Miami

“ 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. ”

“ Each Florida city or resort is violently jealous of every other resort or city. The residents of Palm Beach speak sneeringly of Miami as being a bit plebeian. The residents of Miami speak compassionately of Palm Beach, as young and pretty girls speak of decaying beauty. St. Petersburg and Tampa and Miami have little of a favorable nature to say concerning one another. They only unite to resist attacks from resorts outside the state, or to say a few tart words about California. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I must quit for ever the companions and the woods that are dear to me. Nima, the Susquehannocks are a powerful nation, and my father would have them for his friends. He gives his daughter to their prince, but his daughter trembles to look upon the fierce Miami.
Music. Hunters seen winding down the hills; they are met by the women of the village; Miami approaches Pocahontas, and his attendants lay skins at her feet.
Miami. Princess, behold the spoils I bring thee. Our hunters are laden with the deer and the soft furred beaver. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About Miami it is decidedly common, though the green females show themselves ten times as often as the red, blue, and yellow-green males. What a superbly dressed creature the masculine nonpareil is! And he carries himself as if he knew it. ”

“ So often, where there are centers of good work or right thinking and right living—so often and so widely spread will you find traces of Miami, left by her own sons or coming from those secondary sources which sprang from her example and influence, that you are led in grateful surprise to exclaim: "If this be the work of a little college, God bless and prolong the little college! ”

“ One can never tell what is going to turn up in Florida waters. The prospectuses of{197} both winter and summer resorts usually lay it on a little too thick. The Miami prospectuses always sound very much too much. Starting with the bathing-girls on the front cover and ending with the proud fisherman on the back cover, they always look a little too perfect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Guideposts for Florida begin to appear, and heavy touring cars roll past on the way to Miami and Palm Beach. There are some charming wooden churches—the Negro ones being poorer, looking better sacrifices unto God than those of the Whites. ”

“ Then the Miami delegates, two from each tribe, signed a treaty with the Governor of Pennsylvania. Old Britain promised Christopher Gist that the Miami should come to the Logstown council and get their presents from the Governor of Virginia.
Then a herald hurried in to say that peace messengers from the French of Onontio were waiting outside.
The Miami shouted in anger; but King Britain stood up beside the English flag and called:
“Silence! This is no way in which to receive messengers. Let those men be admitted and we will hear what they have to say. Then we shall know what to answer.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ New and spacious as it is, it is often too small to accommodate the thousands of automobiles that hasten out to Miami Beach on hot Sunday afternoons in mid-winter in order that their occupants may obtain an eyeful, as the saying goes of the bathing crowds. The prudish element hasn’t yet been able to make its influence felt at Miami Beach to any noticeable extent. The one-piece bathing suit is heavily displayed by engaging young women, and there are also large numbers of bathing suits which appear to be{184} one-half-piece or even two-fifths-piece. ”

“ Kenneth foresaw experiences before them during the long coast-wise trip.
The voyage up the Hawk Channel to Miami, on Biscayne Bay, seemed long only because of their short supply of food; and when they anchored off that southernmost town on the mainland of Florida, they were ready to tackle anything in the shape of eatables except oatmeal and cocoanuts.
For many, many days the boys had not been able to send word to their people in far off Michigan; nor had they heard from home. At Miami a big batch of mail awaited them; and they at once satisfied a hunger for home news and civilized food. ”

“ On the 36th of September, in the year 1794, a deed was executed in pursuance of the act of 1792, conveying to John C. Symmes that tract of land beginning at the mouth of the Great Miami river, and extending from thence along the river Ohio to the mouth of the Little Miami river, bounded on the south by the river Ohio, on the west by the Great Miami, on the east by the Little Miami, and on the north by a parallel of latitude to be run from the Great Miami to the Little Miami, so as to comprehend the quantity of 311,682 acres of land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a few hours’ pause at Daytona, I went right on to Miami, which was, till lately, the terminus of the railway—366 miles from Jacksonville.
179Undoubtedly this margin of the great peninsula—this Riviera of the United States—has a charm of its own. Physically, however, nothing could be less like the Riviera. Here there are no Alps, no Esterels. There is not even a molehill that can be magnified into a mountain. It is a region of broad skies and broad waters, green scrub, and leagues on leagues of smooth, white beach, with the blue ocean curling idly over it. ”

“ Concerning the route and the road, little was known. At the outset of the campaign St. Clair in his instructions was ordered “to appoint some skillful person to make actual surveys of your march, to be corrected, if the case will admit of it, by [Pg 131] proper astronomical observations, and of all posts you may occupy.” [99] The first settlers in the Miami purchase [100] had spread inland a few miles at this time; one settlement, Ludlow’s Station, was made five miles up Mill Creek and another twelve miles up the Great Miami. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The face of the country is exceedingly rocky, rocky beyond anything that you will imagine, but the climate is pleasant and healthy, and the mosquitoes not at all troublesome during the winter months. The Miami and the country adjacent upon the bay is similar in all respects to the Perrine claim, probably not quite so rocky, but my favorite place upon the bay is the ADDISON place upon the Perrine grant. ”

“ FLORIDA
[82]
[83] FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MIAMI
It is Sunday, the 19th of January. A week ago I was sitting before a fire, watching the snow fall outside, in winter-bound Massachusetts. This forenoon I am reclining in the shade of a cocoanut palm, looking across the smooth blue waters of Biscayne Bay to a line of woods, I know not how many miles distant, broken in the midst by a narrow cut or inlet (Norris Cut, a passer-by tells me it is called) , through which is to be seen the open Atlantic. The air is motionless, the sky cloudless, the temperature ideal. ”

“ The bootleggers are very active in Miami; and the Miami bootlegger is a very superior{187} sort of bootlegger. He comes around to his patrons each day with long lists of wet goods and the prices, and gives the names of prominent bankers as references for his reliability. The prices seem pleasingly low to northerners who have been paying one hundred and twenty dollars a case for stuff that is only fit for cleaning the nicotine out of pipe stems. The bootleggers get their wares in Bimini, which is a small island only a few miles off the Florida coast. ”

“ Rival champions of the east and the west coasts of Florida may fortify themselves by a study of the tables. It may be noted that Miami and Tampa have the same midday temperature, but that Tampa has a greater range, the night temperature on the average falling five degrees lower than Miami ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are successful at Palm Beach because the Palm Beachers find them useful things in which to kill time. But at Miami Beach one has no time for time-killing. There is something doing every minute. There is golf and tennis and polo and bathing and dancing and seeing the bootlegger, or rushing over to town to see a movie or an orange grove or another bootlegger or something, and if one tried to get around in a wheel-chair, he’d come down with nervous prostration in a couple of days. ”

“ The Miami River is narrow, silent, and slow-flowing, with rocky banks. There are only three families here, but the Miami River bottom-lands are full of people, owing to vegetable farms, which make this an important shipping-point. ”

“ If no gambling casinos run in Miami this winter they will next winter. Meanwhile, those who want to gamble will fly to Havana, where the same mob operates the wheels and crap games. Anyway, you can still bet on the nags in Miami, clean-up or no. At this writing, at least two fully equipped casinos are operating in the area. ”

“ 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. ”