Kitabı oxu: «The Ancient City»
IN TWO PARTS. – PART I
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Vol. L – no. 295 – 1
“The world is far away; the broad pine-barrens
Like deserts roll between;
Be then our mother – take us for thy children,
O dear St. Augustine!”
It was a party of eight, arranged by Aunt Diana. She is only my aunt by marriage, and she had with her a bona fide niece, Iris Carew, a gay school-girl of seventeen, while I, Niece Martha, as Aunt Diana always calls me, own to full forty years. Professor Macquoid went for two reasons – his lungs, and the pleasure of imparting information. It was generally understood that Professor Macquoid was engaged upon a Great Work. John Hoffman went for his own amusement; with us, because he happened to sail on the same steamer. He had spent several winters in Florida, hunting and fishing, and was in his way something of a Thoreau, without Thoreau’s love of isolation. Mr. Mokes went because Aunt Diana persuaded him, and Sara St. John because I made her. These, with Miss Sharp, Iris Carew’s governess, composed our party.
We left New York in a driving January snow-storm, and sailed three days over the stormy Atlantic, seeing no land from the winter desolation of Long Branch until we entered the beautiful harbors of Charleston and Savannah, a thousand miles to the south. The New York steamer went no farther; built to defy Fear, Lookout, and the terrible Hatteras, she left the safe, monotonous coast of Georgia and Upper Florida to a younger sister, that carried us on to the south over a summer sea, and at sunrise one balmy morning early in February entered the broad St. Johns, whose slow coffee-colored tropical tide, almost alone among rivers, flows due north for nearly its entire course of four hundred miles, a peculiarity expressed in its original name, given by the Indians, Il-la-ka – “It hath its own way, is alone, and contrary to every other.”
“The question is,” said Sara St. John, “is there any thing one ought to know about these banks?”
“ ‘Ye banks and bray-aas of bon-onny Doo-oon,’ ” chanted Iris, who, fresh as a rose-bud with the dew on it, stood at the bow, with the wind blowing her dark wavy hair back from her lovely face; as for her hat, it had long ago found itself discarded and tied to the railing for safe-keeping.
“The fresh-water shell heaps of the St. Johns River, East Florida,” began the Professor, “should be – should be somewhere about here.” He peered around, but could see nothing with his near-sighted eyes.
“Iris,” called Aunt Diana through the closed blinds of her state-room, “pray put on your hat. Miss Sharp! Where is Miss Sharp?”
“Here,” answered the governess, emerging reluctantly from the cabin, muffled in a brown veil. Sunrise enthusiasm came hard to her; she knew that hers was not the beauty that shines at dawn, and she had a great longing for her matutinal coffee. Miss Sharp’s eyes were faintly blue, she had the smallest quantity of the blondest hair disposed in two ringlets on each side of her face, a shadowy little figure, indistinct features, and a complexion that turned aguish on the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, equal to the emergency, she immediately superintended the tying down of Iris’s little round hat, and then, with her heelless prunella gaiters fully revealed by the strong wind, and her lisle-threaded hands struggling to repress the fluttering veil, she stood prepared to do her duty by the fresh-water shell heaps or any other geological formation. John Hoffman was walking up and down smoking a Bohemian-looking pipe. “There is only one item, Miss St. John, in all the twenty-five miles between the mouth of the river and Jacksonville,” he said, pausing a moment near the bench where Sara and I sat as usual together. “That headland opposite is St. Johns Bluff, the site of old Fort Caroline, where, in 1564, a colony of French Huguenots established themselves, and one year later were massacred, men, women, and children, by the cut-throat Menendez, who took the trouble to justify his deed by an inscription hung up over the bodies of his victims, ‘No por Franceses, sino por Luteranos’ – ‘Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans.’ It is a comfort to the unregenerate mind to know that three years later a Frenchman sailed over and took his turn at a massacre, politely putting up a second inscription, ‘Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, thieves, and murderers.’ ”
“That was certainly poetic justice,” I said. “Who would imagine that such a drama had been enacted on that innocent hillside? What terrible days they were!”
“Terrible, perhaps, but at least far more earnest as well as more picturesque than our commonplace era,” said Sara, with her indifferent air. She was generally either indifferent or defiant, and Aunt Diana regarded her with disfavor as “a young person who wrote for the magazines.” Sara was twenty-eight years old, a woman with pale cheeks, weary eyes, a slight frown on her forehead, clear-cut features, and a quantity of pale golden hair drawn rigidly back and braided close around the head with small regard for fashion’s changes. I had met her in a city boarding-house, and, liking her in spite of herself, we grew into friendship; and although her proud independence would accept nothing from me save liking, I was sometimes able to persuade her into a journey, which she always enjoyed notwithstanding the inevitable descriptive article which she declared lurked behind every bush and waved a banner of proof-sheets at her from every sunshiny hill.
At Jacksonville the St. Johns bends to the south on its long course through the chain of lakes and swamps that leads to the mysterious Okeechobee land, a terra, or rather aqua incognita, given over to alligators and unending lies. The last phrase was added by Miss Sharp, who laboriously wrote down the Okeechobee stories current on the St. Johns, about buried cities, ruins of temples on islands, rusty convent bells, and the like, only to have them all demolished by the stern researches of the Professor. The Professor was not romantic.
“A buried city on the brim
Of Okeechobee was to him
A lie, and nothing more!”
We found Jacksonville a thriving, uninteresting brick-and-mortar town, with two large hotels, from whence issued other tourists and invalids, with whom we sailed up the river as far as Enterprise, and then on a smaller steamer up the wild, beautiful Ocklawaha, coming back down the St. Johns again as far as Tocoi, where, with the clear consciences of tourists who have seen every thing on the river, we took the mule train across the fifteen miles to the sea, arriving toward sunset at the shed and bonfire which form the railroad dépôt of St. Augustine. This shed has never been seen open. What it contains no one knows; but it has a platform where passengers are allowed to stand before their turn comes to climb into the omnibus. The bonfire is lighted by the waiting darkies as a protection against the evening damps. But they builded better than they knew, those innocent contrabands; their blazing fire only mildly typifies the hilarious joy of the Ancient City over the coming of its annual victim, the gold-bearing Northern tourist.
“But where is the town?” demanded Aunt Diana.
“ ‘Cross de ribber, mistis. De omnibuster waitin’,” replied a colored official, armed with a bugle. John Hoffman, having given directions as to his trunks, started off on foot through the thicket, with an evening cigar for company. Aunt Diana, however, never allowed desertion from her camp, whether of regulars or volunteers. She had her eye upon Mokes; she knew he was safe; so she called after the retreating figure, “Mr. Hoffman! Mr. Hoffman! We shall not know where to go without you.”
“St. Augustine Hotel,” replied Hoffman, over his shoulder.
“But you?”
“Oh, I never ride in that omnibus;” and the tall figure disappeared among the trees. He was gone; but Mokes remained, eyes and all. Mokes had large eyes; in fact very large, and pale green; but his fortune was large also, and Aunt Diana had a prophetic soul. Was not Iris her dear sister’s child? So she marshaled us into the omnibus, which started off across the thicket, through the ever-present and never-mended mud hole, and out into a straight road leading toward the town through the deep white sand, which, logged over with the red legs of the saw-palmetto, forms the cheerful soil of Eastern Florida. The road was built on a causeway over a river and its attendant salt marshes; on the east side we could see two flags and the two spires of the city rising above the green.
“What river is this?” asked Aunt Diana, as we rolled over a red bridge.
“The San Sebastian,” replied Miss Sharp, reading slowly from her guide-book in the fading light. “ ‘After three hours and one-half of this torture the exhausted tourist finds himself at the San Sebastian River, where a miserable ferry conveys him, more dead than alive, to the city of St. Augustine.’ ”
“But here is no ferry,” I said.
“The ‘exhausted tourist,’ however, is here,” observed Sara, wearily.
“The guide-book is at least so far correct that we may reasonably conclude this to be the St. Sebastian – so called, I presume, from the mythical saint of that name,” remarked the Professor, peering out over his spectacles.
“Allow me,” said Miss Sharp, eagerly producing a second small volume from her basket. “This saint was, I believe, thrown into a well – no, that isn’t it. He was cast into a dungeon, and rescued by – by flying dragons – ”
“Oh no, Miss Sharp,” said Iris, as the baffled governess wrestled with the fine print. “Sebastian was the one noted for his arrows; don’t you remember the picture in my hand-book?”
Leaving the causeway, the omnibus entered the town through a gate of foliage, great pride-of-India-trees mingling their branches over the street for some distance, forming a green arched way whose vista made beautiful the entrance to the Ancient City, like the shaded pathway that led to the lovely land of Beulah in the old pictures of Pilgrim’s Progress. On each side we could see a residence back among the trees – one of stone, large and massive, with an orange grove behind, the golden fruit gleaming through the glossy foliage, and protected by a picturesque hedge of Spanish-bayonets; the other a wide house surrounded by piazzas overhung with ivy and honeysuckle, a garden filled with roses and every variety of flower, gray moss drooping from the trees at the gate, and a roof painted in broad stripes which conveyed a charming suggestion of coolness, as though it were no roof at all, but only a fresh linen awning over the whole, suited to the tropical climate. Sara said this, and added that she was sure there were hammocks there too, hanging somewhere in shady places.
“Really, very meritorious,” remarked Aunt Diana, inspecting the houses through her glasses, and bestowing upon them, as it were, her metropolitan benediction.
In the mean while the colored official was gayly sounding his bugle, and our omnibus rolled into the heart of the city – a small square, adorned with a monument. We noticed the upturned faces of the people as we passed; they were all counting. “One, two, three – only seven in all,” said a young girl, with the beautiful hopeless hectic on her cheek. “One, two – seven, only seven,” said a gentleman leaning on the railing near the post-office, with the weary invalid attitude we knew so well, having seen it all along the St. Johns. We learned afterward that one of the daily occupations of the invalids of St. Augustine is to watch this omnibus come in, and count the passengers, invariably announcing the number with a triumphant “only,” as much as to say, “Aha! old town!” thus avenging themselves for their enforced stay. It makes no difference how many come; the number may be up in the hundreds, but still the invalids bring out their “only,” as though they had confidently expected thousands.
“Oh, the water, the blue water!” cried Iris, as we turned down toward the harbor. “Shall I not sail upon you, water? Yea, many a time will I!”
“Are you fond of aquatic excursions, Mr. Mokes?” inquired Aunt Diana, taking out her vinaigrette. “What an overpowering marshy odor!”
“Oh, the dear salt, the delicious salt breath of the sea!” murmured Sara, leaning out with a tinge of color in her cheeks.
No, Mokes was not fond of aquatic excursions in the sort of craft they had about here: if he had his yacht, now!
“Voilà,” exclaimed Iris, “an officer! ‘Ah, ah, que j’aime un militaire, j’aime un militaire, j’aime un – ’ ”
“Iris,” interrupted Aunt Di, “pray do not sing here in the street.”
“Oh, aunt, you stopped me right on the top note,” said Iris, glancing down the street after the uniform.
Arrived at the hotel, Aunt Diana began inspecting rooms. Sara wished to go to one of the boarding-houses, and John Hoffman, who met us on the piazza, proposed his. “I have staid there several times,” he said. “The Sabre-boy waits on the table, and a wild crane lives in the back-yard.”
“The crane, by all means,” said Sara, gathering together her possessions. I preferred to be with Sara; so the three of us left the hotel for Hospital Street, passing on our way Artillery Lane, both names belonging to the British occupancy of the venerable little city.
“This is the Plaza,” said John, as we crossed the little square; “the monument was erected in 1812, in honor of the adoption of a Spanish constitution. The Spanish constitution, as might have been expected, died young; but St. Augustine, unwilling to lose its only ornament for any such small matter as a revolution away over in Spain, compromised by taking out the inscribed tablets and keeping the monument. They have since been restored as curiosities. Castelar ought to come over and see them.”
The house on Hospital Street was a large white mansion, built of coquina, with a peaked roof and overhanging balcony. We knocked, and a tall colored youth opened the door.
“The ‘Sabre,’ ” said John, gravely introducing him.
“Why ‘Sabre?’ ” I said, as we waited for our hostess in the pleasant parlor, adorned with gray moss and tufted grasses; “to what language does the word belong?”
“Child language,” replied John. “There was a little girl here last year, who, out of the inscrutable mysteries of a child’s mind, evolved the fancy for calling him ‘the Sabre-boy.’ Why, nobody knew. His real name is Willfrid, but gradually we all fell into the child’s fancy, until every body called him the Sabre-boy, and he himself gravely accepted the title.”
A tap at the window startled us. “The crane,” said John, throwing open the blind. “He too has come to have a look at you.”
An immense gray bird, standing nearly five feet high on his stilt-like legs, peered solemnly at us for some moments, and then stalked away with what seemed very like a sniff of disdain.
“He does not like our looks,” said Sara.
“He takes his time; not for him any of the light friendships of an hour,” replied John. “Cranie is a bird of unlimited aspirations, and both literary and æsthetic tastes; he has been discovered turning over with his bill the leaves of Tennyson’s poems left lying on the window-sill; he invariably plucks the finest roses in the garden; and he has been seen walking on the sea-wall alone in the moonlight, meditating, no doubt, on the vanities of mankind, with whom he is compelled reluctantly to associate.”
“Do you hear the sound of the breakers, Martha?” said Sara, waking me up in the middle of the night. We had the balconied room up stairs, and the sound of the distant surf came in through the open window in the intense stillness of the night. “It makes me feel young again,” murmured my companion; but I fell asleep and heard no more.
Before breakfast, which is always late in Florida, John Hoffman took us to see a wonderful rose-tree.
“You must have sprays of bloom by the side of your coffee-cups,” he said, “and then you will realize that you are really ‘away down upon the Swannee Ribber.’ ”
“Do you mean to tell me that the Suwannee is in ambush somewhere about here?” began Sara, in her lead-pencil voice. She always declared that her voice took a scratching tone when she asked a manuscript question.
“Not directly here, seeing that it flows into the Gulf of Mexico, but it is in Florida, and therefore will do for melodious comparisons. You will hear that song often enough, Miss St. John; it is the invariable resource of all the Northern sailing parties on the inlet by moonlight. What the Suwannee means by keeping itself hidden away over in the western part of the State I can not imagine. I am sure we Northerners for years have mentioned that ‘dar’s whar our hearts am turning ebber,’ in every key known to music.”
“The tune has a sweet melody of its own,” I said. “Nilsson herself sang it as an encore last winter.”
We walked out St. George Street, the principal avenue of the Ancient City, with the proud width of fifteen feet; other streets turning off to the right and the left were not more than ten and twelve feet wide. The old Spaniards built their coquina houses close together, directly upon the narrow streets, so that from their overhanging balconies on opposite sides they could shake hands with each other if so disposed. I do not think they were so disposed; probably they were more disposed to stab each other, if all accounts are true; but the balconies were near enough for either purpose. They had gardens, too, those old Dons, gardens full of fig, orange, guava, and pomegranate trees, adorned with fountains and flowers; but the garden was behind the house, and any portion of it on the street was jealously guarded by a stone wall almost as high as the house. These walls remain even now the most marked feature of the St. Augustine streets.
“What singular ideas!” I said. “One would suppose that broad shaded streets and houses set far back among trees would be the natural resource of this tropical climate.”
“On the contrary, Miss Martha, the Spaniards thought that their narrow walled-in streets would act like so many flues to suck in every current of air, while their overhanging balconies would cast a more reliable shade than any tree.”
“There is something in that,” said Sara. “What a beautiful garden!”
“Yes; that is the most picturesque garden in St. Augustine, in my opinion,” said John. “Notice those two trees; they are date-palms. Later in the spring the star-jasmine covers the back of the house with such a profusion of flowers that it becomes necessary to close the windows to keep out the overpowering sweetness. That little street at the corner is Treasury Street, and part of the walls and arches of this house belonged to the old Spanish Treasury Buildings.”
A few blocks beyond, and the houses grew smaller; little streets with odd names branched off – St. Hypolita, Cuna, Spanish, and Tolomato – all closely built up, and inhabited by a dark-eyed, olive-skinned people, who regarded us with calm superiority as we passed.
“All this quarter is Minorca Town,” said John, “and these people are the descendants of the colonists brought from the Greek islands, from Corsica, and Minorca, in 1767, by a speculative Englishman, Dr. Turnbull. Originally there were fourteen hundred of them, and Turnbull settled them on a tract of land sixty miles south of here, near Mosquito Inlet, where, bound by indentures, they remained nine years cultivating indigo and sugar, and then rising against the tyranny of their governor, they mutinied and came here in a body. Land was assigned to them, and they built up all this north quarter, where their descendants now live, as you see, in tranquil content, with no more idea of work, as a Northerner understands the word, than so many oysters in their own bay.”
“The Greek islands, did you say?” asked Sara. “Is it possible that I see before me any of the relatives of Sappho, she of ‘the Isles of Greece – the Isles of Greece?’ ”
“Maybe,” said John. “You will see some dark almond-shaped eyes, now and then a classical nose, often a mass of Oriental black hair; but unfortunately, so far, I have never seen the attractions united in the same person. Sometimes, however, on Sunday afternoons, you will meet young girls walking together on the Shell Road, with roses in their glossy hair, and as their dark eyes meet yours, you are reminded of Italy.”
“I have never been in Italy,” said Sara, shortly.
The reflection of an inward smile crossed John Hoffman’s face.
“But where is the rose-tree?” I said.
“Here, madam. Do you see that little shop with the open window? Notice the old man sitting within at the forge. He is a fine old Spanish gentleman and lock-smith, and my very good friend. Señor Oliveros, may we see the rose-tree?”
The old man looked up from some delicate piece of mechanism, and, with a smile on his fine old face, waved us toward the little garden behind the shop. There it stood, the pride of St. Augustine, a rose-tree fifteen feet high, seventeen feet in circumference, with a trunk measuring fifteen inches around and five inches through, “La Sylphide,” yielding annually more than four thousand beautiful creamy roses.
“What a wealth of bloom!” said Sara, bending toward a loaded branch.
“ ‘La Sylphide,’ like other sylphs, is at her best when only half opened,” said John, selecting with careful deliberation a perfect rose just quivering between bud and blossom, and offering it to Sara.
“No; I prefer this one,” she answered, turning aside to pluck a passée flower that fell to petals in her hand. An hour later I saw the perfect rose in Iris Carew’s hair.
“Niece Martha,” said Aunt Diana energetically, appearing in my room immediately after breakfast, “I do not approve of this division of our party; it is not what we planned.”
“What can I do, aunt? Sara ought not to pay hotel prices – ”
“I am not speaking of Miss St. John; she can stay here if she pleases, of course, but you must come to us.”
“Sara might not like to be left alone, aunt. To be sure,” I continued, not without a grain of malice, “Mr. Hoffman is here, so she need not, he too lonely, but – ”
“John Hoffman here?”
“Yes; we came here at his recommendation.”
Aunt Di bit her lips in high vexation; next to Mokes she prized John, who, although a person of most refractory and fatiguing ways, was yet possessed of undoubted Knickerbocker antecedents. She meditated a moment.
“On the whole you are right, Niece Martha,” she said, coming to surface again; “but we shall, of course, keep together as much as possible. For this morning I have planned a visit to the old Spanish fort; Captain Carlyle will accompany us.”
“And who is Captain Carlyle?”
“A young officer stationed here; he introduced himself to the Professor last evening, and afterward mistook me for Mrs. Van Auden, of Thirty-fourth Street. It seems he knows her very well,” continued Aunt Di, with a swallow of satisfaction. (Ah, wise young Captain! Mrs. Van Auden’s handsome face was at least ten years younger than Aunt Diana’s.)
“I saw Iris glancing after a uniform last night as we came around the Plaza,” I said, smiling.
But Aunt Di was true to her colors, and never saw or heard any thing detrimental to her cause.
It was a lovely February morning; the telegraph reported zero weather in New York, but here the thermometer stood at seventy, with a fresh sea-breeze. We stepped up on to the sea-wall at the Basin, where the sail-boats were starting out with pleasure parties for the North Beach. Iris had her Captain; Aunt Diana followed closely arm in arm with Mokes; Miss Sharp, jubilant, had captured the Professor; Sara and I were together as usual, leaving John Hoffman to bring up the rear with his morning cigar.
“The material of this wall,” began the Professor, rapping it with his cane, “is that singular conglomerate called coquina, which is quarried yonder on Anastasia Island; but the coping is, as you will perceive, granite.”
“How delightful to meet the dear old New England stone down here!” exclaimed Miss Sharp, tapping the granite with an enthusiastic gaiter.
“The wall was completed in 1842 at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars, having been built by the United States government,” continued the Professor.
“And why, nobody knows,” added John, from behind.
“To keep the town from washing away, I suppose,” said Sara.
“Of course; but why should the United States government concern itself over the washing away of this ancient little village with its eighteen hundred inhabitants, when it leaves cities with their thousands unaided? The one dock has, as you see, fallen down; a coasting schooner once a month or so is all the commerce, and yet here is a wall nearly a mile in length, stretching across the whole eastern front of the town, as though vast wealth lay behind.”
“The town may grow,” I said.
“It will never be any thing more than a winter resort, Miss Martha.”
“At any rate, the wall is charming to walk upon,” said Iris, dancing along on her high-heeled boots; “it must be lovely here by moonlight.”
“It is,” replied the Captain, with a glance of his blue eyes. He was a marvel of beauty, this young soldier, with his tall, well-knit, graceful form, his wavy golden hair, and blonde mustache sweeping over a mouth of child-like sweetness. He had a cleft in his chin like the young Antinous that he was, while a bold profile and commanding air relieved the otherwise almost too great loveliness of a face which invariably attracted all eyes. Spoiled? Of course he was; what else could you expect? But he was kind-hearted by nature, and endowed with a vast fund of gallantry that carried him along gayly on the topmost wave.
“There is a new moon this very night, I think,” observed Aunt Diana, suggestively, to Mokes.
But Mokes “never could walk here after dark; dizzy, you know – might fall in.”
“Oh, massive old ruin!” cried Iris, as we drew near the fort; “how grand and gray and dignified you look! Have you a name, venerable friend?”
“This interesting relic of Spanish domination was called San Juan de Pinos – ” began the governess, hastily finding the place in her guide-book.
“Oh no, Miss Sharp,” interrupted Aunt Diana, who had noticed with disapprobation the clinging of the lisle-thread glove to the Professor’s lank but learned arm. “You are mistaken again; it is called Fort Marion.”
“It used to be San Marco,” said John.
“I vote for San Marco; Marion is commonplace,” decided Iris, sweeping away the other names with a wave of her dainty little glove.
“A magnificent specimen of the defensive art of two centuries ago,” began the Professor, taking up a position on the water-battery, and beginning to point out with his cane. “It is built, you will observe, in a square or trapezium – ”
“Let us go up and have a dance on the top,” said Iris.
“This is very instructive,” murmured Aunt Diana, moving nearer to her niece. “Miss Sharp, pray call your pupil’s attention to this remarkable relic.” For Mokes had seated himself sulkily on one of the veteran cannon which frowned over the harbor like toothless old watch-dogs. There was no objection to an army Antinous as a picturesque adjunct, Aunt Diana thought; but it was well known that there was very little gold in the service outside of the buttons, while here at hand was a Crœsus, a genuine live Crœsus, sitting sulky and neglected on his cannon!
“Oh, certainly,” said Miss Sharp, coming to the rescue. “Iris, my child, you observe that it is in the form of a trapezoid – ”
“Trapezium,” said the Professor – “trapezium, Miss Sharp, if you please.”
“ ‘That daring young man on a – ’ ” chanted the Captain under his breath, as if in confidence to the southeast tower.
“In the salient angles of the bastions are four turrets or bartizans,” continued the Professor.
“Oh yes; how interesting!” ejaculated the governess, clasping her lisle-threads together. “Partisans!”
“Bar-ti-zans,” repeated the Professor, with cutting distinctness. “The moat, as you will notice, is fortified by an internal barrier, and there is an outer wall also which extends around the whole, following its various flexuses. By close observation we shall probably be able to trace the lines of the abatis, scarp, counterscarp, and fraise, all belonging to the period of mediæval fortification.”
“The Great Work is evidently to the fore now,” whispered Sara, as we sat together on a second cannon.
“The lunette, now, is considered quite a curiosity,” said the Captain, briskly breaking in. “Miss Carew, allow me to show it to you.”
“Lunette!” said the Professor, with lofty scorn.
“That is what we call it down here, Sir,” replied Antinous, carelessly. “Miss Iris, there, is an odd little stairway there – ”
“Lunette!” repeated the Professor again. “But that is an example of the lamentable ignorance of the age. Why, that is a barbacan, the only remaining specimen in the country, and, indeed, hard to be excelled in Europe itself.”
“I have heard it described as a demi-lune,” I remarked, bringing forward my one item, the item I had been preserving for days. (I try to have ready a few little pellets of information; I find it is expected, now that I am forty years old.) The Professor took off his tall silk hat and wiped his forehead despairingly. “Demi-lune!” he repeated – “demi-lune! The man who said that must be a – ”
IN TWO PARTS. – PART II
“The tide comes in; the birds fly low,
As if to catch our speech:
Ah, Destiny! why must we ever go
Away from the Florida Beach?”
AUNT DIANA declared that I must go with her back to the hotel, and I in my turn declared that if I went Sara must accompany me; so it ended in our taking the key of the house from the sleepy Sabre-boy and all three going back together through the moon-lighted street across the plaza to the hotel. Although it was approaching midnight, the Ancient City had yet no thought of sleep. Its idle inhabitants believed in taking the best of life, and so on moonlight nights they roamed about, two and two, or leaned over their balconies chatting with friends across the way in an easy-going, irregular fashion, which would have distracted an orthodox New England village, where the lights are out at ten o’clock, or they know the reason why. When near the hotel we saw John Hoffman coming from the Basin.
“We had better tell him,” I suggested.
“Oh no,” said Aunt Di, holding me back.
“But we must have somebody with us if we are going any farther to-night, aunt, and he is the best person. – Mr. Hoffman, did you enjoy the sail?”
“I did not go,” answered John, looking somewhat surprised to see us confronting him at that hour, like the three witches of Macbeth. Aunt Di was disheveled, and so was I, while Sara’s golden hair was tumbling about her shoulders under the hat she had hastily tied on.
“Have you been out all the evening?” asked Aunt Di, suspiciously.
“I went to my room an hour ago, but the night was so beautiful I slipped down the back stairs, so as to not disturb the household, and came out again to walk on the sea-wall.”
“Sara did hear him go up to his room: she knows his step, then,” I thought. But I could not stop to ponder over this discovery. “Mr. Hoffman,” I said, “you find us in some perplexity. Miss Carew is out loitering somewhere, in the moonlight, and, like the heedless child she is, has forgotten the hour. We are looking for her, but have no idea where she has gone.”
“Probably the demi-lune,” suggested John. Then, catching the ominous expression of Aunt Diana’s face, he added, “They have all gone out to the Rose Garden by moonlight, I think.”
“All?”
“Miss Sharp and the Professor.”
All three of us. “Miss Sharp and the Professor?”
John (carelessly). “The Captain too, of course.”
All three of us. “The Captain too, of course!”
John. “Suppose we stroll out that way and join them?”
Myself. “The very thing – it is such a lovely evening!” Then to Aunt Di, under my breath, “You see, it is only one of Iris’s wild escapades, aunt; we must make light of it as a child’s freak. We had better stroll out that way, and all walk back together, as though it was a matter of course.”
Aunt Di. “Miss Sharp and the Professor!”
Sara. “What a madcap freak!”
Aunt Di. “Not at all, not at all, Miss St. John. I am at a loss to know what you mean by madcap. My niece is simply taking a moonlight walk in company with her governess and Professor Macquoid, one of the most distinguished scientific men in the country, as I presume you are aware.”
Brave Aunt Di! The first stupor over, how she rallied like a Trojan to the fight!
We went out narrow little Charlotte Street – the business avenue of the town.
“A few years ago there was not a sign in St. Augustine,” said John. “People kept a few things for sale in a room on the ground-floor of their dwellings, and you must find them out as best you could. They seemed to consider it a favor that they allowed you to come in and buy. They tolerated you, nothing more.”
“It is beyond any thing, their ideas of business,” said Aunt Diana. “The other day we went into one of the shops to look at some palmetto hats. The mistress sat in a rocking-chair slowly fanning herself. ‘We wish to look at some hats,’ I said. ‘There they are,’ she replied, pointing toward the table. She did not rise, but continued rocking and fanning with an air that said, ‘Yes, I sell hats, but under protest, mind you.’ After an unaided search I found a hat which might have suited me with a slight alteration – five minutes’ work, perhaps. I mentioned what changes I desired, but the mistress interrupted me with, ‘We never alter trimmings.’ ‘But this will not take five minutes,’ I began; ‘just take your scissors and – ’ ‘Oh, I never do the work myself,’ replied Majestic, breaking in again with a languid smile; ‘and really I do not know of any one who could do it at present. Now you Northern ladies are different, I suppose.’ ‘I should think we were,’ I said, laying down the hat and walking out of the little six-by-nine parlor.”
“I wonder if the people still cherish any dislike, against the Northerners?” I said, when Aunt Di had finished her story with a general complaint against the manners of her own sex when they undertake to keep shop, North or South.
“Some of the Minorcans do, I think,” said John; “and many of the people regret the incursion of rich winter residents, who buy up the land for their grand mansions, raise the prices of every thing, and eventually will crowd all the poorer houses beyond the gates. But there are very few of the old leading families left here now. The ancien régime has passed away, the new order of things is distasteful to them, and they have gone, never to return.”
Turning into St. George Street, we found at the northern end of the town the old City Gates, the most picturesque ruin of picturesque St. Augustine. The two pillars are moresque, surmounted by a carved pomegranate, and attached are portions of the wall, which, together with an outer ditch, once extended from the Castle of San Marco, a short distance to the east, across the peninsula to the San Sebastian, on the west, thus fortifying the town against all approaches by land. The position of St. Augustine is almost insular. Tide-water sweeps up around and behind it, and to this and the ever-present sea-breeze must be attributed the wonderful health of the town, which not only exists, but is pre-eminent, in spite of a neglect of sanitary regulations which would not be endured one day in the villages of the North.
Passing through the old gateway, we came out upon the Shell Road, the grand boulevard of the future, as yet but a few yards in length.
“They make about ten feet a year,” said John; “and when they are at work, all I can say unto you is, ‘Beware!’ You suppose it is a load of empty shells they are throwing down; but no. Have they time, forsooth, to take out the oysters, these hard-pressed workmen of St. Augustine? By no means; and so down they go, oysters and all, and the road makes known its extension on the evening breezes.”
The soft moonlight lay on the green waste beyond the gates, lighting up the North River and its silver sand-hills. The old fort loomed up dark and frowning, but the moonlight shone through its ruined turrets, and only the birds of the night kept watch on its desolate battlements. The city lay behind us. It had never dared to stretch much beyond the old gates, and the few people who did live outside were spoken of as very far off – a sort of Bedouins of the desert encamping temporarily on the green. As we went on the moonlight lighted up the white head-stones of a little cemetery on the left side of the road.
“This is one of the disappointing cemeteries that was ‘nothing to speak of,’ I suppose,” said Sara.
“It is the Protestant cemetery,” replied John, “remarkable only for its ugliness and the number of inscriptions telling the same sad story of strangers in a strange land – persons brought here in quest of health from all parts of the country, only to die far away from home.”
“Where is the old Huguenot burying-ground?” asked Aunt Di.
“The Huguenots, poor fellows, never had a burying-ground, nor so much even as a burying, as far as I can learn,” said Sara.
“But there is one somewhere,” pursued Aunt Di. “I have heard it described as a spot of much interest.”
“That has been a standing item for years in all the Florida guide-books,” said John, “systematically repeated in the latest editions. They will give up a good deal, but that cherished Huguenot cemetery they must and will retain. The Huguenots, poor fellows, as Miss St. John says, never had a cemetery here, and it is only within comparatively modern times that there has been any Protestant cemetery whatever. Formerly the bodies of all persons not Romanists were sent across to the island for sepulture.”
The Shell Road having come to an end, we walked on in the moonlight, now on little grass patches, now in the deep sand, passing a ruined stone wall, all that was left of a pleasant home, destroyed, like many other outlying residences, during the war. The myrtle thickets along the road-side were covered with the clambering curling sprays of the yellow jasmine, the lovely wild flower that brings the spring to Florida. We stopped to gather the wreaths of golden blossoms, and decked ourselves with them, Southern fashion. Every one wears the jasmine. When it first appears every one says, “Have you seen it? It has come!” And out they go to gather it, and bring it home in triumph.
Passing through the odd little wicket, which, with the old-fashioned turnstile, is used in Florida instead of a latched gate, we found ourselves in a green lane bordered at the far end with cedars. Here, down on the North River, was the Rose Garden, now standing with its silent house fast asleep in the moonlight.
“I do not see Iris,” said Aunt Diana, anxiously.
“There is somebody over on the other side of the hedge,” said Sara.
We looked, and beheld two figures bending down and apparently scratching in the earth with sticks.
“What in the world are they doing?” said Aunt Diana. “They can not be sowing seed in the middle of the night, can they?”
“They look like two ghouls,” said Sara, “and one of them has – yes, I am sure one of them has a bone.”
“It is Miss Sharp and the Professor,” said John.
It was. We streamed over in a body and confronted them. “So interesting!” began Miss Sharp, in explanatory haste. “At various times the fragments of no less than eight skeletons have been discovered here, it seems, and we have been so fortunate as to secure a relic, a valuable Huguenot relic;” and with pride she displayed her bone.
“Of course,” said Sara, “a massacre! What did I tell you, Martha, about their arising from the past and glaring at me?”
“Miss Sharp,” began Aunt Diana, grimly, “where is Iris?”
“Oh, she is right here, the dear child. Iris! Iris!”
But no Iris appeared.
“I assure you she has not left my side until – until now,” said the negligent shepherdess, peering about the shadowy garden. “Iris! Iris!”
“And pray, Miss Sharp, how long may be your ‘now?’ ” demanded Aunt Diana, with cutting emphasis.
This feminine colloquy had taken place at one side. The Professor dug on meanwhile with eager enthusiasm, only stopping to hand John another relic which he had just unearthed.
“Thank you,” said John, gravely; “but I could not think of depriving you.”
“Oh, I only meant you to hold it a while for me,” replied the Professor.
On the front steps leading to the piazza of the sleeping house we found the two delinquents. They rose as we came solemnly up the path.
“Why, Aunt Di, is that you? Who would have thought of your coming out here at this time of night?” began Iris, in her most innocent voice. The Captain stood twirling his blonde mustache with the air of a disinterested outsider.
“Don’t make a fuss, Aunt Di,” I whispered, warningly, under my breath. “It can’t be helped now. Take it easy; it’s the only way.”
Poor Aunt Di – take it easy! She gave a sort of gulp, and then came up equal to the occasion. “You may well be surprised, my dear,” she said, in a brisk tone, “but I have long wished to see the Rose Garden, and by moonlight the effect, of course, is much finer; quite – quite sylph-like, I should say,” she continued, looking around at the shadowy bushes. “We were out for a little stroll, Niece Martha, Miss St. John, and myself, and meeting Mr. Hoffman, he mentioned that you were out here, and so we thought we would stroll out and join you. Charming night, Captain?”
The Captain thought it was; and all the dangerous places having been thus nicely coated over, we started homeward. The roses grew in ranks between two high hedges, and blossomed all the year round. They were all asleep now on their stems, the full-bosomed, creamy beauties, the delicate white sylphs, and the gorgeous crimson sirens; but John woke up a superb souvenir-de-Malmaison, and fastened it in Iris’s dark hair: her hat, as usual, hung on her arm. Aunt Diana felt herself a little comforted; evidently the undoubted Knickerbocker antecedents were not frightened off by this midnight escapade, and Iris certainly looked enchantingly lovely in the moonlight, with her white dress and the rose in her hair. If Mokes were only here, and reconciled too. Happy thought! why should Mokes know? Aunt Diana was a skillful general: Mokes never knew.
“How large and still the house looks!” I said, as we turned toward the wicket; “who lives there?”
“Only the Rose Gardener,” answered John; “an old bachelor who loves his flowers and hates womankind. He lives all alone in his great airy house, cooks his solitary meals, tends his roses, and no doubt enjoys himself extremely.”
“Oh yes, extremely,” said Sara, in a sarcastic tone.
“You speak whereof you do know, I suppose, Miss St. John!”
“Precisely; I have tried the life, Mr. Hoffman.”
The Professor joined us at the gate, radiant and communicative. “All this soil, you will observe, is mingled with oyster shells to the depth of several feet,” he began. “This was done by the Spaniards for the purpose of enriching the ground. Ah! Miss Iris, I did not at first perceive you in the shadow. You have a rose, I see. Although – ahem – not given to the quotation of poetry, nevertheless there is one verse which, with your permission, I will now repeat as applicable to the present occasion:
“ ‘Fair Phillis walks the dewy green;
A happy rose lies in her hair;
But, ah! the roses in her cheeks
Are yet more fair!’ ”
“Pray, Miss Sharp, can you not dispense with that horrible bone?” said Aunt Diana, in an under-tone. “Really, it makes me quite nervous to see it dangling.”
“Oh, certainly,” replied the governess, affably, dropping the relic into her pocket. “I myself, however, am never nervous where science is concerned.”
“Over there on the left,” began the Professor again, “is the site of a little mission church built as long ago as 1592 on the banks of a tide-water creek. A young Indian chieftain, a convert, conceiving himself aggrieved by the rules of the new religion, incited his followers to attack the missionary. They rushed in upon him, and informed him of his fate. He reasoned with them, but in vain; and at last, as a final request, he obtained permission to celebrate mass before he died. The Indians sat down on the floor of the little chapel, the father put on his robes and began. No doubt he hoped to soften their hearts by the holy service, but in vain; the last word spoken, they fell upon him and – ”
“Massacred him,” concluded Sara. “You need not go on, Sir. I know all about it. I was there.”
“You were there, Miss St. John!”
“Certainly,” replied Sara, calmly. “I am now convinced that in some anterior state of existence I have assisted, as the French say, at all the Florida massacres. Indian, Spanish, or Huguenot, it makes no difference to me. I was there!”
“I trust our young friend is not tinged with Swedenborgianism,” said the Professor aside to John Hoffman. “The errors of those doctrines have been fully exposed. I trust she is orthodox.”
“Really, I do not know what she is,” replied John.
“Oh yes, you do,” said Sara, overhearing. “She is heterodox, you know; decidedly heterodox.”
In the mean while Aunt Diana kept firmly by the side of the Captain. It is safe to say that the young man was never before called upon to answer so many questions in a given space of time. The entire history of the late war, the organization of the army, the military condition of Europe, and, indeed, of the whole world, were only a portion of the subjects with which Aunt Di tackled him on the way home. Iris stood it a while, and then, with the happy facility of youth, she slipped aside, and joined John Hoffman. Iris was a charming little creature, but, so far, for “staying” qualities she was not remarkable.
A second time we passed the cemetery. “I have not as yet investigated the subject,” said the Professor, “but I suppose this to be the Huguenot burying-ground.”
“Oh yes,” exclaimed Miss Sharp; “mentioned in my guide-book as a spot of much interest. How thrilling to think that those early Huguenots, those historical victims of Menendez, lie here– here in this quiet spot, so near, you know, and yet – and yet so far!” she concluded, vaguely conscious that she had heard that before somewhere, although she could not place it. She had forgotten that eye which, mixed in some poetic way with a star, has figured so often in the musical performances of the female seminaries of our land.
“Very thrilling; especially when we remember that they must have gathered up their own bones, swum up all the way from Matanzas, and buried each other one by one,” said Sara.
“And even that don’t account for the last man,” added John.
Miss Sharp drew off her forces, and retired in good order.
“Iris,” I said, the next morning, “come here and give an account of yourself. What do you mean, you gypsy, by such performances as that of last night?”
“I only meant a moonlight walk, Cousin Martha. I knew I never could persuade Aunt Di, so I took Miss Sharp.”
“I am surprised that she consented.”
“At first she did refuse; but when I told her that the Professor was going, she said that under those circumstances, as we might expect much valuable information on the way, she would give her consent.”
“And the Professor?”
“Oh, I asked him, of course; he is the most good-natured old gentleman in the world; I can always make him do any thing I please. But poor Miss Sharp – how Aunt Di has been talking to her this morning! ‘How you, at your age,’ was part of it.”
A week later we were taken to see the old Buckingham Smith place, now the property of a Northern gentleman, who has built a modern winter residence on the site of the old house.
“This is her creek, Aunt Di,” I said, as the avenue leading to the house crossed a small muddy ditch.
“Whose, Niece Martha?”
“Maria Sanchez, of course. Don’t you remember the mysterious watery heroine who navigated these marshes several centuries ago? She perfectly haunts me! Talk about Huguenots arising and glaring at you, Sara; they are nothing to this Maria. The question is, Who was she?”
“I know,” answered Iris. “She is my old friend of the Dismal Swamp. ‘They made her a grave too cold and damp,’ you know, and she refused to stay in it. ‘Her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, her paddle I soon shall hear – ’ ”
“Well, if you do, let me know,” I said. “She must be a very muddy sort of a ghost; there isn’t more than a spoonful of water in her creek as far down as I can see.”
“But no doubt it was a deep tide-water stream in its day, Miss Martha,” said John Hoffman; “deep enough for either romance or drowning.”
Beyond the house opened out the long orange-tree aisles – beautiful walks arched in glossy green foliage – half a mile of dense leafy shade.
“This is the sour orange,” said our guide, “a tree extensively cultivated in the old days for its hardy growth and pleasant shade. It is supposed to be an exotic run wild, for the orange is not indigenous here. When Florida was ceded to England in exchange for Cuba, most of the Spanish residents left, and their gardens were then found well stocked with oranges and lemons, figs, guavas, and pomegranates.”
“Poor Florida! nobody wanted her,” said John. “The English only kept her twenty years, and then bartered her away again to Spain for the Bahamas, and in 1819 Spain was glad to sell her to the United States. The latter government, too, may have had its own thoughts as to the value of the purchase, which, although cheap at five millions in the first place, soon demanded nineteen more millions for its own little quarrel with that ancient people, the Seminoles.”
“Headed, do not forget to mention, by Osceola,” added Sara.
“Beautiful fruit, at least in appearance,” I said, picking up one of the large oranges that lay by the hundreds on the ground. “Are they of no use?”
“The juice is occasionally sold in small quantities,” replied our guide. “At one time it commanded a price of a dollar per gallon, and was used in place of vinegar in the British navy. It makes a delicious acid drink when fresh – better than lemonade.”
We lingered in the beautiful orange aisles, and heard the story of the old place: how it had descended from father to son, and finally, upon the death of the owner who was childless, it came into the possession of a nephew. But among other papers was found one containing the owner’s purpose to bequeath his property to the poor colored people of St. Augustine. This will, if it could so be called, without witnesses, and in other ways informal, was of no value in the eyes of the law. The owner had died suddenly away from home, and there was no testimony to prove that the paper expressed even a cherished intention. Nevertheless, the heir at law, with rare disinterestedness, carried out the vague wish; the place was sold, and all the proceeds invested for the benefit of the colored people, the charity taking the form of a Home for their aged and infirm, which is supported by the income from this money, the building itself having been generously given for the purpose by another prominent citizen of St. Augustine.
“You must see old Uncle Jack,” concluded the speaker. “Before the war his master sent him several times to Boston with large sums of money, and intrusted him with important business, which he never failed to execute properly. By the terms of the will he has a certain portion of the land for his lifetime. That is his old cabin. Let us go over there.”
Close down under the walls of the grand new mansion stood a low cabin, shaded by the long drooping leaves of the banana; hens and chickens walked in and out the open door, and most of the household furniture seemed to be outside, in the comfortable Southern fashion. Uncle Jack came to meet us – a venerable old man, with white hair, whose years counted nearly a full century.
“The present owner of the place has ordered a new house built for Jack, a picturesque porter’s lodge, near the entrance,” said our guide, “but I doubt whether the old man will be as comfortable there as in this old cabin where he has lived so long. The negroes, especially the old people, have the strongest dislike to any elevation like a door-step or a piazza; they like to be right on the ground; they like to cook when they are hungry, and sleep when they are tired, and enjoy their pipes in peace. Rules kill them, and they can not change: we must leave them alone, and educate the younger generation.”
Returning down the arched walks, we crossed over into a modern sweet-orange grove, the most beautiful in St. Augustine or its vicinity. Some of the trees were loaded with blossoms, some studded with the full closed buds which we of the North are accustomed to associate with the satin of bridal robes, some had still their golden fruit, and others had all three at once, after the perplexing fashion of the tropics.
“There are about eight hundred trees here,” said our guide, “and some of them yield annually five thousand oranges each. There is a story extant, one of the legends of St. Augustine, that formerly orange-trees covered the Plaza, and that one of them yielded annually twelve thousand oranges.”
“What an appalling mass of sweetness!” said Sara. “I am glad that tree died; it was too good to live, like the phenomenal children of Sunday-school literature.”
“In the old Spanish days,” said John, “this neighborhood was one vast orange grove; ships loaded with the fruit sailed out of the harbor, and the grandees of Spain preferred the St. Augustine orange to any other. In Spain the trees live to a great age; some of them are said to be six hundred years old, having been planted by the Moors, but here an unexpected frost has several times destroyed all the groves, so that the crop is by no means a sure one.”
“So the frost does come here,” I said. “We have seen nothing of it; the thermometer has ranged from sixty-eight to seventy-eight ever since we arrived.”
“They had snow in New York last week,” said Aunt Di.
“It has melted, I think,” said John. “At least I saw this item last evening in a New York paper: ‘If the red sleigher thinks that he sleighs to-day, he is mistaken!’ ”
“Shades of Emerson and Brahma, defend us!” said Sara.
Then we all began to eat oranges, and make dripping spectacles of ourselves generally. I defy any one to be graceful, or even dainty, with an orange; it is a great, rich, generous, pulpy fruit, and you have got to eat it in a great, rich, generous, pulpy way. How we did enjoy those oranges under the glossy green and fragrant blossoms of the trees themselves! We gave it up then and there, and said openly that no bought Northern oranges could compare with them.
“I don’t feel politically so much disturbed now about the cost of that sea-wall,” said Sara, “if it keeps this orange grove from washing away. It is doing a sweet and noble duty in life, and herein is cause sufficient for its stony existence.”
We strolled back to the town by another way, and crossed again the Maria Sanchez Creek.
“Observe how she meanders down the marsh, this fairy streamlet,” I said, taking up a position on the stone culvert. “Observe how green are her rushes, how playful her little minnows, how martial her fiddler-crabs! O lost Maria! come back and tell your story. Were you sadly drowned in these overwhelming waves, or were you the first explorer of these marshes, pushing onward in your canoe with your eyes fixed on futurity!”
Nobody knew; so we went home. But in the evening John produced the following, which he said had been preserved in the archives of the town for centuries. “I have made a free translation, as you will see,” he said; “but the original is in pure Castilian.”
“THE LEGEND OF MARIA SANCHEZ CREEK
“Maria Sanchez
Her dug-out launches,
And down the stream to catch some crabs she takes her way,
A Spanish maiden,
With crabs well laden;
When evening falls she lifts her trawls to cross the bay.
“Grim terror blanches
Maria Sanchez,
Who, not to put too fine a point, is rather brown;
A norther coming,
Already humming,
Doth bear away that Spanish mai – den far from town.
“Maria Sanchez,
Caught in the branches
That sweetly droop across a creek far down the coast,
That calm spectator,
The alligator,
Doth spy, then wait to call his mate, who rules the roast.
“She comes and craunches
Maria Sanchez,
While boat and crabs the gentle husband meekly chews.
How could they eat her,
That señorita,
Whose story still doth make quite ill the Spanish Muse?”
We heaped praises upon John’s pure Castilian ode – all save the Professor, who undertook to criticise a little. “I have made something of a study of poetry,” he began, “and I have noticed that much depends upon the selection of choice terms. For instance, in the first verse you make use of the local word ‘dug-out.’ Now in my opinion, ‘craft’ or ‘canoe’ would be better. You begin, if I remember correctly, in this way:
“ ‘Maria Sanchez
Launches her dug-out – ’ ”
“Oh no, Professor,” said Sara; “this is it:
“ ‘Maria Sanchez
Her dug-out launches.’ ”
“The same idea, I opine, Miss St. John,” said the Professor, loftily.
“But the rhymes, Sir?”
The Professor had not noticed the rhymes; poetry should be above rhymes altogether, in his opinion.
The pleasant days passed, we sailed up and down the Matanzas, walked on the sea-wall, and sat in the little overhanging balcony, which, like all others in St. Augustine, was hung up on the side of the house like a cupboard without any support from below. Letters from home meanwhile brought tidings of snow and ice and storm, disasters by land and by sea. A lady friend, a new arrival, had visited the Ancient City forty years before, in the days of the ancien régime. “It is much changed,” she said. “These modern houses springing up every where have altered the whole aspect of the town. I am glad I came back while there is still something left of the old time. Another five years and the last old wall will be torn down for a horrible paling fence. Forty years ago the town was largely Spanish or Moorish in its architecture. The houses were all built of coquina, with a blank wall toward the north, galleries running around a court-yard behind, where were flowers, vines, and a central fountain. The halls, with their stone arches, opened out into this greenery without doors of any kind, tropical fashion. Those were the proud days of St. Augustine; the old families reigned with undisputed sway; the slaves were well treated, hospitality was boundless, and the intermixture of Spanish and Italian blood showed itself in the dark eyes that glanced over the balconies as the stranger passed below. It has all vanished now. The war effaced the last fading hue of the traditional grandeur, and broke down the barriers between the haughty little city and the outside world. The old houses have been modernized, and many of them have given place to new and, to my ideas, thoroughly commonplace dwellings. There is one left, however, the very mansion where I was so charmingly entertained forty years ago; its open arches remain just as they were, and the old wall still surrounds the garden. Up stairs is the large parlor where we had our gay little parties, with wines, and those delicious curled-up cakes, all stamped with figures, thin as a wafer, crisp and brittle, which seemed to be peculiar to St. Augustine.”
