In 1894, several years before the railroad opened up South Florida, Charles Richard Dodge wrote about his visit to the bottom of the Florida penensula. As part of his journey, he took a boat into the still largely unknown Everglades:

I had always associated with the term "Everglades," on the map of Florida, the picture of a low-lying, dank, dark, malarial swamp, the abode of venomous creeping things; a morass where the rank vegetation luxuriating in decay formed shadowy dells, on entering which one might leave hope behind.

But instead I found an inland lake, of drinkable water, lying high up in the sunshine, while stretching away toward sunset as far as eye could reach was only a vision of blue waters, green isles, and vast areas of sedge-grass or reeds, moving in the balmy breeze like ocean billows. . .

The water in many places is so shallow that if it could be drawn off for a depth of two feet, I fancy the Everglades would resemble a vast prairie filled with little lakes and winding streams.

Dodge's latter statement was a sentiment shared by many at the time, and was the impetus for Governor Napoleon B. Broward's Everglades drainage project little more than a decade later.

(Excerpt from Charles Richard Dodge, "Subtropical Florida," in Tales of Old Florida, edited by Frank Oppel and Tony Meisel, p. 25.)