When we left Picolata, on the 8th of April, we found ourselves journeying
through a vast forest. A road of eighteen miles in length, over the level
sands, brings you to this place. Tall pines, a thin growth, stood wherever
we turned our eyes, and the ground was covered with the dwarf palmetto,
and the whortleberry, which is here an evergreen. Yet there were not
wanting sights to interest us, even in this dreary and sterile region. As
we passed a clearing, in which we saw a young white woman and a boy
dropping corn, and some negroes covering it with their hoes, we beheld a
large flock of white cranes which rose in the air, and hovered over the
forest, and wheeled, and wheeled again, their spotless plumage glistening
in the sun like new-fallen snow. We crossed the track of a recent
hurricane, which had broken off the huge pines midway from the ground, and
whirled the summits to a distance from their trunks. From time to time we
forded little streams of a deep-red color, flowing from the swamps,
tinged, as we were told, with the roots of the red bay, a species of
magnolia. As the horses waded into the transparent crimson, we thought of
the butcheries committed by the Indians, on that road, and could almost
fancy that the water was still colored with the blood they had shed.
The driver of our wagon told us many narratives of these murders, and
pointed out the places where they were committed. He showed us where the
father of this young woman was shot dead in his wagon as he was going from
St. Augustine to his plantation, and the boy whom we had seen, was wounded
and scalped by them, and left for dead. In another place he showed us the
spot where a party of players, on their way to St. Augustine, were
surprised and killed. The Indians took possession of the stage dresses,
one of them arraying himself in the garb of Othello, another in that of
Richard the Third, and another taking the costume of Falstaff. I think it
was Wild Cat's gang who engaged in this affair, and I was told that after
the capture of this chief and some of his warriors, they recounted the
circumstances with great glee. At another place we passed a small thicket
in which several armed Indians, as they afterward related, lay concealed
while an officer of the United States army rode several times around it,
without any suspicion of their presence. The same men committed,
immediately afterward, several murders and robberies on the road.
At length we emerged upon a shrubby plain, and finally came in sight of
this oldest city of the United States, seated among its trees on a sandy
swell of land where it has stood for three hundred years. I was struck
with its ancient and homely aspect, even at a distance, and could not help
likening it to pictures which I had seen of Dutch towns, though it wanted
a windmill or two, to make the resemblance perfect. We drove into a green
square, in the midst of which was a monument erected to commemorate the
Spanish constitution of 1812, and thence through the narrow streets of the
city to our hotel.
I have called the streets narrow. In few places are they wide enough to
allow two carriages to pass abreast. I was told that they were not
originally intended for carriages, and that in the time when the town
belonged to Spain, many of them were floored with an artificial stone,
composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the
hardness of rock, and that no other vehicle than a hand-barrow was allowed
to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient
pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the
wheels of the carts and carriages, introduced by the new inhabitants. The
old houses, built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion
of small shells, overhang the streets with their wooden balconies, and the
gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high
walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the
pomegranate and of the orange-tree, now fragrant with flowers, and, rising
yet higher, the leaning boughs of the fig, with its broad luxuriant
leaves. Occasionally you pass the ruins of houses—walls of stone, with
arches and staircases of the same material, which once belonged to stately
dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and
foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange
language. You are told that these are the remains of those who inhabited
the country under the Spanish dominion, and that the dialect you have
heard is that of the island of Minorca.
"Twelve years ago," said an acquaintance of mine, "when I first visited
St. Augustine, it was a fine old Spanish town. A large proportion of the
houses, which you now see roofed like barns, were then flat-roofed, they
were all of shell-rock, and these modern wooden buildings were not yet
erected. That old fort, which they are now repairing, to fit it for
receiving a garrison, was a sort of ruin, for the outworks had partly
fallen, and it stood unoccupied by the military, a venerable monument of
the Spanish dominion. But the orange-groves were the ornament and wealth
of St. Augustine, and their produce maintained the inhabitants in comfort.
Orange-trees, of the size and height of the pear-tree, often rising higher
than the roofs of the houses, embowered the town in perpetual verdure.
They stood so close in the groves that they excluded the sun and the
atmosphere was at all times aromatic with their leaves and fruit, and in
spring the fragrance of the flowers was almost oppressive."
These groves have now lost their beauty. A few years since, a severe
frost killed the trees to the ground, and when they sprouted again from
the roots, a new enemy made its appearance—an insect of the _coccus_
family, with a kind of shell on its back, which enables it to withstand
all the common applications for destroying insects, and the ravages of
which are shown by the leaves becoming black and sere, and the twigs
perishing. In October last, a gale drove in the spray from the ocean,
stripping the trees, except in sheltered situations, of their leaves, and
destroying the upper branches. The trunks are now putting out new sprouts
and new leaves, but there is no hope of fruit for this year at least.
The old fort of St. Mark, now called Fort Marion, a foolish change of
name, is a noble work, frowning over the Matanzas, which flows between St.
Augustine and the island of St. Anastasia, and it is worth making a long
journey to see. No record remains of its original construction, but it is
supposed to have been erected about a hundred and fifty years since, and
the shell-rock of which it is built is dark with time. We saw where it had
been struck with cannon-balls, which, instead of splitting the rock,
became imbedded and clogged among the loosened fragments of shell. This
rock is, therefore, one of the best materials for a fortification in the
world. We were taken into the ancient prisons of the fort—dungeons, one
of which was dimly lighted by a grated window, and another entirely
without light; and by the flame of a torch we were shown the
half-obliterated inscriptions scrawled on the walls long ago by prisoners.
But in another corner of the fort, we were taken to look at two secret
cells, which were discovered a few years since, in consequence of the
sinking of the earth over a narrow apartment between them. These cells are
deep under ground, vaulted overhead, and without windows. In one of them a
wooden machine was found, which some supposed might have been a rack, and
in the other a quantity of human bones. The doors of these cells had been
walled up and concealed with stucco, before the fort passed into the hands
of the Americans.
"If the Inquisition," said the gentleman who accompanied us, "was
established in Florida, as it was in the other American colonies of Spain,
these were its secret chambers."
Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and in the morning I attended the services in
the Catholic church. One of the ceremonies was that of pronouncing the
benediction over a large pile of leaves of the cabbage-palm, or palmetto,
gathered in the woods. After the blessing had been pronounced, the priest
called upon the congregation to come and receive them. The men came
forward first, in the order of their age, and then the women; and as the
congregation consisted mostly of the descendants of Minorcans, Greeks, and
Spaniards, I had a good opportunity of observing their personal
appearance. The younger portion of the congregation had, in general,
expressive countenances. Their forms, it appeared to me, were generally
slighter than those of our people; and if the cheeks of the young women
were dark, they had regular features and brilliant eyes, and finely formed
hands. There is spirit, also, in this class, for one of them has since
been pointed out to me in the streets, as having drawn a dirk upon a young
officer who presumed upon some improper freedoms of behavior.
The services were closed by a plain and sensible discourse in English,
from the priest, Mr. Rampon, a worthy and useful French ecclesiastic, on
the obligation of temperance; for the temperance reform has penetrated
even hither, and cold water is all the rage. I went again, the other
evening, into the same church, and heard a person declaiming, in a
language which, at first, I took to be Minorcan, for I could make nothing
else of it. After listening for a few minutes, I found that it was a
Frenchman preaching in Spanish, with a French mode of pronunciation which
was odd enough. I asked one of the old Spanish inhabitants how he was
edified by this discourse, and he acknowledged that he understood about an
eighth part of it.
I have much more to write about this place, but must reserve it for
another letter.
Letter XIV.
St. Augustine.