The morning sun was shining brightly as I pulled steadily along the coast, passing Warrior Creek six miles from my starting-point off the shores of Spring Creek.  About this locality the rocky bottom was exchanged for one of sand.  Having rowed eleven miles, a small sandy island, one-third of a mile from shore, offered a resting-place at noon; and there I dined upon bread and cold canned beef.  A mile further to the eastward a sandy point of the marsh extended into the Gulf.  A dozen oaks, two palmettos, and a shanty in ruins, upon this bleak territory, were the distinctive features which marked it as Jug Island, though the firm ground is only an island rising out of the marshes.  Sandy points jutting from the lowlands became more numerous as I progressed on my route.  Four miles from Jug Island the wide debouchure of Blue Creek came into view, with an unoccupied fishing-shanty on each side of its mouth.

Crossing at dusk to the east shore of the creek, I landed in shoal water on a sandy strand, when the wind arose to a tempest, driving the water on to the land; and had it not been for my watch-tackle, the little duck-boat must have sought other quarters.  As it was, she was soon high and dry on a beach; and once beneath her sheltering hatch, I slept soundly, regardless of the screeching winds and dashing seas around me.

Before the sun had gilded the waters the next morning, the wind subsided, my breakfast was cooked and eaten, and the boat’s prow pointed towards the desolate, almost uninhabited, wilderness of Deadman’s Bay.  The low tide annoyed me somewhat, but when the wind arose it was fair, and assisted all day in my progress.  The marine grasses, upon which the turtles feed, covered the bottom; and many curious forms were moving about it in the clear water.  Six miles from Blue Creek I found a low grassy island of several acres in extent, and while in its vicinity frequently grounded; but as the water was shoal, it was an easy matter to jump overboard and push the lightened boat over the reefs.

About noon the wind freshened, and forced me nearer to the shore.  As I crossed channel-ways, between shoals, the porpoises, which were pursuing their prey, frequently got aground, and presented a curious appearance working their way over a submarine ridge by turning on their sides and squirming like eels.  By two o’clock P. M., the wind forced me into the bight of Dead-man’s Bay.  The gusts were so furious that prudence demanded a camp, and it was eagerly sought for in the region of ominous name and gloomy associations.  I had been told that there was but one living man in this bay, which is more than twenty miles wide.  This settler lived two miles up the Steinhatchee River, which flows into the bight of Deadman’s Bay.