purple or blue ; and you will see the graceful curves of his pendant streamers, each one of which has a life and function of its own. Always in motion, at one moment they are drawn close up against the lower side of the float; at another they are thrown out in countless coils and spirals, or, stretched to their full length, they drop straight as a plumb-line to the bottom of the vase.

Among the little fishes caught with the Portuguese man-of-war, or in its immediate neighborhood, were two or three very small flying-fish. When these creatures are seen, as they constantly are, skimming singly or in flocks over the surface of the water, they are usually of a considerable size, sometimes measuring a foot or more across when the fins are fully spread. Those we took were not more than an inch in length. Their silvery bodies and wings, or rather fins, were ringed with gold, — the gold bands spotted with black. Their motion in swimming was singular. The position of the body was slightly oblique, the upper pair of fins quivering rapidly, the lower spread out but at rest, as if the animal found poise and movement at the same time. We did not see them fly ; they made no attempt to do so while in the glass vessels in which we kept them. Mr. Agassiz regretted that, as he failed to obtain any larger specimens for comparison, he could not decide whether these small flying-fish represented distinct species or were the young of a larger kind. At a later hour on the same day we found two others of the same minute size, but differing from the first in certain details. One had a grayish body with brown rings, the fins being black with a gray edge. The other was of a more silvery, transparent gray; the anterior part of the fins, where they joined the body, was gray also, but their outer edge was black. This fish differed from all the rest in having two long black feelers under the chin. Besides our flying-fish, we caught with the hand-net several Chironectes, that curious little fish with the fins set off from the body on a sort of arms, so that they have the effect of hands. They are most voracious creatures. One of them, hardly larger than the flying-fish, darted upon one of the latter and had half swallowed him before he was detected. A vigorous pinch behind made him eject the precious specimen, which Mr. Agassiz could ill afford to lose.

With all these devices to cheat time and to substitute some other work for that which we were forced to suspend, the days were still rather long, and we were not sorry when the adverse winds culminated in a violent shower, accompanied with severe thunder and lightning. A brilliant sunset followed, and the next morning, with a cloudless sky and a smooth sea, we bade good by to “Old Rhodes.”

We were bound to Orange Key, on the Bahama Bank, but we stopped for a day at Carysfort Light to examine the wonderful field of coral on which the lighthouse is founded. I have already described the aspect of a coral reef under the transparent waters of the Gulf, and I will not weary the reader with repetition. It is, however, a pity that, while thousands pass this reef every year, — Carysfort Light being the guide for all vessels rounding the peninsula of Florida,—so few ever stop to look at it. The sight would well repay a little delay and trouble. It is worth our while for once to get an idea of the ocean floor, of its beauty, its picturesqueness, its manifold life and movement and color. We all are familiar with the wonders of the land, but who knows anything, except by imagination or theory, of the world beneath the sea ?

The picture of Carysfort Reef—as seen from the dizzy height of the great lantern, lifted on its iron shaft a hundred feet above the surface of the water — is wonderful. The brown and purple or greenish beds of coral stretch away on every side, and even from that height you can distinctly see the numerous fishes, every color of the rainbow, — bright blue, blue and black, red, green, yellow, — swimming about in shoals or singly. The prismatic tints of the water, as the sun strikes into it, brighten a thousand-fold the brilliancy of this submarine spectacle. Still more beautiful is it when one rows, as we did, for hours over the reef in a boat. At a depth of two fathoms nothing escapes the eye, not even the smallest objects, — shells, sea-anemones, sea-urchins, etc.; while every detail of the coral growth is seen with the utmost distinctness. Once we floated over the remains of a wreck. There lay the white bed she had worn for herself in the coral sand before she went to pieces, and all about it were scattered such parts as the waves could not carry away. There was an iron door at one place, an iron box with a chain around it, overgrown with coral, at another ; iron bolts, broken bits of iron and copper, were strown in every direction, and we dredged up from the bottom an iron ring to which a large leaf of coral had grown fast. There are many deep furrows in this coral field, where all the living coral is worn away and nothing left but white sand. It is said that these waste places mark the spots where wrecks have dragged over the reef, tearing up the corals ; but I do not know that there is any reason for this notion, except the fact that these long narrow beds look like the track of a keel.

This extensive coral field consists in great part of the Madrepora palmata (leaf-coral). The stocks are of an immense size, growing chiefly in spirals, so that their broad leaf-like expansions rise tier after tier one above the other. Though the Madrepora is the most conspicuous, attracting the eye by its peculiar mode of growth, Mæandrina (brain-coral), Astræa, and Porites are abundant also, varying in size from tufts only two or three inches in diameter to enormous heads measuring many yards in circumference and eight or ten in thickness. Between these solid masses, the purple and green fans, and Gorgonias of many colors, — violet, brown, or yellow, — spring up on the white coral floor in numbers, their elastic branches in constant gèntle motion, swaying to and fro with the water as it passes over them. A great many pretty shells live on the sea-fans. We often gathered the Calpurnia upon them. Even when the animal is dead the shell is pretty; but when the animal is alive, with its golden-brown mantle turned back over its glossy amber house, and the crimson-edged foot protruded, it is extremely beautiful. We found some very handsome sea-anemones also in the neighborhood of Carysfort. Instead of a simple wreath of feelers about the mouth, the whole upper surface of the body, which spreads out rather flat, is covered with bright green tentacles fading to grayish tints in the outer rows. But as I enumerate and vainly try to describe these objects, I am reminded of Emerson’s “ Each and All.” You may gather the sea-fans and the lovely shells and the anemones, and look at them one by one, but you have broken the charm. The picture lies hidden with the reef, fathoms deep, where the water ripples over it, and the broken light plays upon it, and the many-tinted fishes chase each other between the spreading leaves of the coral, and every crevice and recess has its living inhabitant.

I will not here dwell on the details of collecting ; but it may not be amiss to state, in order to give an idea of the rich harvest gathered on this single day, that, when the Carysfort corals were removed from the ‘‘Bibb,” to be stored in Key West, the steamer rose two inches. There cannot have been less than two tons of coral on her decks, consisting of large heads of Astræa and Mæandrina, the spreading stocks of the Madrepores, and the branching finger - corals and sea-fans. Mr. Agassiz owes this collection (which he hopes may be brought in safety to the Museum in Cambridge) in great measure to the cordial assistance of those on board. Almost the whole ship’scompany, officers and men, from the captain down to the deck-hands, turned out. They made a kind of holiday of it. Old clothes and battered hats were in request, and, armed with pickaxes, crowbars, boat-hooks, etc.,plunging, diving, wading, they passed the whole afternoon in dislodging the coral and loading the boats, which were sent, over and over again, to the steamer to discharge their burdens and return for more. Indeed, we left with the impression that we had possibly made ourselves liable to prosecution for undermining the foundations of Carysfort Lighthouse by carrying off bodily the reef on which it stands.

From Carysfort we crossed the Gulf to Orange Key, completing the line of sections begun before the work was interrupted. So desolate a spot as Orange Key I have never seen anywhere else. Elbow Key and Salt Key, of our former cruise, were cheerful in comparison. We said, as we stood on the dreary ridge, “ So must the first dry land have looked in the geological beginning of things.” It is built of a halfformed, unfinished limestone, resembling the broken and burnt surface of lava. It is worn into pits and holes by the action of the sea, and, with the exception of a single creeping plant, its desolation is uncheered by any vegetation. Neither is there a drop of fresh water over its whole extent; nothing but pools here and there, filled with brackish, briny washings from the tide. As we approached, hundreds of crabs, frightened at the noise of the boat, scrambled back to their holes. The rock was also studded with dull grayish shells, mostly of one kind ; but, with these exceptions, there was little life, though we found numerous small fishes thrown up into the pools by storms and high tides. Orange Key is a marginal island, built on the northwestern edge of the Bahama Bank, like Elbow Key and Salt Key. It is but a crescent-shaped strip, some ten feet high in the centre, a few yards in width, and perhaps three quarters of a mile in length from end to end, though it is broken through by channels in one or two places. I do not know what satirical or disappointed traveller named this spot Orange Key. It is difficult to imagine that flower or fruit should ever grow there. It looks as if a decree of barrenness had gone forth against it.

Our next dredging-ground, on returning to the Florida coast, was about French Reef, Indian Key, and the neighboring islands. Landing on Indian Key, a small and very symmetrical island, oval in shape and hardly more than a mile in circumference, we could not but recall the dreadful scene enacted there during the Seminole war. Only some half-dozen buildings, mos of them in a ruinous condition, remain, of the thriving settlement which once covered the whole key. History and romance have made us familiar with the dreadful days when the villages of the early settlers in America were aroused in the dead of night by the war-whoop ; when the mother clasped her baby in her arms with frantic terror, and the father seized his gun, to die on the threshold if need be. But those events, terrible as they seem, are so distant that they hardly impress us with a sense of reality. The tragedy of Indian Key belongs to our own day and generation, and the details here narrated were given to us by one of the chief actors in the drama.

At the time of the massacre there were thirty-eight houses on the island, each one surrounded by its little garden planted with cocoa-nut trees and flowering shrubs. On the fatal night the inhabitants had retired to rest as usual, fearing nothing ; the lights were extinguished; the little island was asleep. Happily, there was one man more wakeful than his neighbors. Opening his window about midnight, he was startled to see canoes stealthily approaching the shore. He left his house instantly, hoping to be in time to warn his neighbors. But a part of the Indian force must have landed already. As he crossed the street he was seen, dark as was the night, and the savages who were crouching along the fences, under cover of the cocoa-nut trees, supposing themselves detected, sprang to their feet with the war-whoop and fired upon him. In one moment the air was filled with the cries of some two hundred Indians, — a fearful odds, for there were but some seventy settlers on the island. The whole population was of course instantly aroused, but there was no possibility of concerted defence or of any communication between the inhabitants. The houses, it is true, were strongly locked and bolted, and the men were not without their loaded guns; for in those days, when the swamps of Florida swarmed with hostile Indians, an attack on the islands was always possible.

Mr. H-, from whom we had our information, was roused with the rest by the sudden tumult. There was not a moment for delay or consideration. He knew that the only hope was in getting down to the shore with his wife and children before the fury of the assailants was directed to his own house. He took the youngest child in his arms, his wife held another, and the rest followed. A singular incident delayed them. He put the baby on the floor for a moment, while he took his gun from behind the door. When he turned to take the child again he could not find it. The room was large, and the little thing had crept away. He did not dare to strike a light; to call was of no avail, for the hideous din outside was so loud that they could not hear each other’s voices. He felt over the whole floor, till at last he found the child cowering in a corner. Such a delay seems of little consequence in the telling, but it might, short as it was, mean life or death to them, and one can imagine the trembling distress in which the party waited till the baby was found. Then they opened the back-door, conscious that their first step over the threshold might be into eternity. But the enclosure behind the house was still empty. It was surrounded by a double picket-fence, with a row of cocoa-nut trees planted between the rows of pickets. They were high, and on that side of the house there was no gate. Mr. Htried in vain to make an opening from the inner side ; he then climbed over, tearing his hand down to the bone in doing so, though he did not discover the wound till afterward. From the outside he contrived to force in the bars, and then dragged his wife and children through the opening. Now they were in the road, — the shouting savages on every side. But for the instant the attention of the Indians was drawn away by some other object; the night was excessively dark; and Mr. Hand his family reached the shore, waded out into the water to their boat, and put off. Just as they started, the Indians descried them and rushed down to the beach, firing their rifles at the boat. The fugitives were not struck, however, the Indians, who were too busy with their work of destruction on land, made no attempt to follow them, and the party found shelter on board a small vessel lying near a neighboring island.

It was fortunate for the whites that they discovered their danger before morning. The intention of the Seminoles had been, to wait until daylight for their attack ; and then probably every soul on the island would have been murdered. But, the night being cloudy and very dark, some of the people were fortunate enough to escape, as Mr. Hhad done, in

boats; others hid themselves among the rocks. Another lucky circumstance was the intoxication of the Indians. They broke open the storehouse, found liquor, and were soon very drunk. This increased their fury, but also made them less watchful. Yet though the greater part of the inhabitants made their escape, many were murdered. One whole family had hidden in an outhouse, but were betrayed by the crying of a child. Others were burned in their houses; for in the morning the Indians set fire to the whole town and destroyed all the buildings. The pretty settlement which had been like a garden the evening before was a pile of smoking ruins when they left it, and it has never been rebuilt.

Many were the daring acts and hairbreadth escapes that night. A mother and all her children were concealed in a bath-house under a wharf. When the Seminoles began to fire the buildings, they set fire also to a pile of wood on the wharf. The heat in the house below soon became almost unendurable. One boy, a lad of fourteen, declaring that he would rather be killed by the Indians than be burned alive, broke from his mother, who attempted in vain to hold him back, and ran out on the shore. At the moment of his escape, he caught sight of a canoe at some distance, which the savages were loading with plunder. They had left it for a moment, to bring down more booty. He ran to the spot, sprang into the boat, put back for his mother and the other children, and was well out from the shore before the Indians perceived their loss. This brave lad and the mother and brothers and sisters whom he had saved were taken up by the schooner on board of which Mr. Hand his family had already found refuge. We lingered some time in this neighborhood, increasing our collections considerably, though we had again to complain of unseasonable weather, which confined us to dredgings in shallow waters or along the shores. In the mean time our stock of coal was dwindling, and on the 7th of April we started on the return down the reef to Key West. We seemed destined to be knights-errant on the sea. It will be remembered that on our first cruise we had been called upon to succor a sinking schooner, and now we had not proceeded far when we were signalled by a fine clipper-ship in distress. Coming up with her, we saw that gangs of men were busy at her pumps ; they were chiefly Chinese, for she was a Spanish coolie-ship returning from Havana to China, and taking as passengers coolies who had served their time and were going home, — let us hope with their fortunes made. On inquiry, we found that, in a violent gale of wind and rain two nights before, this ship had run down an English brig and sunk her. They had rescued the crew, the only life lost being that of one of the hands on board the Spaniard, a young fellow who had shown great bravery, and a disregard of his own safety, in rendering the most efficient assistance at the time of the collision. About half an hour afterward, when all the men of the English brig were safely on board the Spanish vessel, this man was instantly killed by the sudden descent of a block which became loosened and fell from the mast.

The stem of the “Dolores Ugarte’’ was badly fractured, and though they had kept relays of men at the pumps, all the coolies being called to join in the work, the water gained upon them fast. They were now making for Key West, and the captain, who did not know the Florida coast, was in great anxiety. Captain Platt immediately sent our pilot, who is familiar with every spot on the whole reef. We knew indeed that in Manuel they had a strong hand. Sink or swim, he is the man for an emergency; a first-rate sailor, he understands his business well, and is, besides, an honest man, greatly respected in Key West ; Spanish-born, he speaks the language easily, which was another advantage on this occasion. The “ Bibb” and the “ Dolores Ugarte ” kept together through the day, and we had the pleasure of seeing the distressed ship enter the port of Key West safely at night.

This was almost the last of our dredging excursions. A week later we went out for a day’s collecting on the plateau outside the reef, and had excellent success. On the 23d of April we bade good by to Key West, and proceeded up the west coast of Florida to Cedar Keys, where we were to take the cars on our homeward journey. On this trip the good weather for which we had so often sighed in the last two months, and the want of which had occasioned us so much loss of time and work, accompanied us now all the way. We had a sea without a ripple, and the balmiest of summer days, and the most glorious of moon-lit nights. We passed a day at Charlotte’s Harbor, sailing up the bay for a considerable distance in a small boat, and landing on a broad sand-beach, where the morning was passed in dragging the seine, — always an entertaining sport where the fish are abundant. Mr. Agassiz obtained many valuable specimens which he had been wishing to add to his collections. An awning was rigged over a spreading tree for the lazy ones, and we acted as audience, while the rest performed a kind of amphibious drama, half in water, half on land, for our entertainment.

On our return to the ship we found that others of our ship’s-company, with a less scientific but perhaps not less laudable motive, had gone in search of oysters. They got back in the evening wet to the skin ; for a thunder-storm had come up in the afternoon, and a head-wind had delayed them. They had been, however, alarmingly successful, for they brought back twenty-five bushels of oysters. Now such a supply of oysters, in a warm climate, with a limited number of guests at the feast, involves a serious responsibility for each one. During the next twentyfour hours, the “ Bibb ” rivalled any New York restaurant. Roast, boiled, fried, scalloped, on the shell,—oysters were to be had in every conceivable form, at all hours of the day or night. I think I may say, without vanity, that we found ourselves equal to the occasion, and that none of the oysters were lost or thrown away.

We also made a short pause at Tampa Bay, where we were very cordially received by Mr. Coones, who has charge of the Egmont Lighthouse. We were indebted to him for a variety of beautiful shells, and for a good deal of information respecting the fishes and other animals to be found along the shores in that neighborhood. The next day we arrived at Cedar Keys, and took leave of the “Bibb.” We had passed many happy hours on board this comfortable little steamer. Mr. Agassiz had had constant occasion to be indebted to the captain and officers, not only for personal kindness and attention to himself and his party, but also for hearty co-operation in his scientific projects. It will be believed that we did not part without regret, or without a cordial wish that by sea or land we might at some time cruise again together.