To south and to southeast, the green-blue transparent sea.
Within sight of the land, the purple-blue Gulf Stream,--a
mystic warm river a half mile deep, thousands of miles long,
traveling ever at a speed of eighty miles a day through the
depth of the ocean, as distinct and as unswerving from its
chosen course as though it flowed through land instead of
through shifting water.

Studded in the milk-tepid nearer waters, innumerable coral
islets and keys and ridges. Then the coral-built tongue of
land running north without so much as a respectably large
hillock to break its flatness. Along the coast the tawny
beaches, the mangrove-swamps, the rich farms, the groves, the
towns, the villages, the estates, snow-white Miami, the
nation's southernmost big city.

Back of this foreshore, countless miles of waving grass,
rooted in water, and with a stray clump of low trees, dotted
here and there, the Everglades, a vast marsh that runs north
to the inland sea known as Lake Okeechobee. Then the solid
sandy ground of the main State.

Along the foreshore, and running inland, miles of sand-barren
scattered with gaunt pines and floored with harsh
palmetto-scrub. Strewn here and there through this sandy
expanse lovely oases, locally known as "hammocks", usually in
hollows, and consisting of several acres of rich soil where
tropic and sub-tropic trees grow as luxuriantly as in a