Chapter XIX: 270

Cedar Keys, the terminus of the West India Transit Railway--Extortion--Dr. McIlvaine's Hotel--Fourth of July toasts, 1843--Steamers from Cedar Keys to Manatee--Early settlement of Clear Water Harbor--The unfortunate Narvaez--Inaccessibility of South Florida--Manatee--Its dwellings embowered among orange trees--Tenacity of contesting Indians--Their independence subdued by association--The cactus pear eaten by Indians--Present population--Church privileges for worship--Schools--Good physicians--Sowing before reaping--Boarding-Houses kept as sanitariums--Pantry supplies--Fine fish--An Elysium for rheumatics--No starving--The grape-culture suggested--Also wine-making--A variety of crops--Sugar-cane ratooning for six years--Old-fashioned bees in gums--This locality a fine resort for those who wish to avoid cold--The sunny-side of nature turned out in February--Oleander and orange-buds bursting their pink and white petals--The banana--Spring flowers, etc.--Zephyr breezes--The rose--"A child of summer"--Historic records--Hon. Judah P. Benjamin--Remains of the mastodon and megatherium.

CHAPTER XX.....285

Tampa--Undisturbed slumbers--First settlement by Narvaez--Poor Juan Ortiz!--His vigils among the dead--Espiritu Santo Bay--De Soto and his festive soldiers--Billy Bowlegs--Cedar and pine lumber-mills in Tampa--A school and its teacher--Old Tampa--Uses of the cabbage palm--Fort Brooke--Appeal of General Worth to the vanity of Coacoochee, which finally results in his band being sent West--An invocation to the Great Spirit during a storm.

CHAPTER XXI.....296

Marooning from Tampa to Key West--Drum-fish--Loons--Acrobat fleas--Roaches--Bilge-water--The Methodist preacher and his children--Sailor's fare--Landing lady-passengers--Terrasilla Island and its products--Madam Joe--The romantic young couple--Sarasota Bay--Stock-raising--Health--Mangrove thickets--Perpetual verdure--Palmetta houses--Striking for fish--Varied amusements for visitors--Hunting deer--Bugs and butterflies--Egmont Key--Rare shells and a rarer Spiritualist, with his toothless wife--Professor Agassiz--Buccaneers--Jean Lafitte--Sunset at sea--Isles of the sea--Boca Grande--Felippe the Spaniard, and his Indian concubines--Polly goes West for money--Punta Rassa, the terminus of the International Telegraph.

CHAPTER XXII.....313

Alone with God and the stars--Phosphorescent waves--Reefs and coral formation--Key West--Cocoa-trees--Chief of the Everglades--Dwellings--Inhabitants--Early settlers--Conchs--Their origin and occupation--Court of Admiralty--Wrecking--The International Telegraph Survey--Public schools--The sisters--Cigar-makers--Reading while working--Monkey-jugs and their use--Cochineal--Sponge and spongers--Fort Taylor and other fortifications--Curiosity-shop--Captain Dixon its Greek keeper.