“Not far, but I can help you some and you’ll find out the rest for yourselves.  You’ll have to.  Then Johnny savvies Injun talk pretty well and you’re sure to run across them or their camps.  And he’ll likely know them, and if Ned’s anywhere in their country or has been there they’ll sure know it.  You will leave this bay by way of Turner’s River, which will take you into the most tangled up part of the Ten Thousand Islands.  You will go through rivers and bays, around keys, along twisting channels and up narrow, crooked creeks.  You’ll be lost from the start, but you don’t want to think of that.  Just make your course average southeast for the first fifty miles, which you ought to cover in three days.  Then hunt for some creek coming from the east.  It will be a little one, you will have to drag your canoe, perhaps for miles, under branches that close over the creek and you may have to carry your canoe and pack your dunnage over prairie land.  In a day you ought to strike the Everglades.  Then turn to the north and look for Indian trails, which you want to follow whenever they lead anywhere near where you are trying to go.  They will help you to dodge the worst of the saw-grass which is likely to be your greatest trouble.

“Keep along the border line between the Everglades and the cypress country and you will probably hit Osceola’s camp.  He’s about the whitest Seminole in the State and he’ll help you all he can.  Remember, when in an Indian camp, that their brand of politeness is different from a white man’s, though it may be just as sincere.  If you’re hungry, and don’t see a spoon lying around, just dip your hand in the family pot, if you can eat that way.  If you want to sleep lie down on the nearest unoccupied bunk.  If you make a mistake they won’t tell you of it.

“Now, remember above all things, that you mustn’t get rattled.  That’s the biggest risk you’ll run in this country.  If you get separated from Johnny and think about being lost and get excited and begin to walk fast, or run, stop right there and sit down and don’t go on till you’re perfectly cool, not if you have to camp right where you are for a night, or a day, or both.  Just as soon as you have taught yourself that when you get excited you have got to sit still for an hour or two, you’ll stop getting excited.  There is mighty little real danger where you are going.  There are bear and panther, but the only thing on earth that’s a bigger coward than a bear is a panther.  People from your country think the alligator is a dangerous brute.  I have lived among them, killed them, dealt in their hides, of which I have shipped north the biggest consignments sent from this coast, since before you were born, and I never knew of a human being having been harmed by one.  This deep river running in front of my door used to be full of them, and there are some there now, but my whole family of children swim in it almost every day without thought of danger.  Only two weeks ago Johnny killed a ten-foot ’gator