Journey to the Wilderness: Two Travelers in Florida, 1696-1774

The eastern coast of the State of Florida is today heavily populated. From Jupiter Inlet north to the Georgia state line, vacation resorts and permanent communities front the Atlantic all the way. It is not easy to visualize this shore as wilderness through which a traveler could make his way only with the greatest difficulty, a cruel wilderness of burning desert and freezing exposure, of lacerating thorns and shells, and of near starvation. It is still harder to imagine the traveler on this coast beset, not only by natural perils, but also by the menace of hostile, even cannibalistic Indian tribes. Yet that is the situation in which Jonathan Dickinson, author of one of the earliest of Florida travel narratives, found himself in 1696