Dick

In the Everglades

BY

A.W. DIMOCK

Author of "Florida Enchantments"

WITH THIRTY-TWO HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY
J.A. DIMOCK

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1909.

PREFACE

Dick in the Everglades is a true story. All that imagination had to do with it was to find names for the boys and arrange a sequence of events. Other characters, white and Indian, appear under names similar to, or identical with their own. Any old alligator hunter, familiar with the swamps and the Ten Thousand Islands, can follow the course of the explorers from the text of the story. It would be possible for two fearless boys, imbued with a love of Nature and the wilderness, to repeat, incident by incident, the feats of the explorers in the identical places mentioned in the story.

Many of the stories are understatements, seldom is one exaggerated. I have been asked if it were possible for a boy to handle a manatee in the water as one of the boys was represented as doing. I have done it myself three times with manatees three times the size of these in the story. In the story the manatees escaped. Two of those which I captured were sent to the New York Aquarium, where one of them lived for twenty months. The crocodiles which the boys sent to the Zoological Park may be seen to-day, alive and well in the reptile house. The frequent swamping of canoes and skiffs by porpoises, or dolphins, tarpon and manatees are all experiences of my own.

Aside from the Government charts which give the coast line only, the existing maps of the scene of the story are worse than useless. In them a hundred square miles are given to Ponce de Leon Bay, which doesn't exist, unless the little depression in the coast which is called Shark River Bight is accounted a bay. Rivers are omitted; one with a mouth fifty feet wide is represented as a mile broad. A little stream four miles long is sent wandering over a hundred and forty miles of imaginary territory. I have sailed and paddled for days at a time over the watercourses of South Florida, with a compass before me and a pad at hand on which every change of course was noted and distances estimated, and although no attempt at accurate charting has ever been made, I am quite sure that none of the natural features or products of the country traversed by the young explorers have been misrepresented in the book.

The pictures are from photographs taken on the scene of the incidents they illustrate. They show more conclusively than can any words of mine, how beautiful is the region traversed by the boy explorers and what interesting and exciting adventures they enjoyed.

CONTENTS

1. THE CHUMS 1
2. DICK GOES TO SEA 15
3. LIFE ON A SPONGER 27
4. CAUGHT IN A WATERSPOUT 38
5. OUTFITTING FOR THE HUNT 51
6. DICK'S HUNT FOR HIS CHUM 61
7. THE MEETING IN THE GLADES 76
8. OLD DREAMS REALIZED 93
9. THE CAPTURE OF THE MANATEE 108
10. HARPOONING FROM A CANOE 123
11. GHOSTS AND ALLIGATORS 129
12. HUNTING IN HARNEY'S RIVER 136
13. EDUCATING AN ALLIGATOR 150
14. ENCOUNTER WITH OUTLAWS 157
15. DICK AND THE BEAR 165
16. IN THE CROCODILE COUNTRY 171
17. AMONG THE SEMINOLES 183
18. DICK'S WILDCAT AND OTHER WILD THINGS 195
19. A PRAIRIE ON FIRE 209
20. DICK'S FIGHT WITH A PANTHER 219
21. CONVALESCENCE AND CATASTROPHE 234
22. THE RESCUE 245
23. MOLLY AND THE MANATEE 258
24. TO THE GLADES IN THE "IRENE" 271
25. IN FLORIDA BAY 286
26. MADEIRA HAMMOCK AND--THE END public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@13168@[email protected]#page297" class="pginternal"