Miami River

“ An extremely luxuriant vegetation covers the whole hammock and the mound itself, though few of the trees indicate a great age. On the same side of the river twenty miles above the lake, is another similar mound. They are abundant on the rich lands of Marion and Alachua counties, and in the hammocks of the Suwannee, and are found at least as far south as Charlotte’s Harbor and the Miami river. There is one on the government reserve in Tampa, another at the head of Old Tampa Bay, and a third on Long Key, Sarasota Bay. ”

“ There is not a horse in the settlement, and only one mule, whose duty is to haul a light summer car between the houses. The vehicles of Palm Beach are said to be confined to 380 "bicycles, wheel-chairs and jinrickshas." Off to the westward the distant horizon is bounded by the mysterious region of the everglades. Far down the coast the railway terminates at Miami, the southernmost railway station in the United States, a little town on Miami River, where it enters the broad expanse of Biscayne Bay, which is separated from the Atlantic by the first of the long chain of Florida keys. ”

“ Most of the business houses and nearly all residences had occupants. Downtown the offices were filled with men, fathers unable to get home, and the upper floors and on some of the roofs of the residences were helpless women and children. Hundreds of houses, substantial buildings in the residence districts, many of them with helpless occupants, were washed away.
The water in the Miami River began rising Monday afternoon at the rate of six inches an hour and continued to rise throughout the night. The first break in the levee at Dayton came at four o'clock Tuesday morning at Stratford Avenue. ”

“ Bounded on the east by the Pennsylvania line, on the south by the Ohio River, to the mouth of the Great Miami River, on the west by the line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami aforesaid, and on the north by an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, running east after intersecting the due north line aforesaid, from the mouth of the Great Miami until it shall intersect Lake Erie or the territorial line, and thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid ”

“ Near Dayton, about seventy-five miles from its mouth, the Miami receives on the east side the Mad river; from this place boats carrying three and four thousand barrels, may run into the Ohio during high water. The trial of ascending Mad river is seldom made, the stream being too rapid and there being a great many sand-banks and dams. The Miami has a diameter of one hundred and fifty yards during forty miles. ”
We found the shores of the Ohio well cultivated, with orchards and Indian corn: we observed several very pretty country-seats. ”

“ Little engine going finely all day and in the calm of a beautiful spring evening we pushed down the little creek, entered the river, set our lights as darkness fell, and hauling along close to navy yard and the big battleships, we dropped anchor at 7 p.m. off the Norfolk Rowing Club. We are a total of 50 days from Miami with 31 sailing days for a distance, as crow flies, of about 1,000 miles. This means over 30 miles a day average, and, the size of boat considered, together with character of water passed through, makes it rather a remarkable record. ”

“ This migration of the Miamis was a gradual process and can be traced from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin around the head of Lake Michigan to their old settlements on the Wabash, Maumee, and Miami rivers. The Miamis were persuaded to move for a number of reasons—the hostility of the Fox Indians, the advantages in trade and protection furnished by their proximity to Detroit, and finally the abundance of fur, especially beaver, to be found in the area south and southwest of Lake Erie. ”

“ It affords a navigation for loaded batteaux 180 miles in a direct line, in the winter tides.
The Great Miami of the Ohio, is 200 yards wide at the mouth. At the Piccawee towns, 75 miles above, it is reduced to 30 yards; it is nevertheless, navigable for loaded canoes 50 miles above these towns. The portage from its western branch into the Miami of Lake Erié, is 5 miles; that from its eastern branch into Sandusky River, is of 9 miles.
Salt River is at all times navigable for loaded batteaux 70 or 80 miles. It is 80 yards wide at its mouth, and keeps that width to its fork, 25 miles above. ”

“ The Miamis—a tribe of the Algonquin family in powerful league with the Shawnees, Wyandots, Potawatomies and the Ottawas—were determined to keep the white man off the prime hunting grounds that lay between the Great and Little Miami rivers. ”

“ The Miami itself, with its precipitous bank of two hundred feet, defends the western side. The ravines are occupied by small streams. Quite around this peninsula, on the very verge of the ravines, has been raised an embankment of unusual height and perfection. Meandering around the spurs, and re-entering to pass the heads of the gullies, it is so winding in its course that it required one hundred and ninety-six stations to complete its survey. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus they passed Juno and Palm Beach, and then saw the thicker cluster of fine dwellings of Miami itself, the most southerly city on the Florida mainland.
Paul was guiding the Sky-Bird at this time, and turned her across the limpid waters of Biscayne Bay, cutting a huge circle above the town and slowly swooping downward toward the broad white beach, as he picked out a level stretch for landing. Townspeople who had been watching the strange airplane, so much like a great bird, now ran forward to see it land. ”

“ The mountain ranges stood as barriers in the way, unless the headwaters of such rivers as the Potomac and the James, could be connected by canals and portages with the headwaters of the Ohio and its tributaries. If this could be accomplished, and if the headwaters of the Miami, Scioto and Muskingum, could be connected in turn with those of the Cuyahoga, the Maumee and the Wabash, then all was well, for this would furnish an outlet for the commerce of the west through the ports and cities of the Atlantic seaboard. ”

“ The dangerous coral reefs of the Florida and Bahama shores would be avoided, and a land-locked channel of thirty thousand miles of navigable watercourses would be united in one system.
Lieutenant-Colonel Q. A. Gilmore's report on "Water Line for Transportation from the Mouth of the St. Mary's River, on the Atlantic Coast, through Okefenokee Swamp and the State of Florida to the Gulf of Mexico," in which the able inquirer discusses this water route, has recently been published. ”

“ I have been looking the sun straight in the eye for 5 months with result that my own eyes pain me constantly and I am always behind blue glasses and canvas patches. It is all a bit tedious and makes home look a good ways off. Miami, like all the towns we have visited, seems to be in the midst of a real estate boom. The sun pours down and is beaten back into your face and eyes from new cement sidewalks and buildings. ”

“ Even Palm Beach has nothing unusual to show until the holidays of mid-winter bring its vast hostelries back to life. One loses little in fleeing all day onward at Southern express speed.
Miami, however, is worth a halt, if only for a glimpse of the United States in full tropical setting. There the refugee from winter will find cocoanuts nodding everywhere above him; there he may pick his morning grape-fruit at the door; and he need be no plutocrat to have his table graced with those aristocratic fruits of the tropics, the papaya and the alligator-pear. ”

“ Westward from Jacksonville, a railway runs through the pine forests until it reaches the rushing Suwanee River, draining the Okifenokee swamp out to the Gulf, just north of Cedar Key. This stream is best known from the minstrel song, long so popular, of the Old Folks at Home. Beyond it the land rises into the rolling country of Middle Florida, the undulating surface sometimes reaching four hundred feet elevation, and presenting fertile soil and pleasant scenery, with a less tropical vegetation than the Peninsula of Florida. ”

“ Miami is the centre of a farming country in which citrus fruits, especially grape-fruit, pineapples and winter vegetables are raised for northern markets. There is excellent rod-fishing; Spanish and king mackerel and blue-fish are shipped from Miami in large quantities; and in Biscayne Bay there are important sponge fisheries. An alligator “farm” and the Subtropical Laboratory of the U.S. government are points of interest. ”

“ The largest of the latter—the Saint John River—rises far away in the south, frequently expanding during the early part of its course into broad lakes, and in some places closely approaching the Atlantic coast. The southern point of Florida reaches to within twenty-five degrees of the equator, so that the vegetation is of a tropical character. Alligators swarm in the streams and pools; flowering shrubs of rare beauty clothe the banks of every river; and birds innumerable inhabit the forests, lakes, islets sand-banks, and sea-coast. ”

“ The greatest river in the world, then, begins in the vicinity of Key West, Florida. There is on the globe no such stupendous flow of waters. It defies the severest droughts; in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its current sweeps onward more rapidly than the Mississippi or the Amazon and its volume is a thousand times greater. Let us rid our mind of the idea of land. The banks and the bottom of this stupendous river are of cold, whilst its current is of warm, water. The name of it is the Gulf Stream. ”

“ It was only on May 1 that the Nautilus openly resumed its northbound course, after raising the Bahamas at the mouth of Old Bahama Channel. We then went with the current of the sea’s greatest river, which has its own banks, fish, and temperature. I mean the Gulf Stream.
It is indeed a river that runs independently through the middle of the Atlantic, its waters never mixing with the ocean’s waters. It’s a salty river, saltier than the sea surrounding it. Its average depth is 3,000 feet, its average width sixty miles. In certain localities its current moves at a speed of four kilometers per hour. ”

“ Here you embark on an amber-watered lake which is but the river, grown wide and lazy for a time. If you were to ask me for Florida’s most astounding characteristic I might hesitate, but I should eventually decide that it was the great number of fish which frequent its shallow waters. Looking from the Sanford dock as you go down to embark you see the sunny shallows full of schools of bream and in the deeper places, much bigger and a little more wary, other schools of “trout,” as the Floridians insist on calling the big-mouthed bass which swarm in all fresh waters. ”

“ On account of its sand reefs, the east coast has not so many harbours as the west coast. The most important harbours are at Fernandina, St Augustine, and Miami on the E. coast, and at Tampa, Key West and Pensacola on the W. coast.
The soils of Florida have sand as a common ingredient. [1] They may be divided into three classes: the pine lands, which often have a surface of dark vegetable mould, under which is a sandy loam resting on a substratum of clay, marl or limestone—areas of such soil are found throughout the state ”

“ The summits of this range have been but seldom seen by white men, and have never been scaled. The river drains the whole territory, but loses itself in a terrific marsh before its tide reaches the Mexican gulf, toward which it runs. The current is exceedingly rapid; and, after passing for hundreds of miles under the land and under the sea, it unites its submarine torrent near the west end of Cuba, with that of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and thus forms that great oceanic river called the Gulf Stream. ”

“ The dredging operations which had transferred sand from the bottom of Biscayne Bay to the top of Miami Beach had left several unsightly mud banks protruding a few inches from the surface of the bay. Fisher surrounded these mud banks with bulkheads and pumped more mud into them.{181} The result was seven beautiful islands, most of which are already shaded by palm groves and dotted with simple but beautiful homes costing about thirty dollars a square inch. They are easy of access, since they are connected with the mainland or the causeway. ”

“ Indian River, Halifax River, Mosquito Lagoon, and half a dozen rivers, sounds, lagoons, lakes, and inlets on the Atlantic coast of Florida, are different names for the same shallow body of water, separated from the main ocean by a narrow strip of sand, which extends north and south for two hundred miles. Indian River extends from about twenty-five miles north of Titusville to the inlet, a distance of one hundred miles. But Banana River and Mosquito Inlet are separated from it only by Merritt's Island, so that these bodies of water overlap each other. ”

“ In 1910, Miami had a population of 5,471. In 1920 there were about 30,000 people living there. In 1922 there were 40,000. That’s the way things go in Florida. Once let a thing get a foothold, and it grows so rapidly that the general effect is more that of an explosion than a growth.{138}
Grass grows with such enthusiasm in Miami that one can’t merely plant seed and let it grow. If one did that the grass would come in so thick that it would choke itself. What one does is to plant the seed and then, when the seed has sprouted, transplant the spears of grass so that they’re six inches apart. ”