LIVING HISTORY
17
Marcos) and made a long drop down into a moat. With Wildcat
on the loose, the 6eminole 1ation had another inspiring
leader to keep them going.
SERVED COUNTRY UNSELFISHLY
Jesup may have looked like a double-crosser to most folks
back home, but he really was the epitome of the selfsacriÀcing
soldier. He carried out orders at great personal cost and
pressed onward with his thankless task. On horseback and on
foot, he followed the tracks of scattering Seminoles into South
Florida’s uncharted swamps — with all the world against
him. Even the hot, muggy climate and tangled terrain were
Àghting on the 6eminoles· side.
Jesup’s strategy brought him to Fort Pierce, from where
he led his army westward through forbidding marshland to
make a Muncture with yet more troops. And then they headed
southward, looking for one big battle. As they marched
through the region there was something aesthetically arresting
about the primeval wetlands. Motte, the surgeon, reveled
in the exotic scenery. He painted the setting with words,
describing it as a region where “a landscape painter would
delight to dwell.”
“The whole country, since leaving Fort Pierce,” Motte
wrote, “had been one unbroken extent of water and morass
« 1othing can be imagined more lovely and picturesTue
than the thousand little isolated spots, scattered in all directions
over the surface of this immense sheet of water, which
seemed like a placid inland sea shining under a bright sun.
Every possible variety of shape, color, contour, and size were
exhibited in the arrangement of the trees and moss upon
these islets, which, reflected from the limpid and sunny
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