Nicky, and Mr. Neale, could readily see how difficult it would be to cut a way through: the edges of the blades could inflict such deep gashes in the hands that only by the most careful work could one cut at them, and then only in heavy gloves which would, in a short time, be cut through. Even boots, Brownie said, were not thick enough to withstand much work in passing through the grass.
“In places,” he added, “we had to wade and push our canoes—we had two specially built canoes, and we made a survey while we crossed. The grass tears at leather and rubber boots and in almost no time it gets through. Look across! See, about half way, there is a long clump of grass—almost like land! Well, it’s just grass, and it is so long and so thick that it took us a couple of weeks, going South, to get down around it. In covering five miles straight across we made more than forty miles of travel. You see, we’d go fifty feet and run into a dead end, or into a bend that took us to grass; then we’d have to go back and search out another way. Back and forth, around and back, through and back, we went. I tell you, it was no lark!”
They were rested, and with water enough to float their dory, they turned her prow toward the distant line of trees which marked the Big Cypress Swamp and sculled carefully, winding along the comparatively open way at the edge of the rim of the ’Glades.
The Everglades are really a sort of inland sea, very shallow and thickly studded with clumps of the terrible, high grass. Around the table land of the shallow sea, which rises gradually toward its center line, something like a low crest of a long underwater hill, there is a rim of somewhat higher rock which keeps the water in.
The water seems to be replenished by streams or springs coming up through fissures in the rock; its drainage is to the open sea and the bays inside the outer reefs, through rivers like the Shark and the Harney on the West side, and the Miami on the Eastern slope.
Sculling carefully, and keeping a sharp lookout, the trio in the light-draught dory progressed steadily as the sun rose higher. It was still very early.
“I doubt if the hi-jackers are awake yet,” said Brownie. “They probably feel that they are well hid.”