Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1894-06-07
uNrRoo BY HUMAN FOOT.

The Everglades of Florida, which Extend
Ninety by = Hundred Miles.
The southern extremity of the PENN
su1ar of Florida is one huge marsh
known as the Everglades. eThis i'm
penetrable wilderness, or, rather,
jungle, is made up of about all of the
large county of Dade, almost all of
Monroe, the greater part of Bee, much
of De Soto and most of Brevard At
the north end of this singular forma-
ton is Lake Okeechebee, into which
the KiSsinmee and other rivers dis
charge their waters and which are
largely responsible for the vast swamp.
This great stretch of tangled growth
is in some places ninety miles wide, ex-
tending from the Atlantic across to the
gulf, and from its southern extremity
northwSrd is considerably over ona
hundred miles. There are great
stretches of cypress swamps, wilder
neSSes of vines, lakelets of open water,
immense regions of moraSs with COM
paratively dry spots in this desert OF
untraversable and bewi1dering inter
mingling of a semitropical fora, with
a fauna of alligators, snakes, bears,
wildcats and other carnivora, willis
geese, ducks, seabirds and other
aquatic fowl dot the water and myriads
of the other feathered tribes make the
somber cypress forests vocal. The en-
tire state of Florida is not much above
the level of the sea and this dismal
waste is scarcely more than a few
dozen feet higher than tide water.
Throughout this everglade region no
human being has ever fully Penetrated,
and there are lagoons that no human
eye has ever seen that are much tho
same as those of preglacial time. While
there are large stretches on which sail
or rowboats might be operated, there
are hundreds of intervening miry boys
of ooze and slime of unknown depth
that bar the way There is no frost
season here-no season when a frozen
surface may be traversed-and so this
dismal area for thousands of years has
been given over to such a production
as was in keeping with such an environ
ment. But it is nov contemplated to
penetrate this great marsh with canal
like bitches, with a view of so lower
ing the general water line so as to
bring this swampy mass into cultiva-
ton for the products peculiar to this
zone, and for which the decaying vege-
table matter of the ages is supposed to
be admirably fitted. Little or nothing
is known of the geological substruc-
ture of this peninsular termination,
but that an immense coral formation Is
its base is altogether probable. 1t
is safe to predict that excavations
through this material will reveal
many skeletons of creatures that
found death in the treacherously
yielding surface In a dry time this
compost bears up fairly well, but when
continued rains are precipitated on it
the entire area is inundated, when the
softened material is incapable of sus-
tanning any of the larger quadrupeds-
These everglades are interesting in
this that they typify in a manner the
early paleozoic conditions, when about
all the earth was water and marsh. OF
course there are no such creatures now
as wallowed in the lagoons and
crunched the roots of the aquatic vege-
tation in the earth's earlier time and
yet in small way the present fauna
of the great Florida swamp is typical
of their long ago ancestors. While the
alligator is nearly extinct in the re-
gions of easy access, the saurians of the
everglades have never been much mo
Tested and have there attained size
and fierceness unknown to other parts
of the state. Strange cries are some
times heard coming from within the
borders of this inaccessible domain, a
churuing of the water attests encount-
ers between large and savage contest
ants, while the fight and terrified
screaming of birds gives evidence that
the instincts of the everglade brute ara
still saguinary as they were before
man had so evolved as to dominate over
them and eXterminate them from the
earth. Pittsburgh Dispatch