In our quest to preserve and make available as many Florida writings as possible, here’s a public domain piece from Outing magazine dated 1891.
I was but one of the army of migrants when first my pilgrim steps wended Florida-ward, seeking in its to me unknown but well vouched for scenery, its balmy air and its end less varieties of sport that diversion and enjoyment which the frigid and boisterous North can not yield after Thanksgiving Day has set the seal to the close of even the Indian summer. ‘T was by degrees that its claims upon me evinced themselves. Yearly I came away with lingering steps and slow, and ever as the seasons passed my periods of absence shortened and my periods of enjoyment lengthened. From a casual and itinerant dallyer with the sorceress I became an ardent worshipper, and Florida now holds undisputed sway as my winter’s queen. A hunter, a fisherman, a naturalist and a yachtsman, and yet somewhat of an epicurean, what more natural than that I should seek a camp of refuge and a permanent habitation which should yield, in the highest degree, these delights, and should find them in Eden, advantageously situate between the inlets at Jupiter and St. Lucie, the latter known as Indian River Inlet. Jupiter is about twenty-eight miles south, while Indian River Inlet lies some ten miles above, and here all that mortal can require for artistic satisfaction, sports man’s instinct or creature comforts is at our door, for fifteen miles above the St. Lucie inlet the bed of the river is covered with oysters. In sailing here two years ago, our charts having run out, we felt the way while gliding along, by sounding with an oar, and for hours heard a constant “chink “as it struck oysters. They are worked but very little, are fine in flavor, and no one has as yet thought it worth while to cultivate them.
Here also is the home of the manatee. The method of catching this fish is very curious. Two or three nets are secured across a narrow arm of the St. Lucie, the lower one firm, the second slack and the upper one loose. Then the manatee is alarmed. It makes a break down the river, strikes the loose net, tears it free, gets twisted up in it, and if the second net gives the third is sure to hold. Were all the nets fastened taut, the creature would go through each like a bullet, or, if they were made very powerful, kill itself.
Here, too, we are in the best of possible positions for organizing social parties for exploration, which lend variety, the very spice of life, and thus it came to pass that on one of the typical mornings of last winter we were ready to start on a short cruise up the St. Lucie River. I had never been up the St. Lucie, al though I had been some distance up the St. Sebastian two years back, when on a long cruise down the east coast.
We chartered a thirty-five-foot steam launch for the occasion, the Eleanor, owned by a pineapple planter, a Baltimore gentleman named Lucas, who loves Eden and has a splendid property there. He was to run the launch, assisted by a Mr. Duffy, his friend, while Harry Richards manned the engine. Frank made up the party of six.
The mouth of the river is very wide, and for several miles it is a noble stream, deep and with wooded banks. I confess I was both pleased and amazed at its appearance, but presently came a change — sudden and rather disappointing. The great river came to an end and two arms extended, one to the north for many miles and the other to the south. These branches are not one – twentieth part as wide as the main river, though generally very deep. They wind about in a serpentine way, sometimes through open reedy tracts, again past growths of pine and palmetto, and always with banks some six to eight feet high on either side.
We passed a few cranes and water turkeys, but the birds were very wild. Several herons flew up ahead of us and a couple of white ibis. Birds, with these exceptions, were very scarce, thanks to the plume hunters, who enter the rookeries and hatcheries by night and slay by hun dreds egrets, ibis, herons, cranes, and even pelicans when they can. These butchers have been the curse of Florida, and it is certainly a shame that the Legislature has not prohibited such wanton slaughter.
After winding about for some time we came to where the channel was really too tortuous to proceed further. There could be no mistake; we were on the wrong trail and must back out. So, with setting poles, we managed to get the boat around and proceeded to the main stream, where, passing on the other side of a point, we entered what proved to be the genuine north fork of the St. Lucie. It is not here more than forty or fifty feet across and generally half of that, but very deep.
It was simply delightful. Once, however, we held our breath as a small flock of buzzards arose from a reedy bank and lazily flapped away from the carcass of a big deer, possibly the victim of some hunter who sought his venison with a blazing pine knot for a jack and a double barrel loaded with buck shot, wounding three deer to one that he slew.
We had now made twenty-five miles in all and looked for a place to camp and a good spot to tie the boat up, where a fire could be built on shore. I suggested that as the water looked suitable for bigmouth bass we have a try at them. We tumbled into the dinghy, and made an exploration of several likely arms that formed little bayous or pockets. The result was three bass, none of them very enormous in size, all caught on a Hill spoon. As we moved up a long bayou, something dropped from the bank ahead into the water with a splash.
“A ”gator!'” exclaimed Frank, although his back was turned that way.
“I see him,” said I, raising my rifle.
Upon the calm water, about fifty feet away, were two peculiar objects, looking like pine knots, which I knew were the reptile’s eyes. I took a quick aim and fired. There was no commotion, but Frank immediately declared I had hit him. The bullet had passed in and out of its neck, just back of the eyes.
The next day we decided to try a short tramp for deer, signs of which had been seen.
The woods were very open and we could have seen deer half a mile away.
There is only one way to get near these little Florida deer when they are browsing in the open pine barren — work to leeward and then advance slowly, watching the deer’s tail, which is always jerked before he raises his head, thus giving one time to become motionless. In this way it is easy to steal up close enough to reduce the number of Mr. Deer’s mess. We were given no such opportunity on this tramp, as not a deer was sighted. I raised a flock of wood ibis, and also a number of sand hill cranes, almost-breaking my neck in the endeavor to get a specimen of the latter great birds. One shot I had at a crane flying, but not being a Bogardus or a Carver I failed to bag the handsome game, esteemed fine eating wherever known. I regretted not having my shotgun and some No. 2s just then. There were also a number of white cranes and a blue heron that kept just outside of decent rifle shot.
With the weather very hot and the wind in the west we knew what was coming full soon. Upon taking a vote it was agreed that we start down the river. We started for the forks of the river, with the current to assist our progress.
Fishing was tried at a favorite place where Henshall declared he took large bass as fast as he could get them in; but the weather must have been against us, for we did not have a strike at the troll.
Meanwhile my premonition was verified. The wind whipped into the north and began to blow great guns. It was all very fine so long as we were on the St. Lucie, protected by the wooded shore on our port quarter, but once we struck the Indian River it would be different. There we must head directly into the teeth of the gale, and if anyone has an idea that the Indian River cannot kick up a great sea on such an occasion he makes a mistake. It has a clean stretch of some thirty miles up St. Lucie Sound to the Narrows, and is from one and a half to three miles wide. Besides, its being very shallow adds to the nasty nature of the sea.
We got it when we ran out from the St. Lucie. As far as we could see the Indian River was a mass of boiling whitecaps. No sailboat would have made progress trying to beat up against such a combination. I had been through it before, and had enough then to convince me that patience in waiting for a fair breeze was the best policy. We met one boat flying down almost under bare poles and going so fast at that as to shoot past us like a fleeting dream, the captain shouting some thing we could not catch, as the roaring wind carried his words beyond.
We were compelled to take the middle of the river until past Waveland, because of the grass that choked the channel.
How the billows did roar and toss! Scores of times our screw would revolve in the air as we plunged downward.
Again and again huge seas would strike the starboard bow in spite of our pilot’s good generalship, and the spray would drive all over us.
It took us several hours to put behind us the eight miles between Eden and the mouth of the St. Lucie, for even the gallant little launch could make but slow headway. At about half past 3 o’clock we could plainly see the white building known as the store and post office on the edge of the water at Eden, and all of us were glad to draw near our goal, for the buffeting we received had become a trifle monotonous. Those who have gone through the checkered lines of a sports man’s career for years learn to be content with what fortune sends them, however, and take as much enjoyment as possible out of the sport itself. A few days later we decided to take a run down to Jupiter Inlet, possibly to Lake Worth, so we packed our traps, took a twelve-bore rifle, rods and tackle, a valise apiece and my inseparable vademecum — the camera — and stood on the bulkhead at the end of the captain’s then unfinished long pier, awaiting the coming of the St. Lucie. She hove in sight, and at 6:3o the tuneful voice of Captain Bravo was heard, while his well-known smile beamed on us from the upper deck.
It took us several hours to go through the Narrows, helped or hindered by the strong north wind, favorable to our passage on a straight stretch, but it sent us into many a pocket, where the darky deck hands had to throw all their strength on the setting poles in order to work her out.
The scenery was weird and fantastic — false channels or canals ran hither and thither, with the trees forming an arch overhead. We scraped the branches at times, so that it was easy to pluck the live oak or cypress leaves. On every hand lay the swamp. A few birds flew up at our approach, but otherwise the Narrows presented a dismal appearance, funereal-like in its ghostly character, and not to be forgotten.
Air plants could be seen very frequently hanging from trees and just bursting into bloom. In the top of many a palmetto I detected a young rubber tree growing. The nature of this tree is in deed singular. Starting thus thirty feet from the ground — from a seed perhaps carried by a bird — it throws tendrils down toward the moist ground. When these strike root they grow into one or more trunks — I have seen a tree with three such trunks — and eventually the palmetto that has been the foster mother of the rubber is choked to death and yields its life to the monster it brought forth.
Finally this strange region was left behind, and we passed into a channel dredged through beds of old oyster shells. Long ago this region must have been a famous place for oysters, but it has none now. At Eden there is a great shell mound erected by the ancients, and at Jupiter I saw one that staggered me; it was of great height and length.
Captain Richards advanced a plausible theory respecting these Indian mounds of oyster shells. He claims that he has always found an old burial ground near the mounds and presumes that a part of the burial ceremony was in eating great quantities of oysters and piling up the shells, as we place a monument over our dead.
After passing through Hobe Sound and stopping at one or two likely looking places on the land between the river and the ocean, where we saw luxuriant bananas growing, we came in sight of the grand lighthouse at Jupiter, whose beacon has for many years warned mariners drifting in near shore on the treacherous Gulf Stream.
It was about 2 o’clock when we landed at the dock at Jupiter. They were then building the little railway running through to Lake Worth, the ground being ready for the rails. It is now an accomplished fact, ridding the Lake Worth tourist of the abominable hacks that were wont to jolt the life half out of him during the ride across.
Jupiter is a peculiar formation; it is really the junction of the Indian and Locohatchee rivers, the one extending for 165 miles up along the coast, the other a little stream coming from the swamps of the interior not far from the head of Lake Okeechobee.
On the northern bank of what is called Jupiter River lies the great lighthouse and several comfortable white cottages, the homes of Captain Armour, who has been in charge since the war, his assistant, and the signal service man.
On the southern bank a large stern-wheel steamer was moored. She looked like a Mississippi River boat, and had been brought in by the officer then in charge, Captain Fitzgerald, narrowly escaping disaster at the time. This steamer was used as an hotel, and we were served royal meals all the time we stayed.
After a while we strolled down along the sand about a quarter of a mile to a point opposite the inlet. Here, in a little bay, a party of Philadelphia gentlemen were drawing in sailor’s choice, a small but rather nice pan fish, which abounds in these waters. We wandered around enjoying the warm sunshine, watching a flock of gulls and snipe on a point opposite, and finally brought up at the Chattahoochee Hotel, where several Louisville merchants had just come in from pompano fishing.
Henshall declared the gamy pompano would not take bait and could only be caught in a net, but this has been discovered to be false. During our stay at Jupiter several score were taken. Great care must be the order of the day. Small hooks and light but strong tackle, together with a boat, sand fleas for bait, and room to allow for the fierce run of the vigorous fish, will bring success. Al most absolute silence is necessary, however, as the game is easily frightened. They are probably the finest eating fish in our country, and when taken fresh from their native waters and well cooked make a dish fit for a king.
There was a naphtha launch from New York, owned by Commodore Hughes, that won my admiration. I believe she was thirty-five feet in length over all, and with her cedar sides and brass furniture made a handsome craft. The cabin was a waterproof roof, with canvas curtains that could be raised or lowered at will. She had all the appliances to delight a cruiser’s heart and I thought the boat was the neatest I had ever seen.
The Gas Engine and Power Company, of New York, its makers, have since sent out a boat that suits me better — one made to bear harder knocks, and having two short masts, being rigged with a jib in addition, so that with a fair wind the engine may remain idle. When the breeze is dead ahead such a boat, urged on by a two or four horse power engine, will climb into the teeth of the wind in a way calculated to excite envy in the heart of the yachtsman, who vainly beats against the gale and gets a tremendous ducking at little profit.
We went over to the lighthouse, and passing out upon the platform that goes around the tower we had a magnificent view, although the wind blew furiously up there, so that the more timid hugged the wall.
We could trace the Indian River a long way running north; the sinuous course of the Locohatchee until lost in the labyrinth of swamps and heavy growth ; the crooked line of Lake Worth Creek a short distance, as it trended away to the south, and even get a glimpse of Lake Worth it self by careful scrutiny. To the east lay the great ocean, a magnificent panorama; to the west lay the great unknown swamps that border that wonderful and mysteri ous lake, Okeechobee, and terminate in the Everglades.
Monday dawned partly cloudy, with wind enough for fishing. I took views of the Chattahoochee Hotel while the people were preparing to go in quest of the finny tribes. Then we separated, one party to sail up the Locohatchee for various species of fish, a second in a couple of rowboats after pompano, while we entered the sailboat of a darky, a sort of hodge-podge, neither sharpie nor catboat, but something in the line of a skip jack with a half cabin.
The sable captain took his boy along, and we were soon making the run from the lighthouse as near down to the inlet as was safe. We soon had rods out and it was not a great while before something struck me with great force. The boat was moving swiftly, and I heard a suspicious crack that warned me to look out for that bamboo rod near the lower ferrule. I managed to save my fish, however, after quite a tug, and found him to be a large crevalle, or cavalli. This fish is not eaten as a general rule, the flesh being too oily, but he is a strong fighter in the water, and being very trimly built looks like a piratical customer. He was the first of a numerous company I took.
A few bluefish were caught that day, the party up the Locohatchee picking up nearly a dozen in some favorite locality known only to the captain of the craft.
Our pompano fishermen had better luck and brought in a fair mess of the tooth some fish. We amused ourselves between times catching mullet from the side of the steamer. This is a fish that was once said never to touch bait, and that one had never been caught on a hook. We took dozens of them. A fine leader, a trout hook, a piece of dough from the cook’s galley and no sinker — the tide carries the dough along — a tiny morsel on the dainty hook, it sinks a foot or so; there is a jerk and up comes a mullet nearly a foot long, his white sides glittering like silver in the light. Small cats could be taken at the rate of one a minute. It was nothing to say ” I’ll fish until I have twenty-five,” for they never stopped biting that I knew of, day or night. Probably the refuse thrown out from the cook’s galley brought these schools of small fish around.
Crabs were caught, the largest I ever saw in all my life, but they were very scarce, and the old darky got a quarter a piece for them. They were worth it.
Boating is regarded as a sine qua non down in that region, and the man who does not know enough about aquatics to run his own craft had better learn before making a trip to the cruiser’s paradise.
To the canoeist there can be nothing more delightful than a trip down the east coast — all sheltered work, through the great bays, known as rivers here, the Halifax, Hillsboro, Mosquito Lagoon, through the Haulover Canal and down the Indian River to Jupiter— about 250 miles in all, a winter’s trip.
The only discouragements found would be the fierce northers, head winds, lack of stowage room for fresh water, and occasionally tracking over oyster bars. I have the location of all those bars well noted — I found them, as the keel and garboard streak of my cedar Rushton cruiser, Sea Robin, bear mute but eloquent testimony. Had I stuck to my chart all would have been well, for there is a steamboat channel, but the tempta tion to cut across lots often proved the cause of disaster.
From what I saw of the new steamer I was well impressed with the service. She was crowded the four times I was on her and, proving insufficient, two sister boats, the St. Sebastian and St. Augustine, have appeared on the river, so that in the future tourists down the dreamy Indian River, past the orange groves of Rock ledge, the wonderful pineapple plantations of Eden, to the groves of Lake Worth may expect to be well taken care of.
We fortunately did not get aground going up Hobe Sound, and our passage through the intricate canals of Jupiter Narrows was but a repetition of the one down. Thus the halcyon days passed away and each brought its pleasures. If we did not perform great feats with gun and rod we enjoyed capturing what came our way; we were not butchers.
If one chose to tramp a few miles back of the savannah, among the pines, deer are to be found, but it is astonishing how little one cares to exert one’s self when it is so pleasant to loll in a Boat and wait for the game to come to you.
Many were the phases and incidents of sport and pastime we enjoyed, now going by night with a Ferguson jack light to spear fish and securing a boat load, anon trying for alligators on the savannah.
Yet another day we netted and took two large green turtles, a number of cre- valle, sergeant fish, red snapper, lady fish, mutton fish, silver catfish and a four-foot shark which I clubbed over the head and tossed away.
That night our menu for supper was flavored with game. Besides genuine green turtle soup, we had fried green turtle that beat any spring chicken I ever tasted, rabbit and coot stew, cold roast venison with guava jelly, and broiled dove and snipe.
Space would fail to describe all we saw and took part in during those glorious weeks. Their memory haunts me while I write. I am again on the lovely Indian River, sailing across for the fishing grounds, lunch and tackle and gun at my side, and T– tightening the halliards, his sun-burned face always wreathed in a smile.
I look forward to future winters to be spent in this favored region. One may go to other parts at other seasons where game is more plentiful, often sacrificing home comforts, but at Eden it is all at your doors, among a people sociable and kindly disposed toward strangers. They are all from the North, people of education and refinement, so that in dropping off here one need not feel that he is about to encamp in a squatter wilderness.
No one has an axe to grind about Eden, simply because no one has land to sell. The available property is only about a quarter of a mile deep, running along the ridge between the river and the savannah, so that it is limited in extent. If you wonder why the captain gave his place that name, fight your way against head winds a week in a small cruiser, as I did with Neide in ’87, and you will swear the place is a paradise as it opens on your view, with its swaying cocoanuts, houses em bowered in palmettos and rubber trees, its great vistas of pineapple plants and its blooming flowers.
