The Gulf Quotes

“Around their mounds, they dug scores of miles of watercourses on the order of Venetian canals; one allowed them to punt their craft two and a half miles across Pine Island between the sound and Matlacha Pass, saving themselves from a ten-mile paddle around either end of the island.”
― Jack Emerson Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“Walden Pond into large chunks of global commodity prompted Henry David Thoreau to quip, “Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well.” Frozen New England gave the South one of its symbols of hospitality, ice tea.10”
― Jack Emerson Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“Thirty-three major rivers flow into the Gulf, and Europeans had learned to access most, yet not the grandest river, not the tenth largest in the world.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“Cortés proved the shrewder of the two. As he did with the Aztecs, he did with his Castilian rival: he defeated Narváez’s larger force with a smaller one.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“Álvarez de Pineda’s”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“As did every expedition leader, Álvarez de Pineda surely kept a log. In it would have been the only first-person observations of native cultures of the upper Gulf at the time of contact. According to secondhand accounts, he came across as many as forty native groups, which would have exhibited the fullness of aboriginal life, thousands of years old, before the sweeping carnage of European pathogens, biological imports transported on every ship crossing the Atlantic”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“En route, he identified a few rivers, including what seems to be the Mississippi (a river he named Espiritu Santo, after “Holy Spirit”), which to European nations would become the most important river in North America.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“Following the coast northward, he named the terra firma off his port side La Florida in recognition of the Easter season, known in Spain as Pascua Florida, “feast of flowers.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“William D. Collier was not related to the advertising millionaire Barron Collier, who later became the largest landowner in the area and state, and namesake of Collier County, Florida.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“But they drained wetlands and cleared dry land for their townships, which were individual and meticulously planned developments.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“With the men standing between five feet eight and five feet ten, they were inches taller than the average Spanish soldier—taller than Cushing. The twice repulsion of a formidable conquistador and the dispossession of his dreams made the Calusa larger-than-life figures in European New World mythology.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“With the men standing between five feet eight and five feet ten, they were inches taller than the average Spanish soldier—taller than Cushing.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“Warriors armed themselves with spears made of alligator and fish bones, and stingray spines, which also made good cutting edges and gaffs for domestic use. Fish harpoons doubled as war spears. Shells were used as dippers, spoons, bowls, hammers, awls, and digging and hacking tools. Big spiky conch shells were strapped to the heads of war clubs.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“for the Atlantic is less “place” than entity, bearishly expansive and disengaged.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“It is the wholeness of living things, the dynamic energy moving from sun to plant to animal, a ceaseless flow that in the long scheme of things is far more important than mineral deposits to our future existence.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“For another, no person or place is the sum of a single tragedy or continuing ones.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“recent. Like all of Homer’s Homosassa paintings, Shell Heap conveys an intimate and vital connection linking humankind, nature, and history. I call this triad Homer’s truth, and it lies at the heart of this book.”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“In one such painting, Shell Heap, sabal”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea

“WINSLOW HOMER”
― Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea