72 TEQUESTA


 Key to botanize and explore.... When night fell, we gathered
 some dead pine wood ... and built a fine fire. After a cold sup-
 per and some yams we tried to rest. The mosquitoes were bad;
 the sharp uneven rock like Banquo' s ghost murdered sleep. The
 sky was overcast, the wind southwest, but we realized a norther
 was coming... a cold, steady rain began to fall. Soaked through,
 but with our blankets wrapped about us, we sat around our
 weakening fire and 'made a night of it....' Congenial men can
 draw very near to each other under such circumstances, and
 although we were cold, wet, and half devoured by mosquitoes,
 though our environment was the dreariest imaginable, the
 memory of that night is one of my very pleasantest.7

 On another trip in a hammock, this time alone, surrounded by
live oaks, gumbo limbos, West Indian cherry, lancewoods, white ilex,
and even some royal palms, Simpson, in Out of Doors in Florida,
observed that:

 Not the slightest sound disturbed me; in fact one of the charms
 of the great forest is its stillness. I sat and fairly drank in the
 wonderful silence and loneliness of the hammock. In such a


Charles T. Simspson readingamong wild vegetaion in thehammockbehind The
Sentinels after hard day of work. (HASF x-287-6)