Part 13

One sunny morning I sailed from John's Pass and entered Gordon's Pass, a few miles south of Naples, about noon. While the men were preparing dinner and getting the seines and collecting outfit in readiness, I had some fine sport with jewfish, running from fifteen to forty pounds, on a ten-ounce rod. A few hundred yards from the mouth of the pass, on the south shore, where the bank is very steep and crowned with palmettos, the water is quite deep, and was a favorite resort for jewfish, as heretofore mentioned.

After dinner we proceeded to haul the long seine, and just as it was landed, filled with all manner of fishes, four negroes came driving up the beach in a mule cart, two men and two women, to where the seine was being hauled ashore. They leaped out of the cart at once, consumed with curiosity as to the contents of the seine. The oldest woman was an immense specimen, weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds, and with a beam as broad as the cart. The other woman was a comely mulatto girl, her daughter. I had just gaffed a small horned ray, a devil-fish, about four feet across its wing-like pectoral fins.

The fat and dusky gargantuan female came waddling down the beach as fast as her short legs could carry her. On seeing the rather formidable and frightful looking ray, she recoiled in horror and exclaimed:

"Good Lawd! Wat is dat ting, mistah?"

"That's a devil-fish, Auntie," I replied.

"Fo' de lan's sake! It sho' luks lak de debble! Luk, Rastus; luk at his ho'ns and tail!"

Then turning to her daughter, she said: "Go 'way, honey; don't come anigh dat ugly varmint; he sho' swallow yo' or prod yo' wid his ho'ns."

Fig. 2. Northern Barracuda. (Sphyræna borealis.)]

I assured her and the other terror-stricken darkies that no harm would befall them provided they did not approach too near. Turning to the fat woman, I asked: "When did you leave Kentucky, Auntie?"

"Good Lawd, mistah! How'd yo' know I fum Kaintucky? You must be cunjah man."

"Why, Auntie, as soon as you opened your mouth I knew you were from Kentucky; I'm from Kentucky myself," I answered.

"'Deed, honey, I'm pow'ful glad to see yo'," she said. "Why, dar's lots o' people fum Kaintucky up to Naples. Kurnel Haldeman and Gen'l Sarah Gordon Williams is bofe dar; and Miss Rose, Pres'dent Grove Cleveland's sistah, she dar, too, at de hotel." Then she added, "I'm de cook for Miss Lizzie M'Laughlin; she keeps de hotel."

It seemed that the cook and her party had come down to the pass to fish, but as I gave them more fish than they really needed, they concluded to return at once to Naples, especially as the jolly cook declared that, "Dat debblefish dun spile my appetite fo' fishin'."

I handed my card to her, with the request that she take it to Colonel Haldeman, or General "Cerro Gordo" Williams. They departed in great glee, but with furtive glances at the devil-fish on the beach. As they started off, the corpulent cook shouted:

"Good-by, mistah; hopes to see you soon. Say, mistah, we all's gwine to 'tend lak we cotch all dese fish wid we all's fish lines."

"All right, Auntie, I will not give you away," I replied.

She evidently had one of the qualifications of the true angler.

Late in the afternoon I saw a lady and a gentleman coming down the beach in a handsome carriage, drawn by a pair of trim-looking mules. I soon recognized Col. W. N. Haldeman, of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and his good wife. Col. Haldeman was the founder of Naples, where he had a charming winter home. (His sad death through a trolley-car accident will long be regretted and mourned by his many friends.)

The Colonel and his lady insisted on my dining with them that evening. I pleaded that I had nothing to wear but outing clothes, and was not presentable. They would not be refused, however, the Colonel saying that it was their first drive in the carriage, which had been on its way six weeks from Louisville, and that Mrs. Haldeman had honored me by coming herself to invite me. Of course, I had to accept their kind invitation, as I could proffer no more excuses, and especially as the Colonel promised me a real Kentucky dinner; that settled it. We had a delightful drive up the beach on the hard sand at low tide, and the dinner was to the queen's taste: Oyster soup, baked redfish, venison steak, and the Kentucky feature, a roast 'possum with a lemon in its mouth.

After a most enjoyable evening with a happy company, myself and one of my darkey acquaintances of the morning mounted two saddle mules for a moonlight midnight ride down the beach to the pass. It was a high, spring tide, compelling us to occasionally abandon the beach where covered with water, and take to the scrub, much to the evident fear of the negro, who, I soon discovered, was very timid and superstitious. He started at every sound in the still night--the puffing of a porpoise in the water or a 'coon or 'possum scurrying through the thick scrub or the weird cry of a night bird caused him to blench with evident fear and trembling. At the leap of a large fish, a tarpon or jewfish, that struck the water with a resounding splash, he whispered:

"Doctah, was dat a debblefish?"

"It might have been," I replied.

Just then a bull alligator in the bayou back of the beach emitted a terrible roar, followed by the discordant cries of all sorts of waterfowl; and, as it happened, some large animal, a horse or cow, or perhaps a deer, fled at our approach and crashed through the scrub. Altogether the various sounds were somewhat appalling, and calculated to alarm and distress a more courageous person. At last we reached the pass, and my boat, with its white canvas roof glaring in the light of the full moon, broke on the gaze of the astonished darkey through the trees, and as it moved this way and that, responsive to a slight breeze, it seemed an uncanny thing to the thoroughly frightened man as he moaned:

"O Lawd; O Lawd; dar's a spook! De debble will sho' cotch me. I wish I was back in ole Kaintuck. Oh, doctah, I sho' am 'fraid to go back to-night. I sho' saw de debble's eye shinin' in de bresh, and heard de splash of his tail in de watah, all de way down. Please, sah, let me stay in de camp till de mawnin'."

I saw that he was really terrified, and that it would never do to let him attempt to return to Naples alone that night. Accordingly we hobbled the mules, and I made him a bed in the boat, where he soon was snoring and making as loud and uncouth noises as any "debble" was capable of. In the morning I gave him a good breakfast and started him home with the mules, the happiest coon in Florida.

I have not been in Florida since the winter of 1896-7, but even then it had greatly changed from the old Florida I knew as far back as 1878. At the present day my old cruising and camping grounds near Rockledge, Lake Worth and Miami are famous winter resorts, with large and commodious hotels whose luxurious appointments and service are unsurpassed in the world.

Both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, as well as the interior of the State, are now well-populated by Northern people, mostly engaged in raising sub-tropical fruits and early vegetables. Marshy lands, once the resort of innumerable water-fowl, have been drained and cultivated. The pine forests and flat woods where once the cowboy reigned supreme, and where the deer and wild turkey roamed at will, have been decimated or destroyed by sawmills and turpentine stills. The rookeries of the cypress swamps and wooded keys have been laid waste by the plume hunter, so that the flamingo, pink curlew and egret are now but empty sounding names.

But while the greed and improvidence of commercial fishermen have greatly reduced the numbers of not only mullet, but redfish, sheepshead, sea-trout and other bay fishes, there still remains the best and most varied fishing in the world for the angler who cares more for real sport than a big creel.