To-day this lure led me far out on the old Government trail which is now, strange to relate, one road to Palm Beach. This is one rarely traversed by the butterflies of fashion. You may see these gliding by on the Pullman limited, looking with road-weary, unseeing eyes through the thick glass of the windows. The yachts of others take them down the sparkling waters of the Indian River, but now and then an automobile enthusiast, lured south by the good trails through Ormond and Daytona and Rockledge, then bewildered by the vast sand depths of the roads below and finally learning with sinking heart at Fort Pierce that there is no bridge across the St. Lucie nearer its mouth, swings westward into the limitless prairie and follows this old Government trail which swings out from the noise of breakers somewhere above the head waters of the St. Lucie, keeps for a dozen to a score of miles to the westward of the seacoast, and marches steadily southward to Miami. I doubt if the country along its two shallow ruts is any less wild to-day than it was in the days of Osceola. Except for those narrow ruts which you may not see two rods away man has left the region unmarked. You see there what Ponce de Leon may have seen. A mile west of the St. Lucie you still carry the settlements with you. Here are ditches, that first requisite of Florida farming, and wire fences, which come next. Here are comfortable houses, set high on heartwood posts, and here too are groves of grapefruit trees, the great golden globes weighing the tough branches with their glossy, dark-green foliage to the ground. Here are dogs that bark and cocks that crow and all the simple, genial activities of farm life. You [Illustration: A Seminole village deep in the flat woods of Southern Florida] go your mile and with the houses at your back you stand within the untamed wilderness. A mile farther and you may look which way you will and you are lost from all touch with man. But before you make the mile you will pause and turn, for there, upside down upon a tree, but with an arrow pointing due south, is a sign which says, “To Miami”. The last warning, guiding word of civilization is humorous and you plod southward into the primeval with a laugh.