AN OVERLOOKED RIVER

CHAPTER XIX

AN OVERLOOKED RIVER

NOW wasn't that the blamedest (synonym) bito' navigation that you ever see?" said thecaptain, as we paddled up to the little

cockleshell of a power boat in which he and theCamera-man were awaiting us in a bend in theupper Miakka. He was a gentle-voiced captainand only twice before had I known him to talk initalics. The first time was when the swelling of newhalyards delayed lowering the mainsail of the Ireneuntil a twisting rain squall carried it away, and thesecond was when a gale in the night broke out ouranchor and swept us on shore, where a big wavelifted us bodily and sat us down on a coral bank withthe gentleness of an irate mother depositing herpredatory offspring in a chair.

They had only come a few miles down a narrowstream with a current of five or six miles an hour,but it bristled with snags and was defended by sharppointed rocks. Ends of palmetto logs, held fast tothe bottom by their roots, bobbed up and down inthe current, sometimes visible but more often hidden.Eddies, ripples and swirls in the water had to be readquickly and decisions made in the twinkling of aneye, as the craft swept down on obstructions at therate of a dozen miles an hour. They were in a little

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boat with a big rudder, built to chase quick-dodgingdenizens of the water-fish, mammals and reptiles-and made to turn quickly, while the motor reversedso readily that the man on the bow usually wentoverboard.

We had towed a little Canadian canoe as far upthe river as we could push the power boat, but anattempt to tow it back would have wrecked bothboats in the first hundred yards. So I knelt in thestern of the tiny craft, put the colored boy in the bow,and promised myself a joyful voyage. But the powerboat, which must go first! Nothing less than fullspeed would keep her under control while runningthe rapids and turning the sharp corners. The cap-tain as pilot and the Camera-man as engineer,wouldhave glory to divide if neither faltered and no errorwas made.

Down the river they started, the speed of the boatdoubled by the current, toward a snag in themiddle of the stream, then a sudden turn to theright sent them straight for a coral bank and Ifancied I saw the craft tremble under the full powerof the reverse action, which held it from striking therock, while the current swept it out of danger. Adouble curve now had to be made, within about thelength of the boat, to escape another snag and a sharprock. My heart was in my mouth and I was halfenvious and half scared as the dangers. were avoidedby what seemed the breadth of a hair. We watchedtheir zigzag course until a bend in the river hid themfrom us. Then I thought of the low-hanging

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When navigation was closed to boats with spars, we tied the Ireneto the bank.

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An Overlooked River

branches which they would have to dodge, justwhere a lot of obstructions would demand undividedattention, of the long streamers of Spanish mosswhich would slap their faces and perhaps close theireyes at inopportune times, and especially of sundrylong ropes of vines pendent from tall trees, endingsometimes in a loop hanging close to the water, sug-gestive of a gallows prepared by the Spirit of theRiver for just such intruders as were being hurledhelpless beneath it. Once the propeller struck a log,the motor stopped and it was dollars to doughnutsthat the blades were broken, but no harm was doneand they went through without mishap.

Things worked differently with the canoe. In thefirst half mile, in a reach of swift water, we came upona log lying across the stream, almost from bank tobank. On the left was a narrow space between thelog and the bank toward which I turned the canoe.On the right of the log was a little space, blockedbelow by a snag, which the boy mistook for the chan-nel and swung the bow in that direction. We werethen in the grip of the current and escape was im-possible. There was barely time to head for thelog, when we struck it and slid half way over it.Here, balanced between earth and sky, like Moham-med's coffin, we teetered up and down in a constantstruggle to keep from swinging broadside to thecurrent, which would have insured a capsize and abattle with deep and angry waters in a tangle of snags.Our fix was so ludicrous that I laughed over it,afterward. An occasional deluge of water, flopping

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over the low gunwale, brought from the darky thecomment, "Sumpin's goin' to happen right now."By working my way toward the bow of the canoe itsbalance was changed until it tilted forward down-stream. Then by a series of hitches we jarred italong, inch by inch, until we were again afloat in ourcranky craft, with two in her bow and her stern outof water. As the current swept us down the river Iworked back to my place without quite capsizing thecanoe, but I knelt in water the rest of the passage.Thenceforth the voyage, until we reached the powerboat, was uneventful, beyond the thrills that camewith gleams of rock that were just below the surface,projecting logs that seemed to lie in wait for us, andswirling waters that spoke of obstructions, all crowd-ing the joy of hours of canoeing into a few rapidminutes.

From Charlotte Harbor north, from the Caloosa-hatchee to the Homosassa, the rivers of the westcoast of Florida have been explored and exploited,partly settled and altogether denuded of game, andswept bare of their most interesting animal life bynative hunters and foreign tourists. There wassmall chance that the Miakka River, with its mouthin Charlotte Harbor, six miles from the importanttown of Punta Gorda, had been overlooked in thegeneral devastation, and it was with little hope ofsuccess that we began our cruise up its broad mouth.We passed through mile-wide meadows of partly sub-merged bulrushes backgrounded by forests of pine,with clumps of cedar to the fore and dotted with tall

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An Overlooked River

palmettoes, singly and in groups. As we ascendedthe river the pines came nearer, the water grew shoaland was dotted with islands, while tall ferns adornedthe banks. As we continued to advance the rivernarrowed to fifty yards and became a fresh waterstream with a strong current, so crooked that wetraveled twelve miles to make six and in doing sowent in every direction. Sometimes in traveling amile we nearly completed a circle and once a tinytunnel beneath a high bank disclosed an effort ofNature to shorten the stream by cutting out a super-fluous segment. As we ascended, the river continuedto narrow and deepen. On both sides were greatwhite sand banks, six to ten feet in height. In someplaces these were quite bare, in others they werecarpeted with grass or covered with scrub palmetto,while far beyond them stretched park-like groves ofstately palmettoes interspersed with patriarchal liveoaks with long gray beards of Spanish moss andbranches closely garmented with brilliant orchids.Often the shifting current had undermined the banksand the projecting trunks of long-fallen trees im-periled the passing boat. Long, slim, python-likebodies of palmettoes thrust themselves above thesurface of the water and upreared threatening crests.Trunks of great live oaks, three feet in thickness,projecting horizontally from the bank, broke up intooctopus-like arms, that writhed in. dim light likemonster serpents, sometimes so twining with othersacross the stream as to close the river to craft withspars. Upon an undermined bank, a palmetto

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with head lifted forty feet in air, stood beside asturdy pine whose crest towered above it sometwenty-five feet, the roots of both washed clean forthe grave the stream had dug deep beneath them.In places the water had washed away low banksfrom above, laying bare the entire root system oftrees that yet seemed to stand firmly, upheld by thelace work of tiny rootlets that spread out like a carpetfor yards around. Upon the banks, too, could beseen the familiar hickory and the bright-leaved maple,while the graceful willow dipped its slim leaves in theflowing water. When some trees, closing above thestream, barred the advance of our cruising boat, wetied it to a tree on the bank and explored withlaunch and canoe.

We continued our journey up the stream, and itgrew still narrower, swifter and crookeder. We sawcurious forms of branches and trees, a big palmettogrowing out of the trunk of a bigger oak and gnome-like forms into which Nature had twisted the roots oftrees upturned long ago. The current grew swifterand at times took nearly all the power of the motorto overcome it, leaving a margin of a mile or two anhour only for the upstream work. Our progress wasso slow that it mattered little what we ran into, sinceobstacles could be studied with the bow of the boattouching them and the slow advance permitted theenjoyment of surroundings.

Drowsy-eyed alligators watched us from their sun-baths on top of the high banks until we were oppositethem, when with amusing haste they made for the

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An Overlooked River

river. The little ones scurried like rats to the water,bigger members of the family trotted with clumsyrapidity a score of yards along the bank to an easierslope, while one old moss-back, who slept until wewere within a few yards of him, rolled over and overin ludicrous panic down the steep bank and crashedinto the water beside us with a splash that drenchedthe man in the bow of the power boat. A momentlater the head of the reptile appeared upon the sur-face and inquiring eyes obviously asked if we werethe real thing or only a nightmare.

The living creatures of the wild, told by their con-duct of the sometime absence of the-man-with-a-gun.It was the cattle, wilder than deer, that fled from ourapproach, although a quarter of a mile of forest laybetween us. Hogs usually scampered from thebanks at distant sight of us, yet more than one oldboar stood firm upon a point of bank that overlookedus and with bristles lifted in rage invited us to battle.

Herons, from the big blue and great white to thelittle green "fly-up-the-creek," flew just before usfrom every bend in the river and sluggishly precededus up the stream with cries of protest against beingdisturbed that ranged in pitch between the quack ofa duck and the croak of a raven. Flocks of ducksspattered up from before our advancing bow to ren-dezvous above the next turn in the river. A wildturkey looked from the bank with surprise upon a lotof two-legged things without a gun, but shook hishead in distrust as he winged his way out of range.Snake birds were in the air, the water, and on most

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of the trees. When we were within a few feet of them,they dropped from the branches and splashed in thewater in a fashion more awkward even than the alight-ing of a pelican, and a minute later a long snake-likeneck thrust up from the surface of the water a littlehead with bright eyes that took careful note of ouroutfit.

As we continued to advance, long slim islandsdivided the little stream, leaving two channels ofwhich we always took the wrong one first, high-banked tongues of land bearing beacons of tall pal-mettoes thrust themselves out into it, false forks ledto little lakes in tiny forest glades, and the riverdivided into labyrinthic channels like the puzzlepaths to a garden. Then it suddenly went crazy,dodged around islands, made little incursions into theforest, spun about like a teetotum and lost itself inchannels the power boat could not follow.

Two hours later, for two hours downstream didwhat six had accomplished in the other direction,we were again aboard our cruising craft and voyagingdown the broadening river until its current of freshwater changed to the ebb and flow of the tide, and itsbanks, fading in the distance, made of it a shallow,placid, island-dotted bay. Then as one of its shoalsseized our craft, and for an hour held it to ransomby a rising tide, we sat upon the cabin top watchingthe wonderful clouds massed in the west and coloredby the declining sun, rejoicing in the rest andpeace that had followed a strenuous day on the riverthat had been overlooked.

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