Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/334

 CHAPTER XXII

INTO THE MIRACULOUS SEA

Flying southward by rail from Palm Beach one immediately leaves behind tropical gardens and enters semi-arid wastes. The contrast is most vivid. The traveler feels like Es-Sindibad of old who thus was transported by magic, or perchance by an Afreet or the talons of a roc, from king's gardens to deserts, and anon back again. The dream of yesterday was of stately palms, of richly massed foliage plants, of broad-petaled flowers tiptoeing for a butterfly flight, of softly perfumed breezes and man and maid in rich garments wandering joyously among it all. The reality of today is sand and saw palmetto and dreary wind-bowed, stunted pines, and dust and desolation.

Only by thus plunging back into bleakness can you realize what man and climate have done, working together, to redeem the wilderness from itself. By and by the arid levels of sand change to equally arid levels of rock. The coral formation which is the backbone of lowest Florida here rises to the surface, showing everywhere in mi