the waves, with only the tops
of certain trees to steer by, is one of the mysteries.

Our object in visiting this desolate part of the country was to capture
turtles. Here is the ground of the green and loggerhead turtles, and,
according to Sandy, the hawksbill, from which the shell of commerce is
taken, is also occasionally found.

The squall was now a fast-disappearing pillar in the west. The
anchor-chain ran merrily out, and we rounded to in the narrow harbor of
Garden Key. The boys manned the pump, while Sandy and the writer pulled
for the shore, and the dingy soon crunched into the white, sandy beach
of the coral island which during the war was the Botany Bay of America.
Surely Dry Tortugas has been maligned: instead of dry we find it very
wet, a key of sand thirteen acres in extent, hardly one foot above the
tide, and entirely occupied by probably the largest brick fort in the
world.

Fort Jefferson was commenced long before the war, and is now a monument
of the ineffectual military methods of thirty years ago. The work is a
six-sided, two-tiered fort of majestic proportions, its faces pierced
with over five hundred guns. How many millions of dollars have been
expended in its erection it would be difficult to conjecture. The
question why so important a work was built here is often asked, and we
have heard the answer given that it was encouraged by the Key West
slave-owners, through their representatives, to give employment to their
slaves, who were engaged as laborers by the government. Garden Key,
however, is the key of the gulf, and, as a prospective coaling-station
in case of war, it was undoubtedly a spot to be held at all odds, and at
the outbreak of the war it formed a convenient spot for the confinement
of certain prisoners, as many as three thousand being kept there at one
time. Now the great fort figures as a picture of desolation and is
slowly falling to decay, deserted save by the memories of the great
conflict, a lighthouse-keeper, and a guard.

Once within the great enclosure, the reason for its having been called
Garden Key becomes apparent. The neighboring islands are covered with
prickly pear, mangroves, and bay-cedars, while here clumps of cocoanuts
rear their graceful forms, their long rustling leaves, which convey to
the distant listener the cooling impression of falling rain, reaching
high over the top of the fort. On the west side grows a small grove of
bananas, while against the cottage