The Sage of Biscayne Bay 69


a public park, since it was considered one of the finest collections of
sub-tropical flora in the world. The Simpsons were in favor of the
Rotary Club's intentions, but for reasons unknown the idea appar-
ently did not pass the suggestion stage. As late as 1944, the city of
Miami considered purchasing the entire Simpson property and turning
it into a park, but the plans fell through.34 Of the private gardens, his
and those of the other significant plant explorers and naturalists of
this early period, only the Kampong, the Fairchild estate in Coconut
Grove, is still intact and is open to the public for special guided tours.
 Simpson was fifty-three when he finally settled into Florida for
good. Tall and slender, he was distinguished-looking, with a white
moustache and beard, except for his style of dress, typically old
outdoor clothes. In Miami U.S.A., Helen Muir describes Simpson
"wearing his faded khaki trousers, torn shirt and canvas shoes, car-
rying a stained bamboo staff, conducting a 'wading trip' to Big Cypress
Swamp for nearly one hundred embryonic botanists."" The reader
of his South Florida nature books, knowing Simpson as a tireless,
nonstop explorer, can easily imagine how he would have looked. In
a letter written to a friend in 1929, Simpson noted:

 I probably have made a hundred trips to the lower part of the
 state and the Keys; have repeatedly tramped the latter from Key
 Largo to Key West. Sometimes I carried a little tent and about
 as often went without, camping out alone, have been eaten with
 swarms of insects, have almost frozen and then been burned
 with heat. Once I went 38 hours without food and have almost
 perished with thirst. But there was a charm, an enticement about
 it all and I could never give it up.6

 Then there was the scorn of various locals Conchs (water people)
and Crackers (inland dwellers), who took him for a dangerous desperado
instead of a famished and exhausted naturalist and denied him food or
shelter. Nixon Smiley told the story of how Simpson was once almost
arrested as a vagrant when he returned to Miami at the end of an exploring
trip, tired and dirty, with an old canvas bag of plants and shells over his
shoulder.37
 'The Old Man' divided his energies between gardening at the
Sentinels and exploring the wilds, somehow getting himself indoors to
work with his collection of over 10,000 shells, which was kept on the