Orange Groves and an Ancient Village—The Oldest Town and Fort in the
United States—Northern Speculations.
From Jacksonville, we steamed down the coast to St. Augustine. “The
oldest town in the United States,” managed, in the good old times, to
secure handsome gratuities from the national authorities. A long granite
wall, splendidly built, by Government contractors, lines the whole water
face of the village, and gives wharfage for a place of twenty, instead
of a paltry two thousand inhabitants. Toward the upper end of the harbor
stands the quaint Spanish fort, the oldest fortification on our
sea-coast, “bastioned on the square,” as the engineers describe it, with
Spanish inscription by the old drawbridge,[22] and Spanish coat of arms
over the gate, and rusty Spanish guns still standing on the parapets;
Spanish dungeons beneath, with rings to which men were chained, and
French inscriptions, penciled more than a century ago, in solitary
despair, on the dungeon walls, and still telling their own story of the
sufferings of the times.
Climbing the old look-out tower of concrete shells, which stands nearly
perfect yet on the sea face of the fort, one sees a collection of
curious little antique houses, built so closely together that the
streets between them can hardly be made out, a widening circle of
orchard-like spots of green in the midst of seemingly waste expanse, a
tumble-down collection of old grave stones, and beyond all, the
dark-green line of the forests. This is St. Augustine, with its Spanish
streets, and orange groves, and relics of three hundred years of growth
and decay.
Even to this quaint old Sleepy Hollow of the extreme South the war has
penetrated with its changes. On the Plaza del Armas, where, of old,
Spanish soldiers, in cumbrous accouterments, had trained their
firelocks, and marched beneath the Red and Orange, with the arms of
Spain, and where, later, Spanish monks, to the tolling of the bell, that
still remains, had formed their long processions, and solemnly moved out
in stately show, to pronounce the doom of God alike upon sacrilegious
invaders and the pagan infidels, who inhabited the country; this very
Plaza was surrounded by long rows of stalwart negroes, black as ebony,
splendidly armed, and drawn up in handsome regimental lines for dress
parade. There is an island, not far off the coast of Florida, where the
Spanish colors still float, and where this spectacle of soldiers made
from slaves might prove suggestive.
* * * * *
When St. Augustine was laid out, the theory of those days was that,
without excessively narrow streets, it was impossible to have a cool
town in these low latitudes. The narrower the streets, they argued, the
more perfect the draught through them; and so it comes that, from the
projecting second-story balconies on the one side, in the main street of
St. Augustine, you can almost step to the similar balconies on the other
side. In the street itself there is no room for sidewalks, and I am not
even sure that carts can pass each other.[23] Behind each house is a
luxuriant garden; great masses of flowers hang over the walls or depend
from the trellises; and, through the open doors, one gets glimpses of
hammocks, swinging under vine-clad trees, and huge, but airy,
Sleepy-Hollow chairs. Curious little piazzas jut into the narrow
streets, and dark Spanish faces, with coal-black brows and liquid eyes,
look out from the windows.
One such, a pretty Madame Oliveras, whose husband has gone to the Rebel
army, and concerning whose fate, on his (now daily expected) return, his
fond wife is prettily anxious, displays a tempting array of palmetto
work in her rag-carpeted little parlor—toy baskets, hats, napkin rings,
fans and the whole catalogue of palmetto fancy work—drawing numerous
greenbacks from the Yankees, and evoking, in consequence, much warm
politeness from the grateful grass widow. There are not many Rebels
here, she thinks; but the fact that any number of wives, like her, are
expecting returning husbands, “now that paroles have been given,”
remains unexplained. Of course the Government will never think of
interfering with their little plantations; surely, they meant no harm,
and knew no better than to fight for their State, as they were told!
* * * * *
Passing through an old cemetery, where obelisks of granite, without a
word of inscription, have stood for nearly three hundred years; where
old tombs have fallen to pieces in the lapse of time, and human bones
protrude amid the decaying masonry; while, over all, the rich vegetation
of the semi-tropical climate throws a kindly concealing veil of beauty,
we come out into groves of exquisite fragrance. The ground is covered
with oranges, and the fruit is still clinging to the trees in bunches
that bend down and almost break the branches. The oranges are of a size,
and especially of a flavor, never found at the North; and the
deliciously dreamy, luxuriously indolent retreats one finds amid these
orange groves, and in the pleasant cottages of the owners, make St.
Augustine seem a town of another continent and century.
One of the orange groves was pointed out as that purchased by Major John
Hay, late the President’s private secretary. It had been sold for unpaid
taxes by the Land Commissioner—the taxes having remained unpaid for the
sufficient reason that the owner was away in the Rebel army—and Major
Hay had secured it by an investment of some five hundred dollars. Last
year, as an enthusiastic Floridian explained, the orange crop was worth
two thousand five hundred dollars! But, unfortunately for my dormant
enthusiasm, Hay had told me of his financial success in Florida before I
left Washington. “Incidental expenses” had required him to advance
another sum about equal to the original purchase money, and while the
orange crop might, for all he knew, have been a very fine one, he had
never seen an orange or received a penny from it! The Floridian pointed
out beautiful little groves that were soon to be sold, and dilated on
their advantages; but the party produced no purchasers.
There is great uncertainty, of course, about the titles in these tax
sales, and many people find it difficult to regard the transactions as
very creditable to the Government. There is no doubt, however, that, if
the titles stand, investments made in the lands about St. Augustine must
be profitable. The exquisite climate will always make the place a resort
for debilitated people, and particularly consumptives from the North;
and the orange crop, although occasionally injured by the frost, is so
nearly certain that, for those who can have it properly attended to, it
must, at the present prices for investments, prove unusually profitable.
At the rates now ruling, the gross returns of a single year’s crop will
nearly pay for the land. Whoever purchases, however, will here, as
elsewhere through the South, have to bear the odium among the returning
Rebels, who will soon make up again the bulk of the population, of
having taken advantage of their misfortunes and helplessness to get
possession of their property for nothing. Under such circumstances, let
the climate be never so delightful, and the profits never so inviting, a
sensitive man might still find residence in St. Augustine unpleasant.
* * * * *
The negroes here seem to have a vague idea that they are free; but
little change in their relations to their old masters is perceptible. In
the back country they remain, as usual, on the little cracker
plantations, and neither masters nor negroes succeed in more than making
a rude living.
Little boys were “playing marbles” in the streets with green oranges, as
we returned to the wharf, and a crowd of people, who had seen no other
opportunity for months to get North, were begging permission to go on
board our boat, and return with us to Fernandina.
-----
Footnote 22:
“Reynando en Espana el Fernando Sexto y Siendo Gov^{or} y Cap^o de
Es^a C^d Sa^{to} ang^o de la Florida y Sus Prov^a el mariscal de Campo
D^n Alonzo Fern^{do} Hereda Asi Concluio Este Castillo El Anod 1756
Diri^g endo Las obras el Cap Ingru^{ro} Dn Pedro de Brazos, y Garay.”
“Don Ferdinand the Sixth, being King of Spain, and the Field Marshal
Don Alonzo Fernando Hereda being Governor and Captain General of this
place, St. Augustine, of Florida, and its provinces, this fort was
finished in the year 1766. The works were directed by the Captain
Engineer, Don Pedro Brazos y Garay.”
The Fort first erected was called San Juan de Pinos. The same name
attached to the present Fort at the commencement of its erection.
Subsequently it was called St. Mark; and finally, upon the acquisition
of Florida by the United States, Fort Marion. Don Juan Marquez Cabera
commenced the construction of the present Fort in 1681. The Apalachian
Indians were employed upon it for more than sixty years. The first
Fort was built by Don Pedro Melendez de Avila, in 1565. In the same
year, the foundation of St. Augustine was laid. It is thus, by more
than forty years, the oldest town in the United Slates.
Footnote 23:
This is a specimen of Spanish sanitary precautions, but those of
Anglo-Saxon origin in the South were little better. Till within a very
recent period, Southern physicians have held that it was unhealthy, in
low latitudes, to pave the streets of a city, because the dust and
sand were needed to absorb the unhealthy moisture! And to this day New
Orleans is the only Southern city that can be said to be paved at all.