The financier, however, was not perturbed in the least by the cost. The project received his sanction, and a few days later the engineer departed to commence operations. Little time was lost upon the essential preparations, and soon the grade was forcing its way out of Miami towards the most southerly point of the United States. News concerning the enterprise, which up to this point had been nursed in secrecy, now leaked out. The activity around Miami pointed to something unusual being under contemplation. When the object of the extension became known the financial magnate became the butt of widespread ridicule. His ambitious project was christened “Flagler’s Folly”, under which name the railway has since been known colloquially. “Well, there is one thing for which travellers will bless me when they travel by rail over the Keys,” the moving spirit humorously replied to his detractors: “they will never be troubled with dust.” From Miami southwards so far as the eye can reach stretches a dismal tract of swamp where miasma reigns supreme. The Everglades lie below the level of the Atlantic Ocean, and the latter is only prevented from grasping the enormous waterlogged expanse within its ravenous maw by a slender wall of rock which runs right along the coast. But though this barrier resists the incursion of the ocean, at the same time it prevents the imprisoned water on the other side from effecting an escape. The result is that stagnant water, varying from a few inches to several feet in depth, according to the season, spreads over the whole of the depression. It is a huge bog and nothing more, with dank, dense vegetation growing riotously in all directions, forming an ideal home for the alligator, which here is found in large numbers. Some 30 miles of this uninviting marsh confronted the engineers, and until scientific effort discovers some means of reclaiming the country fringing the railway from eternal water, it must remain unproductive. The engineers found this bog difficult to penetrate. Drainage was impossible, and the raising of an embankment, with the ordinary type of implements at command, was out of the question, because it was impossible to secure a solid foundation for their manipulation. For a few miles south of Miami a rocky ridge thrust its hump above the level of the marsh, and as its situation was convenient it was followed to the uttermost limit.