It was five a.m.; the sun shone brilliantly already, and the thermometer indicated 84 deg., but fresh sea breezes moderated this excessive heat.
Barbicane, on leaving Tampa Town, went down south and followed the coast to Alifia Creek.

This small river falls into Hillisboro Bay, twelve miles below Tampa Town.

Barbicane and his escort followed its right bank going up towards the east.

The waves of the bay disappeared behind an inequality in the ground, and the Floridian country was alone in sight.
Florida is divided into two parts; the one to the north, more populous and less abandoned, has Tallahassee for capital, and Pensacola, one of the principal marine arsenals of the United States; the other, lying between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, is only a narrow peninsula, eaten away by the current of the Gulf Stream--a little tongue of land lost amidst a small archipelago, which the numerous vessels of the Bahama Channel double continually.

It is the advanced sentinel of the gulf of great tempests.