where there are only two hotels, that, whichever one you select, you
will wish that you had chosen the other. Although the hotels south of
the line have greatly improved of late years, the old joke will still
apply in certain towns and cities. Not so, however, at Thomasville.
There are only two hotels here known to fame, and you will make no
mistake if you select either. It is a matter of surprise to find two
such hotels in such a comparatively small town. The Mitchell House and
the Piney Woods Hotel (I take them alphabetically) are both large, new,
handsomely furnished and perfectly appointed houses, containing all the
modern improvements, and erected with strict regard for the laws of
sanitation. The Mitchell House is an imposing solid brick structure,
four stories high, two hundred feet square, with a cultivated park of
two acres sweeping before its front piazza. This little park is
reserved for the hotel guests and their friends.
The Piney Woods Hotel is within gun-shot distance of the Mitchell House,
on the same street, with a front measuring three hundred and fifty feet,
the other side overlooking Paradise Park, of which I have already
spoken. The Piney Woods stands, as it were, and as its name might
indicate, on the very edge of the pine forests, and yet it is only a
five minutes’ walk from the post-office and a ten minutes’ drive from
the depot. The pamphlet issued by the proprietor tells you that “the
Piney Woods is modelled similar to the Grand Union Hotel, at Saratoga
Springs,” but this is a mistake of the compiler of the work, and is no
compliment at all to the house under consideration--which is far more
pleasing to the eye, exteriorly, than the Grand Union at Saratoga. The
Piney Woods is built after plans of J. A. Woods, a New York architect,
who planned the new Grand Hotel _in the Catskill Mountains_, and with
its wide and lofty verandas, its projecting towers, its pretty corners
here and there, is a facsimile on a somewhat smaller scale of that
favorite and beautiful house. Any one who has seen the hotel on the line
of the Ulster and Delaware Railway, can picture to himself the Piney
Woods Hotel at Thomasville. The late Captain Gillette, who kept the
Mountain Hotel, kept this one also for years. William E. Davies is now
the manager of the Piney Woods.
Each hotel, the Mitchell House and the Piney Woods, will accommodate
nearly three hundred guests.
THE BEST ROUTE.--The Atlantic Coast Line, called “the short route to
Florida,” is by all odds the best way to reach Thomasville from the
Eastern States and from New York. The vestibule train, “the Florida
special” of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which traverses this route, is
the quickest and most luxurious train, with its dining-room car, library
car, etc., but this only leaves New York on certain days of the week,
and you must apply for seats a long time ahead, and then you may not get
them. The ordinary trains, with Pullman sleepers, are good enough for
the majority of travellers, and they afford people opportunity to stop
over and see the cities en route--Washington, Richmond, Wilmington, N.
C., Charleston and Savannah. Or, if you prefer, you may come direct from
New York, in about thirty-two hours, to Waycross, Ga., where there is
connection for Thomasville, distant four hours. But if you “stop over,”
you must be prepared to travel in ordinary coaches between the Southern
cities; parlor cars are not attached to local trains. It would help
Thomasville materially if the Savannah, Western and Florida Road
(everybody in this section calls it “the S. F. & W.”) were to run a
quick train with a parlor car to meet the Florida special. The return
would not be great at first, but it would prove profitable to the road
ultimately. Washington, D. C., seems to be especially favored: the
Atlantic Coast Line runs a Pullman buffet sleeping car for Washington
passengers direct to Thomasville. Strangers and tourists make it a point
to go to the stations to see the Pennsylvania vestibule train at
different points of the road, and the colored folk stand and stare at
the beautiful appointments with eyes and mouth wide open. “Only God’s
people,” remarked one surprised darkey, “can ride in them carriages.”
[Illustration]
A NEW SOUTHERN RESORT.
If you tell people in New York that you are “going to Brunswick for the
winter,” they will probably look at you with surprise; some will say,
“Do you mean New Brunswick?” having in mind New Brunswick, N.J.; while
others will say, “Brunswick; where is Brunswick, in what State? I never
heard of it.” Well, new as Brunswick may appear to the majority, it is
an old place, having been settled and laid out in the year 1763.
WHERE IS BRUNSWICK?--Brunswick is in the Southeastern part of Georgia,
not far from the Florida border, sixty miles below Savannah, seventy
miles north of Jacksonville. The city covers an area of two miles
square, and is handsomely laid out, the whole adorned by some of the
most beautiful groves of live oaks and cedars to be found in the South.
It is situated on a small peninsula jutting out into the sea, surrounded
on three sides by salt water, but protected from the severity of the
ocean winds by outlying islands. Brunswick is only eight miles from the
sea and there are no fresh water streams or swamps within many miles to
breed malaria, the air being constantly renewed and vivified by the
health-bearing breezes of the ocean, that render it, as official
statistics show, one of the healthiest cities in the Union.
Among its natural advantages are its climate, uniform and mild in
winter, its geographical position being but little north of St.
Augustine, ice being seldom seen, and snow rarely, if ever; its forests
of pine, palm and moss-covered oak, its healthy soil, pure water,
semi-tropical foliage and plants, the magnificent drives, and last, but
by no means least, its superior water facilities, having one of the
finest harbors in the South Atlantic. As to the trees: I have stood
under the far-famed old oaks of England, I have seen the moss-covered
trees of Bonaventure, of which all Savannah proudly boasts, and admired
the great oak at Thomasville, whose branches measure ninety feet across;
but there is an oak here which belittles them all for age, strength and
size. Under the “Lovers’ Oak” at Brunswick it is said that one hundred
teams can find shelter from the sun’s rays. It is called Lovers’ Oak
because a marriage was once performed under it, several hundred
witnesses being present at the open air ceremony.
JEKYL AND OTHER ISLANDS.--There are a number of beautiful islands near
here which are fertile almost beyond one’s imagination. Everybody has
heard of Jekyl Island, and all true sportsmen know it. It is famous as
the location of one of the finest club-houses in the country, the island
being a paradise for the sportsman and fisherman. It is literally full
of game; deer, wild turkey and other fowl are so plentiful that visitors
are sure of good sport. Being a natural game preserve, upon which the
general public have not been permitted to hunt, the increase has been
rapid and the supply practically inexhaustible. The club-house, seen
from the river, is a noble structure. Then there is St. Simon’s Island,
which lies off the coast at a distance of seven miles from Brunswick,
and is noted for the wonderful fertility of its soil. It excels
especially in fruits--oranges, peaches, figs, bananas, olives, lemons,
limes and pecans, growing in great profusion. The climate is almost
perfection. Ice is seldom seen, and snow has been seen here but once
within the present century,
A DOCTOR’S CERTIFICATE.--Brunswick’s peninsular location, almost
surrounded by salt water, with immense pine forests on the north,
extending hundreds of miles into the interior, conduces to a state of
healthfulness excelled by no other place of its population in the whole
South. Dr. H. Buford, Health Officer of the City of Brunswick, makes the
following official statement: “The result of my observation and
experience as a practitioner in this city and in the country adjacent
thereto, during a residence of seven years, proves that our mortuary
statistics show a minimum death rate--Poughkeepsie, N. Y., not excepted.
During an active practice of seven years I cannot record a single case
of scarlet fever or diphtheria. Hay fever and asthma are unknown here.”
A MISTAKE OF CONGRESS.--Brunswick is a century and a quarter old, but it
went along lazily and slowly, like many other Southern towns and
villages, and the war somewhat retarded its progress. Nor was it helped
by a committee from Congress which, some years after the war, took a
cruise along the Atlantic coast to examine the facilities of our
seaports. Congress has not earned its peculiar reputation without
deserving it. This committee may have included members who were learned
in the law, or who knew how to hoe potatoes, but of harbor advantages
and the requirements of ships they must have been innocently ignorant.
They reported that “the harbor of Brunswick was twelve feet deep.” This
went abroad and ships went elsewhere. How near to the truth came this
report may be judged by one instance. On Friday, February 3, 1888, the
English steamer, the Port Augusta, cleared this port drawing twenty feet
of water and carrying 6,559 bales of cotton, weighing over three
millions of pounds and valued at $300,000. It was the largest cargo ever
cleared from a South Atlantic port, and ships drawing _twenty-four feet
of water_ enter and leave here without the slightest danger of touching
bottom. So much for the congressional report. That the shipping
facilities of Brunswick are becoming known may be judged also from the
following facts and figures: During the whole month of February, 1887,
the exports of cotton, naval stores and lumber amounted to $78,000
while for only the _first five days_ of Feb., 1888, the exports amounted
to over $300,000. These figures are given on official authority from the
collector of the port. Are more significant statements needed to show
the marvellous advance and improvement of this place? Here they are--the
exports in the year 1886 amounted to less than a million dollars; in
1887 they footed up over two and a quarter millions. The imports of 1886
were less than $5,000, the imports of 1887, $48,000.
A CITY BY THE SEA.--How has all this seeming prosperity and increase of
business on the water affected the land? Well, in 1884 the population of
Brunswick was 3,000, four years later it was 8,000; the increase of
taxable property was thirty-three per cent, greater in ’87 than ’86; the
comptroller of the State says that this county (Glynn) has made for the
last twelve months a larger pro rata increase than any other county in
the State of Georgia, for eight years ago there was not a brick building
in the place; now there are blocks and blocks of brick stores and fine
dwellings; increase in the value of the land is almost fabulous, and
there is a new brick hotel here, “the Oglethorpe,” which cost with
furniture, $160,000, the equal of which for site and style cannot be
found between Washington, D.C., and St. Augustine, Fla.
THE OGLETHORPE.--The new hotel is an evidence of and in keeping with the
new order of things. The location of the building is choice--on the
highest ground in Brunswick, affording fine views and rare sanitary
facilities. The house is not merely considered to be, but is fire-proof.
So perfect is the protection against fire that the company insuring the
property reduced the usual hotel rate one-half in consideration of the
character of the building and the excellence of the fire system adopted.
The Oglethorpe stands on the principal street, near the railway depot
and steamboat wharf, on a plot of ground about three hundred feet
square, the main building having three stories and being two hundred and
sixty-seven feet long, with wings running back one hundred and forty
feet. It is the largest building in the place, and with its graceful
round brick towers at each corner, and its turrets and spires jutting
through the roof, here and there, it is the most prominent object you
see as you approach Brunswick from any direction, either by land or
water. The Oglethorpe, being new, is the latest exponent of all that is
best and most approved in modern hotel building, and of course has all
the “modern improvements.” The drawing-room is a grand apartment,
reminding you of the parlor of the United States at Saratoga; the
dining-room is lighted from three sides, and seats three hundred
persons; the main floor, the entrance, office and lower hall are tiled
with Georgia marble in beautiful colors, and there is a covered porch
for promenading which reaches up to the second story. It is two hundred
and forty feet long, and from twenty to twenty-five feet wide.
The bedrooms of the Oglethorpe are larger, as a rule, than those of most
hotels. Even the “small rooms” connecting with the suites are twenty
feet long by eleven wide, and have two windows, each seven feet high by
three feet wide. The “tower” rooms, with their open fire-places, carved
wooden mantels, tiled hearths, rich Moquette carpets, portières of
velours, and lace curtains on brass poles are as handsome as the
bedrooms of any other hotel that the writer has seen, and if the walls
and ceilings were artistically decorated and frescoed, the “tower” rooms
of the Oglethorpe probably might compare with those palatial bedrooms of
the Hotel Métropole in London. A peculiarity of the Oglethorpe is that
there are no back rooms; each one faces the street or overlooks the bay,
but a few hundred feet distant. Between the bay and the house the
grounds of the hotel are attractively laid out. As to the table and
general management of the Oglethorpe, it is only necessary to say that
the manager is Warren Leland, Jr., a member of the celebrated Leland
family--a name long associated with some of the leading hotels in the
United States.
EN ROUTE TO AND FROM FLORIDA.--Brunswick is reached by rail from the
North by the Atlantic Coast Line and the Savannah, Florida and Western
Railroad by way of Savannah and Waycross, Ga., and from Jacksonville,
Florida, by railway to Fernandina in one hour, and thence by steamboat
in four hours. The water route is very pleasant. The boats, if not
splendid specimens of naval architecture, are at least staunch and
comfortable. You take an inside route, hug the shore, pass many
beautiful islands and get glimpses of most picturesque scenes.
Tourists contemplating a visit to Florida for health or pleasure do well
to break the journey at Waycross or Jessup, visit Brunswick and see the
charming country thereabouts. The run is made from Waycross to Brunswick
in three hours and ten minutes.
The route Southward is from New York to Quantico, Va., over the
Pennsylvania tracks; from Richmond to Charleston via Atlantic Coast
Line; from Waycross to Brunswick by the Plant system. Leave New York
(Desbrosses or Cortlandt streets) at 9 P.M. or midnight--through car to
Waycross.
[Illustration]
A CUBAN CITY IN THE UNITED STATES.
KEY WEST, February, 1891.
Key West, in Spanish Cayo Hueso (Bone Island), derived its name, so says
history, from the fact that the island was strewn with human bones. The
conquerors didn’t take time to bury the bones of the conquered. The
change, corruption Spaniards call it, from Cayo Hueso to Key West was
easy.
The United States bought the island from Spain in 1816. The formation is
coral and it contains about two thousand acres. The Hon. C. B.
Pendleton, editor and proprietor of the _Equator-Democrat_, and a man of
culture who has served in the State Senate, showed me an island, or key,
as they call it in these parts, distant from Key West five miles, and
which he believed to be the most southerly point in the United States.
Another authority informed me that Cape Sable, distant from Key West
about sixty miles, is the most southerly point.
To quote Editor Pendleton, Key West is distant from the tropical line
only thirteen miles. Doctors will differ; another authority gives it as
sixty miles. I am inclined to think that on the tropical question my
editorial brother is correct in his estimate, because Key West is only
distant from Cuba eighty or ninety miles.
The climate is about the same as that of Havana. In the Cuban capital
the mercury never goes below sixty degrees; in Key West the lowest point
recorded is fifty-one.
Key West is the ninth port of entry in the United States, collecting
more import duty than all the other ports in the States of Florida and
Georgia and one-half of Alabama combined.
In 1860 the population was about two thousand, one-quarter of whom were
colored; but in 1869, after the rebellion in Cuba, the population of the
island began to increase and now it numbers twenty-two thousand, and
they claim that it is the largest city in Florida.
The inhabitants are mixed, very much mixed--Cubans, negroes, Americans,
Chinese, etc. The negroes come from Nassau, Cuba and other places.
Key West was bought of Spain, as before remarked; the island is nearer
Cuba than any other land, it is not in any sense American except that it
flies the American flag, and it seems to be now, to all intents and
purposes, a foreign place--a Spanish colony, as it once was. Spanish is
the prevailing language, and Cubans predominate. All the public notices
and handbills are printed in two languages, several newspapers are
printed in Spanish, and only one, the _Equator-Democrat_, in English. It
is difficult to make a purchase or to transact any business unless you
speak Spanish, and there are few drivers or conductors of street cars
who can understand you if addressed in English. The car drivers swear at
their patient, sadly abused mules in hard Spanish. All the American
residents and business men speak the prevailing tongue, or are learning
it as fast as they can, for without it they cannot so readily conduct
business.
Speaking of the street cars, they are all open, of course, winter and
summer. In fact, there is never anything resembling northern winter
weather in Key West; light summer clothes and Panama hats are worn the
year round.
But you are not obliged to patronize street cars. Riding in private
conveyances is at a cheaper rate of fare than even in London, or in a
country town on the Continent. In London the smallest cab fare is one
shilling (twenty-five cents); in Key West you can ride a short distance
for a dime, and a longer distance for fifteen cents. The conveyance is a
very light and very dirty wagonette on four wheels. The driver is as
dirty as his vehicle, and his horse resembles those poor skeletons which
are blindfolded and pushed into the arena at a Cuban bull fight.
Such tropical fruits as the sugar apple, the guava, mango, the soft and
sweet sapadillo, thrive in Key West. The climate and salt atmosphere
combine to make it the home of the palm. There are many tall, slender
and beautiful cocoanut trees, some with their graceful leaves waving as
high as eighty feet in the air, making an interesting and pretty picture
against a cloudless sky.
But the cultivation of the cocoanut in Key West might be made very
profitable as well as picturesque. At present there are comparatively
few of such trees; their cultivation ought to be encouraged. The tree
has no tap root, and will thrive on a thin soil. It comes into bearing
eight or ten years from the nut; and after that the fruit grows and
increases every month in the year. Like the orange tree, the older it
gets the more it bears. A bearing cocoanut grove costs less to care for
than an orange grove, and the revenue therefrom is greater. It requires
no cultivation, and is as hardy in its section as the cabbage palmetto,
that grows everywhere in Florida. Besides, cocoanuts can be shipped in
any month of the year; they require no packing, no care in handling, and
they will bear transportation for thousands of miles. There is a good
market for green cocoanuts in these parts as well as for matured ones.
When the nut is fully grown, but green, it contains about two glasses of
clear juice, milk we call it in the North. It is considered a healthful
beverage in the tropics and sells per glass in the streets of Havana for
the equivalent of five cents.
Nature has favored Key West with a perfect climate. It is surrounded by
the Gulf of Mexico, as blue and as beautiful as the famous Danube.
Nature in fact has done everything she could to make the place desirable
as a residence for man, but man has done little or nothing for himself,
thus far, and if the truth must be told, notwithstanding its favorable
natural conditions and its lovely surroundings, Key West is not yet a
desirable place to live in. It has no sanitary laws, for nothing
whatever has been done with a view to sanitation, and yet with the salt
ocean all around the little island, how easy it would be to make it
healthy and clean, for it is neither one nor the other. There is no such
thing as system, no sewerage whatever in the town excepting one iron
pipe which leads from one hotel, the Russell House, to the sea, and even
that one pipe is allowed to clog occasionally.
A liberally illustrated and large edition of the _Equator-Democrat_ was
issued in 1889, which presents a very rose-colored view of Key West. In
that paper I find that “the pleasant streets running at right angles are
as smooth and hard as adamant.” I am not certain that I am very well
acquainted with adamant, but I know that the streets of Key West are
unpaved and that they are the roughest and the dirtiest streets I ever
saw. As I have lived in Baltimore, in New York and in New Orleans, my
testimony ought to be accepted on such a theme. I speak of Key West in
fine weather; what it must be in wet weather I don’t like to imagine. If
nothing but very deep ruts, holes and great gullies in the roadway
resemble adamant then is Key West adamantine beyond doubt.
There is not a boot-black in the town; none is needed. Nobody thinks of
blacking his shoes; it would be absurd. I spoke on this point with a
young New Yorker who hails from the fashionable precincts of Madison
avenue. He is a business man who is liberal in the matter of money,
usually dressy, and extremely neat in his person. He has been in Key
West six months, and in all that time not a brush has passed over his
shoes.
I regret to differ with my learned and courteous friend, the editor of
the _Democrat_, on the subject of hotels. Let him speak for himself. He
says that “The Russell House, the leading hotel in the city, is second
to none in the State in accommodations.” Now I had an idea that St.
Augustine and Jacksonville and Tampa were in Florida, and that there
were such hotels “in the State” as the Ponce de Leon and The Cordova at
St. Augustine, and the new Tampa Bay Hotel at Tampa Bay, not to mention
a number of other first-class houses “in the State.”
Directly opposite the Russell is the Duval House. You may never have
heard of it; it is not one-third the size of the Russell House. I know
nothing of the apartments of the Duval. for I investigated no further
than the dining-room, but that was enough to establish its good
reputation. It will be a long time before I forget how beautifully
garnished a dish they made at the Duval of a red snapper, and the
delicious flavor of their _omelette soufflée_ remains with me still. The
Duval is presided over by a Cuban lady, Mrs. Bolio, who kept for years
one of the leading hotels in Havana. She is evidently a woman who knows
what good living is.
Cigar-making is a very large and important industry in Key West. The
place was selected for cigar-making because the climate is suited to the
“curing” of tobacco in the leaf, and because it is near Havana. There is
something also in the name. Everybody does not know that this (Spanish)
island is United States territory, and some smokers if they see a “Key
West” label on a box of cigars believe, without stopping to think, that
they are smoking a foreign-made cigar. Now a Key West cigar if made from
Havana tobacco of fine quality has just as good a flavor as if it were
made in Cuba, but the Key West cigar can be sold at a lower price
because the import duty on cigars is much higher than the duty on the
raw material.
Having the same climate as Havana, the best climate in the world for
tobacco curing, and the cigars being made by Cubans, who are the best
cigar-makers in the world, Key West turns out just as good cigars as can
be produced anywhere--provided always that tobacco of the first quality
is used. And the cigar need not consist entirely of Havana tobacco. A
cigar of choice flavor is made of a mixture of tobaccos--Havana “filler”
and “binder,” with, say, a “Connecticut seed” or Sumatra wrapper.