HARPER’S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
No. CCXCV.--DECEMBER, 1874.--Vol. L.
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.
[Illustration: GARDEN IN ST. AUGUSTINE.]
“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.’”
[Illustration: SHOOTING ALLIGATORS ON THE ST. JOHNS.]
“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.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ST. AUGUSTINE.]
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--”
[Illustration: PLAZA AND MONUMENT.]
“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.
[Illustration: THE BASIN.]
“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.”
[Illustration: THE SABRE-BOY.]
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.”
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE STREET.]
[Illustration: TREASURY STREET.]
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.
[Illustration: THE SEA-WALL, ST. AUGUSTINE.]
“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.
[Illustration: OLD FORT SAN MARCO.]
“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--”
“Demi-lunatic,” suggested John. “Forgive me, Miss Martha; it isn’t mine,
it’s quoted.”
We crossed a little draw-bridge, and passed through the ruined outwork,
barbacan, lune, or demi-lune, whichever it was. Iris and the Captain had
disappeared. At the second draw-bridge we came face to face with the
main entrance, surmounted by a tablet bearing an inscription and the
Spanish coat of arms.
“It seems to be two dragons, two houses for the dragons, and a supply of
mutton hung up below,” said Sara, irreverently making game of the royal
insignia of Spain. “Oh dear!” she sighed in an under-tone, “I ought to
have all this written down.”
[Illustration: THE DEMI-LUNE--EXTERIOR.]
[Illustration: COAT OF ARMS.]
“Here are the main facts, Miss St. John,” said John Hoffman, taking out
his notebook. “I collected them several years ago out of piles of
authorities; they are authentic skeletons as far as they go, and you can
fill them out with as many adjectives, fancies, and exclamation points
as you please.” He walked on, joining the others in the inner
court-yard, where the Professor, the old sergeant in charge, the piles
of cannon-balls, and all the ruined doorways were engaging in a wild
mêlée of information. Left alone, Sara and I read as follows: “Fort here
as far back as 1565. Enlarged several times, and finally finished much
as it now stands in 1755. The Appalachian Indians worked on it sixty
years; also Mexican convicts. The inscription over the entrance says
that the fort was finished when Ferdinand Sixth was King of Spain, and
Hereda Governor of Florida. It has been many times attacked, twice
besieged, never taken. Occupied in 1862 by the Fourth New Hampshire
regiment.”
We had read so far when Aunt Diana came out through the sally-port.
“Have you seen Iris?” she asked. “The sergeant is going to show us the
window through which the Coochy escaped.”
“The Coochy?”
“A cat, I believe; some kind of a wild-cat,” said Aunt Diana, vaguely,
as her anxious eyes scanned every inch of the moat and outworks in
search of the vanished niece. At length she spied a floating blue
ribbon. “There they are, back in that--in that illumined thing.”
“Oh, Aunt Di! Why, that is the demi-lune.”
“Well, whatever it is, do call Iris down directly.”
I went after the delinquents, discovering after some search the little
stone stairway, nicely masked by an innocent-looking wall, where was a
second stone tablet containing the two dragons, their two houses, and
the supply of mutton hung up below. There on the topmost grassy stair
were the two young people, and had it not been for that floating blue
ribbon, there they might have remained in ambush all the morning.
“Come down,” I cried, looking up, laughingly, from the foot of the
stair--“come down, Iris. Aunt Di wishes you to see the escaped cat.”
“I don’t care about cats,” pouted Iris, slowly descending. “I am glad he
escaped. Let him go; I do not want to see him.”
[Illustration: THE PROFESSOR.]
“Iris,” began Aunt Di, “pray what has occupied you all this time?”
“The study of fortifications, aunt; you have no idea how interesting it
is--that demi-lune.”
“Many persons have found it so,” observed John.
“We could not quite decide whether it was, after all, a demi-lune or a
barbacan,” pursued Iris.
“Many persons have found the same difficulty; indeed, visit after visit
has been necessary to decide the question, and even then it has been
left unsettled,” said John, gravely.
Following Aunt Diana, we all went into a vaulted chamber lighted by a
small high-up window, or rather embrasure, in the heavy stone wall.
“Through that window the distinguished Seminole chieftain Coa-coo-chee,
that is for to say, the Wild-cat, made his celebrated escape by starving
himself to an atomy, squirming up, and squeezing through,” announced
the sergeant, who stood in front as torch-bearer.
“Then it wasn’t a cat, after all,” said Iris.
“Only in a Pickwickian sense,” said John.
“Now _I_ thought all the while it was Osceola,” said Sara, wearily.
“The Seminole war--” began the Professor.
“Captain, I am sure you know all about these things,” said Iris; “pray
tell me who was this Caloochy.”
“Well,” said Antinous, hesitating, “I believe he was the son of--son of
King Philip, and he had something to do with the Dade massacre.”
“King Philip? Oh yes, now I know,” said Iris. “Chapter twenty-seven,
verse five: ‘Philip, while hiding at Mount Hope, was heard to exclaim,
Alas, I am the last of the Wampanoags! Now indeed am I ready to die.’”
“Oh no, Iris dear,” said Miss Sharp, hastily correcting; “that was the
New England chieftain. This Philip was a Seminole--Philip of the
Withlacoochee.”
[Illustration: CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.]
“Osceola is in it somewhere, I feel convinced,” persisted Sara; “he is
always turning up when least expected, like the immortal Pontiac of the
West. There is something about the Caloosahatchee too.”
“Are you not thinking of the distinguished chieftains Holatoochee and
Taholoochee, and the river Chattahoochee?” suggested John.
“For my part, I can’t think of any thing but the chorus of that
classical song, _The Ham-fat Man_, ‘with a hoochee-koochee-koochee,’ you
know,” whispered the Captain to Iris.
“Don’t I!” she answered. “I have a small brother who adores that melody,
and plays it continually on his banjo.”
The next thing, of course, was the secret dungeon, and we crossed the
court-yard, where the broad stone way led up to the ramparts, occupied
during the late war by the tents of the United States soldiers, who
preferred these breezy quarters to the dark chambers below. We passed
the old chapel with its portico, inner altar, and niches for holy-water;
the hall of justice. The furnace for heating shot was outside, and the
southeast turret still held the frame-work for the bell which once rang
out the hours over the water.
Standing in the gloomy subterranean dungeon, we listened to the old
sergeant’s story--the fissure, the discovery of the walled-up entrance,
the iron cage, and the human bones.
“Oh, do come out,” I said. “Your picturesque Spaniards, Sara, are too
much for me.”
“But who were the bones, I wonder?” mused Iris.
“Yes,” said Aunt Diana, “who were they? Mr. Mokes, what do _you_ think?”
Mokes thought “they were rascals of some kind, you know--thieves,
perhaps.”
“Huguenots,” from John.
“Recreant priests,” from myself.
“The architect of the fort, imprisoned that the secrets of its
construction might die with him,” suggested Miss Sharp.
“A prince of the blood royal, inconvenient to have around, and therefore
sent over here to be out of the way,” said Iris.
“For my part, I feel convinced that the bones were the mortal remains of
‘Casper Hauser,’ the ‘Man with the Iron Mask,’ and ‘Have we a Bourbon
among us,’” said Sara. Mokes looked at her. He never was quite sure
whether she was simply strong-minded or a little out of her head. He did
not know now, but decided to move a little farther away from her
vicinity.
The Professor had left us some time before, and as we came out through
the sally-port we saw him down in the moat in company with the
fiddler-crabs, an ancient horse, and two small darkies.
“I have discovered the line of the counterscarp!” he cried, excitedly.
“This is undoubtedly the talus of the covered way. If we walk slowly all
around we may find other interesting evidences.”
But there was mud in the moat, not to speak of the fiddlers, whose
peculiarity is that you never can tell which way they are going--I don’t
believe they know themselves; and so our party declined the interesting
evidences with thanks, and passing the demi-lune again, went down to the
sea-wall. Miss Sharp looked back hesitatingly; but Aunt Diana had her
eye upon her, and she gave it up.
In the afternoon all the party excepting myself went over to the North
Beach in a sail-boat. I went down to the Basin to see them off.
“_Osceola_” was painted on the stern of the boat. “Of course!” said
Sara. She longed to look out over the broad ocean once more, otherwise
she would hardly have consented to go without me. The boat glided out on
the blue inlet, and Miss Sharp grasped the professor’s arm as the
mainsail swung round and the graceful little craft tilted far over in
the fresh breeze.
[Illustration: AUNT VINY.]
[Illustration: VICTORIA LINKUM.]
“If you are frightened, Miss Sharp, pray change seats with me,” I heard
Aunt Diana say. The Captain was not there, but Mokes was; and John
Hoffman was lying at ease on the little deck at the stern, watching the
flying clouds. The boat courtesied herself away over the blue, and, left
alone, I wandered off down the sea-wall, finding at the south end the
United States Barracks, a large building with broad piazzas overlooking
the water, and a little green parade-ground in front, like an oasis in
the omnipresent sand. At the north end of the wall floated the flag of
old San Marco, here at the south end floated the flag of the barracks,
and the two marked the limits of the Ancient City. The post is called
St. Francis, as the foundations of the building formed part of the old
Franciscan monastery which was erected here more than two centuries ago.
Turning, I came to a narrow street where stood a monument to the
Confederate dead--a broken shaft carved in coquina. Little St. Augustine
had its forty-four names inscribed here, and while I was reading them
over a shadow fell on the tablet, and, turning, I saw an old negro, who,
leaning on a cane, had paused behind me. “Good afternoon, uncle,” I
said. “Did you know the soldiers whose names are here?”
“Yas, I knowed ’em; my ole woman took car’ ob some ob dem when dey was
babies.”
“The war made great changes for your people, uncle.”
“Yas, we’s free now. I tank de Lord dat day de news come dat my
chil’en’s free.”
[Illustration: AFRICA.]
“But you yourself, uncle? It did not make so much difference to you?” I
said, noticing the age and infirmity of the old man. But straightening
his bent body, and raising his whitened head with a proud happiness in
his old eyes, he answered,
“I breave anoder breff ebber sense, mistis, dat I do.”
Farther on I found a woman sitting at the door of a little shop with
sweets to sell, and purchased some for the sake of making a mental
sketch of her picturesque head with its white turban. “I have not the
exact change, but will send it to you to-morrow,” I said, intending to
fee the Sabre to execute the errand. “Who shall I say it is?”
“Why, Viny, course. Every body knows Aunt Viny.”
“I want to go over to Africa, Aunt Viny. Can you tell me the way?”
“Certain. You goes--You know St. Francis Street?”
“No.”
“De Bravo’s Lane, den?”
“No.”
“Well, nebber mind. You goes ’long down Bridge Street--you knows dat?”
“No.”
“I declar’ for’t, mistis, I don’t jes know how to tell _you_, but
whenebber _I_ wants to go dar, I jes _goes_.”
I laughed, and so did Aunt Viny. A colored girl came round the corner
with a pail on her head. “Dar’s Victoria; she’ll show yar,” said Aunt
Viny.
“Your daughter?”
“Yas. Victoria Linkum is her name, mistis. You see, she was jes borned
when Linkum died, and so I named her from him,” said the woman, with
simple earnestness.
The funny little Victoria showed me the way across a bridge over the
Maria Sanchez Creek.
“Why is it called so--who was this Maria?” I asked. But Victoria Linkum
did not know. Africa was a long straggling suburb, situated on a
peninsula in shape not unlike the real Africa, between the Maria Sanchez
Creek and the Sebastian River; it was dotted with cabins and an
easy-going idle population of freedmen, who had their own little church
there, and a minister whose large silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity
to his ebony countenance. “They do not quite know how to take their
freedom yet,” said a lady, a fellow-boarder, that evening. “The colored
people of St. Augustine were an isolated race; they had been family
servants for generations, as there were few plantations about here, and,
generally speaking, they were well cared for, and led easy lives. They
held a great celebration over their freedom; but the truth is they don’t
know what to do with it yet, and their ideas take the oddest shapes. The
Sabre, for instance, always insists upon going and coming through the
front-door; he calmly brings in all his provisions that way--quarters of
venison, butter, fish, whatever it may be, no matter who is present.”
“Did you enjoy the afternoon, Sara?” I asked that evening.
“I can not tell you how much. If you could only have seen it--the blue
inlet, the island, and the two light-houses, the surf breaking over the
bar, and in front the broad ocean, thousands of miles of heaving water,
with no land between us and Africa.”
“You absurd child! as though that made any difference.”
“But it does make a difference, Martha. If I thought there was so much
as one Canary Island, the sense of vastness would be lost. I stood on
that beach and drew in a long breath that came straight from the Nile.”
“And Aunt Diana?”
“Oh, she was happy.”
“Iris smiled upon Mokes, then?”
“Conspicuously.”
“Naughty little flirt! And Miss Sharp?”
“One summer day--with pensive thought--she wandered on--the sea-girt
shore,” chanted Sara. “The madam-aunt had the Professor, and kept him!”
“And John Hoffman?”
“Mr. Hoffman said that we ought to be very thankful for the simple,
unalloyed enjoyment of the perfect day; how much better it was than the
gaudy glare of cities, and so forth.”
“I have noticed that no one ever says that who has not been well through
the g. g. aforesaid, and especially the and-so-forth, Sara, my dear.”
The sunny days passed; the delicious, indolent atmosphere affected us
all; we wandered to and fro without plan or purpose in a lazy enjoyment
impossible with Northern climate and Northern consciences.
“I feel as though I had taken hasheesh,” said Sara.
Crowds of tourists came and went, and liked or liked not the Ancient
City according to their tastes.
“You must let yourself glide into the lazy tropical life,” I explained
to a discontented city friend; “it is _dolce far niente_ here, you
know.”
But the lady did not know. “Very uninteresting place,” she said;
“nothing to see--no shops.”
“What! going, Mr. Brown?” I asked one morning.
“Yes, Miss Martha, I _am_ going,” replied the old gentleman, decidedly.
“I have been very much disappointed in St. Augustine--nothing to do, no
cemeteries to speak of.”
“Stay longer? No, indeed,” said a lady who had made three toilets a day,
and found nobody to admire them. “What _you_ find to like in this old
place is beyond me!”
“She is not far wrong there,” commented Sara, _sotto voce_; “it is
beyond her; that is the very point of the thing.”
But, on the other hand, all those in search of health, all endowed with
romance and imagination, all who could appreciate the rare charming haze
of antiquity which hangs over the ancient little city, grew into love
for St. Augustine, and lingered there far beyond their appointed time.
Crowds of old ladies and gentlemen sunned themselves on the south
piazzas, and troops of young people sailed and walked every where,
waking up the sleeping woods and the dreaming water with song and
laughter. The enterprising tourists came and went with their accustomed
energy; they bought palmetto hats and twined gray moss around them; they
carried orange-wood canes and cigar boxes containing young alligators.
(Why young alligators must always travel North in cigar boxes in
preference to any other kind of box is a mystery; but in cigar boxes
they always go!) Once a hand-organ man appeared, and ground out the same
tune for two whole days on the Plaza.
“And what may be the name of that melody, Miss Iris--the one he is
playing now?” asked the Professor, endeavoring to assume a musical air.
“He can only play one tune, and he has been playing that steadily for
two days,” replied Iris. “As far as I can make out from the discords it
is intended to be Strauss’s _Tausend und Eine Nacht_.”
But the Professor, an expert in Hebrew, Greek, and Sanskrit, had never
condescended to a modern tongue.
“Pray translate it for me,” he said, playfully, with the air of an
affable Sphinx.
“It is a subject to which I have given profound thought, Sir,” said
Iris, gravely. “It is not ‘A thousand and one nights,’ because the last
night only is intended, and therefore the best way to translate it is, I
think, ‘The thousand and oneth.’ I will give you some verses on the
melody, if you like.”
[Illustration: HORSE RAILROAD, ST. AUGUSTINE.]
The Professor liked, and Iris began:
“‘TAUSEND UND EINE NACHT.
“‘The birds within their dells
Are silent; hushed the shining insect throng--
Now human music swells,
And all the land is echoing with song;
The serenade, the glee,
The symphony--and forth, mit Macht und Pracht,
Orchestral harmony
Is thrilling out _Tausend und Eine Nacht_.
“‘O thousand nights and one!
The witching magic of thy opening bars,
In little notes begun,
Might move to swaying waltzes all the stars
In all their shining spheres;
Then, soft, a plaintive air the music sings--
We dance, but half in tears--
To dearest joy a sadness always clings.
“‘O thousand nights and one!
Could we but have a thousand nights of bliss!
The golden stories spun
By dark-eyed Arab girl ne’er equaled this.
Soon over? Yes, we see
The summer’s fading; but, when all is done,
There lives the thought that we
Were happy--not a thousand nights, but one!’
“Dancing at a watering-place, you know--two young people
waltzing--orchestra playing _Tausend und Eine Nacht_. You have danced to
it a hundred times I dare say.”
No, the Professor had neglected dancing in his youth, but still it might
not be too late to learn if--
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Iris, waking up from her vision. “I forgot
it was you, Sir; I thought you were--were somebody else.”
So the days passed. Iris strolled about the town with Mokes, talked on
the piazza with Hoffman, and wore his roses in her hair (Hoffman was
always seen with a fresh rose every morning); she even listened
occasionally to extracts from the Great Work. But the sea-wall by
moonlight was reserved for Antinous. Thus we dallied with the pleasant
weather until Aunt Diana, like a Spartan matron, roused herself to
action. “This will never do,” she said; “this very afternoon we will all
go over to the island and see the tombs.”