ter an hour of this we came to a cypress swamp, and for several miles
waded through water ankle-deep although on a bottom of firm sand. Hardly
any undergrowth was here, but in all directions stood gray, dismal
cypress trees, coarsely buttressed at the water's edge and tapering to
slender tips. Draped in long streamers of Spanish moss which were
delicately swayed by an almost imperceptible current of air, this was a
ghoulish place--suggesting a rookery for shrouded spirits which perched
along the bonelike branches awaiting their resurrection. Here, too, upon
some convenient root of these gray ancients--perhaps the longest lived
of our southern trees--lay coiled the dozing moccasin. And from this
grim place we merged once more into the jungle where my clothes again
became the prey of clawing things.

But Smilax, never faltering, moved with the ease of a shadow. At last,
by watching him I, too, came to learn his secret and was charmed to find
that it made my pace both quiet and swift. Indeed, I took great care to
practice this silent trail walking--a knack that can be acquired only by
the closest observation; for a hundred books could not teach a hundredth
part as much as a ten-mile hike at the heels of a trained woodsman when
he is trying to go noiselessly. Finally he turned and looked at me,
saying:

"You do good now."

Noon brought us to a higher country whose beauty could not be surpassed.
Dark and cool it was, even dismal without bringing depression. The
mid-day suns of a hundred years must have been tempered to the aisles of
this wild cathedral by venerable specimens of mahogany and black olive
trees; and, where the branches of these did not touch, rose the
slenderer red ironwood. The mahoganies, alone, stood as a proof that we
were entering a region which had escaped the eyes of white man for--how
long? It was even seventy years ago that bands of wood pirates, known as
"the mahogany cutters," invaded southern Florida from the Bahamas and
ruthlessly pillaged this desirable wood for foreign markets; so here, at
least, was a spot that had remained undiscovered, where perhaps a white
foot had never trod.

Charmed as I was, a greater enchantment awaited, when the next few steps
brought me to a pool; a pool of crystal transparency, though dark for
reflecting the black bowl of earth in which it lay. Without a ripple it
nestled close against the roots of a golden-fig tree--an unfruitful
parasitic giant of squat stature