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Dazzling sunshine flooded the belt of sand where the shadows of dusty palmettos quivered beyond the Moorish arch; the old presidio smelt like a brick-kiln and the heat outside was nearly intolerable. In the middle of the dirty patio a fountain splashed in a broken marble basin, and it was dim, and by contrast cool, under the arcade where Kit sat among the crumbling pillars.
And there are dad and Stent riding in line with that outpost pine ho-paiee! Mount, my cavalier. And" in a lower voice "perhaps you also may hear that voice in the wilderness which cried once to the unwise." As they rode girth-high through the grass the first enchanting glade opened before them, flanked by palmettos and pines.
Woodcutters had already begun work on the great central forest avenue stretching straight away for four miles between green jungles topped by giant oaks, magnolias, and palmettos; lesser drives and chair trails were being planned, blazed, and traced out; sample coquina concrete blocks had been delivered, and a rickety narrow-gauge railroad was now being installed with spidery branches reaching out through the monotonous flat woods and creeping around the boundaries where a nine-foot game-proof fence of woven buffalo wire was being erected on cypress posts by hundreds of negroes.
As we rowed upwards, the banks were overhung with the densest vegetation. There were mahogany trees with their curious lop-sided leaves, the copal-plant with its green egg-like fruit, from which copal oozes when it is cut, like opium from a poppy-head, palms with clusters of oily nuts, palmettos, and guavas.
The promise of satiation, of inevitability, steeped his being in a pleasant lethargy. It was the same to him if they moved or stopped, whether they arrived at the next destination or remained forever in a sandy monotony of tomato fields or by a slow pass of water cutting the harshness of palmettos.
They were finally stopped by the trunk of a large tree which had fallen across and completely blocked up the creek. Just beyond it two palmettos had fallen in the stream, one of which lay lengthwise in the channel. It would have taken days to remove the obstructions and the young explorers explored the swamp near them to find a possible carry.
"The Everglades at last!" said Dick the next morning as the rays of the rising sun fell on the waters of the Everglades in the distance and lit up the clumps of cypress and groups of palmettos that dotted the prairie before him.
The strain was telling on them. It seemed as if only a few more pounds on the rope would swing the balance in their favor. And that help was near. Dashing from the clump of palmettos where he had remained, Rowdy came bounding over the intervening space. His fear was now gone and when he saw the boys at the pit he seemed to overcome his terror that had been so apparent at the time of the explosion.
Then another night, and there was the pageant of Florida: palmettos, and other trees of which one had seen pictures in the geography books; stretches of vine-tangled swamps, where one looked for alligators; orange-groves in blossom, and gardens full of flowers beyond imagining.
This bay is a labyrinth of channels and keys and opens into creeks large and small, and water-courses shallow and deep, grass-choked and clear. After exploring its mazes for miles, Dick and Ned found, near the northeast end of the bay, a tiny key marked by two tall palmettos, on which were the signs of an old Indian camp. Here they roasted a mess of clams and spent the night.
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