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The sun struck down on our heads with intense force, there being few trees to afford us shade. Our legs were torn by the sharp teeth of the palmetto; and the only water we could obtain was from stagnant pools fringed with tall saw-grass, through which it was difficult to penetrate to get to the water, such as it was.
A species of yucca called sotal, or saw-grass, grows plentifully in places, and is sometimes used as food for cattle when grass is scarce. In its natural state it is inaccessible to cattle because of its hard and thorny exterior. To make it available it is cut down and quartered with a hoe, when the hungry cattle eat it with avidity.
He was on his own land, and he would not allow the guards to regain possession without a fight. He saw the white prow of the canoe shoot out past a tuft of saw-grass on the bend, and laid his eye to the sights. Another stroke of the paddles and the canoe was in full view, and Roger found his front sight bearing upon a button on the silken shirt which stretched taut across Garman's great chest.
Presently it thrust its nose into the soft bank of a stream, or, rather, a sluggish water-course which made a clear channel in an ocean of waving saw-grass. The men shipped their paddles, stepped out, and lifted Hugh to his feet; then they dragged him ashore. He was able now to look about him, to see where they had landed.
How we longed for ammunition to kill some of the water-fowl which rose from the sedgy shores! Sometimes our course led us through immense expanses of marsh covered with saw-grass, with here and there islands formed by uprooted trees, brushwood, and reeds matted together. In other places the vegetation which clothed both sides of the river was rich and beautiful in the extreme.
The young explorers "lit out" as proposed and, after a day of hard work and easy work, of open water and thick saw-grass and of clear channels and half dry meadows, camped beside a little slough on the border of a swamp, in the jungle of which it soon lost itself.
To reach the woods they were aiming for the boys left the Indian trail they were on and, after forcing their way through a strand of saw-grass, found themselves on a prairie, bounded on the west by a heavy growth of cypress, oak and other heavy timber, while the prairie itself was made beautiful by picturesque little groups of palmettos which were scattered through it.
The water was deeper than was needed to float their canoe, and the grass too light to trouble them. They sheered off and avoided all bands of saw-grass unless they found trails across them. The Glades were dotted with little keys of bay, myrtle and cocoa plum. These were small and usually submerged. A few larger keys were covered with heavier timber, pine, oak, mastic, palmetto and other woods.
I was obliged to leave my conveyance some distance from the island on which the cane field was located. When we arrived at the shore of the saw-grass marsh no outward sign indicated the presence of fifty Indians so close at hand; but suddenly three turbaned Seminole emerged from the marsh, as we stood there.
A light push sent the canoe forward, but when the push ended so did the motion. It took a stronger push to start the Seminole canoe, but the stroke was much longer, and when the stroke ended the motion continued. The boys were game and wouldn't admit that it tired them to keep up. But when a strand of heavy saw-grass had to be crossed they found trouble to burn.
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