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.”
[Illustration: UNCLE JACK.]
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.”
[Illustration: UNCLE JACK’S CABIN.]
“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.”
“Did you know there was a native artist here?” said John, calling up one
morning as he sat on the balcony, Sara and myself endeavoring to write
duty letters.
“Painter or sculptor?” I inquired, pen in hand, pausing over an
elaborate description of a sunset with which I was favoring a
soul-to-soul correspondent. “Let me see: standing on the glacis with the
look-out tower outlined against--”
“Sculptor,” answered John. “His studio is on Charlotte Street not far
from here. Let us walk down and see him.”
“Look-out tower outlined against the golden after-glow. Is it worth
going to see?”
“Indeed it is. There is a fine design--a lion carved in stone, and also
a full-length figure of Henry Clay walking in the gardens of Ashland;
and what is more, these statues are on top of the house outlined
against--”
“The golden after-glow,” I suggested.
“Certainly,” said John. “And inside you will find rare antique vases,
Egyptian crocodiles, Grecian caskets, and other remarkable works, all
executed in stone.”
“I have long craved an alligator, but could not undertake the cigar-box
discipline,” I answered, rising. “A crocodile carved in stone will be
just the thing. Come, Sara.”
We walked down Charlotte Street, and presently came to a small house
with a low wing, whose open shutter showed the studio within. On the
roof were two figures in coquina, one a nondescript animal like the
cattle of a Noah’s ark, the other a little stone man who seemed to have
been so dwarfed by the weight of his hat that he never smiled again.
“The lion, and Henry Clay,” said John, introducing the figures.
“Passé for the lion; but how do you make out the other?”
“Oh, Henry seems to be the beau ideal of the South. You meet him every
where on the way down in a plaster and marble dress-coat, extending his
hand in a conversational manner, and so, of course, I supposed this to
be another one. And as to the gardens of Ashland, as he has his hat
on--indeed, he is principally hat--he must be taking a walk somewhere,
and where so likely as his own bucolic garden?”
“I shall go back to my after-glow, Mr. Hoffman. Your Henry Clay is a
fraud.”
“Wait and see the artist, Martha,” said Sara. “He is a colored man and a
cripple.”
We tapped on the shutter, and the artist appeared, supporting himself on
crutches; a young negro, with a cheerful shining countenance, and an
evident pride in the specimens of his skill scattered about the
floorless studio--alligators, boxes, roughly cut vases, all made of the
native coquina; or, as the artist’s sign had it,
[Illustration: COKENA WORK DONE TO ORDER]
“It must require no small amount of skill to cut any thing out of this
crumbling shell-rock,” I said, as, after purchasing a charming little
alligator, and conversing some time with the dusky artist, we turned
homeward.
“It does,” replied John. “Ignorant as he is, that man is not without his
ideas of beauty and symmetry--another witness to the capability for
education which I have every where noticed among the freedmen of the
South.”
“I too have been impressed with this capability,” said Sara--“strongly
impressed. Last Sunday I went to the Methodist colored Sunday-school on
St. George Street. The teachers are Northerners; some resident here,
some winter visitors; and the classes were filled up with full-grown men
and women, some of them aged and gray-haired, old uncles and aunties,
eager to learn, although they could scarcely see with their old eyes.
They repeated Bible texts in chorus, and then they began to read. It was
a pathetic sight to see the old men slowly following the simple words
with intense eagerness, keeping the place under each one with careful
finger. The younger men and girls read fluently, and showed quick
understanding in the answers given to the teachers’ questions. Then the
little children filed in from another room, and they all began to sing.
Oh, how they sang! The tenor voice of a young jet-black negro who sat
near me haunts me still with its sweet cadences. Singularly enough, the
favorite hymn seemed to be one whose chorus, repeated again and again,
ended in the words,
“‘Shall wash me white as snow--
White as snow.’”
“The negroes of St. Augustine were formerly almost all Romanists,” said
John, “and many of them still attend the old cathedral on the Plaza,
where there is a gallery especially for them. But of late the number of
Methodists and Baptists has largely increased, while the old cathedral
and its bishop, who once ruled supreme over the consciences of the whole
population of la siempre fiel Ciudad de San Augustin, find themselves in
danger of being left stranded high and dry as the tide of progress and
education sweeps by without a glance. The Peabody Educational Fund
supports almost entirely two excellent free schools here, one for white
and one for colored children; and in spite of opposition, gradually,
year by year, even Roman Catholic parents yield to the superior
advantages offered to their children, and the church schools hold fewer
and fewer scholars, especially among the boys. The Presbyterian church,
with its pastor and earnest working congregation, has made a strong
battle against the old-time influences, and it now looks as though the
autocratic sway of the religion of Spain were forever broken in this
ancient little Spanish city.”
“At least, however, the swarthy priests _look_ picturesque and
appropriate as they come and go between their convent and the old
cathedral through that latticed gate in their odd dress,” said Sara. “Do
you remember, in _Baddeck_, the pleasing historical Jesuit, slender too
corpulent a word to describe his thinness, his stature primeval? Warner
goes on to say that the traveler is grateful for such figures, and is
not disposed to quarrel with the faith that preserves so much of the
ugly picturesque.”
“The principal interest I have in the old cathedral is the lost
under-ground passage which, according to tradition, once extended from
its high altar to Fort San Marco,” I remarked. “I am perpetually haunted
by the possibility of its being under my feet somewhere, and go about
stamping on the ground to catch hollow echoes down below. We moderns
have discovered at San Marco a subterranean dungeon and bones: then why
not an under-ground passage?”
“And bones?” asked Sara.
“No; Spanish jewels, plate, and all kinds of mediæval treasures. I
consider the possibility far more promising than Captain Kidd’s chest. I
have half a mind to begin digging.”
“You would be obliged to take the shovel yourself, then, Miss Martha,”
said John. “Do you suppose you could hire the St. Augustiners to dig,
really dig, day after day, Northern fashion? Why, they would laugh in
your face at the mere idea. I am inclined to think there would never be
another house built here if regular foundations and cellars were
required; as it is, they set up the timbers as the children set up their
houses of blocks. How clearly that sail-boat is outlined against the
gray water, like a sketch in India ink! Is not that Miss Carew on
board?”
“Yes, with Mr. Mokes,” said Sara.
“And Aunt Diana,” I added. “I remember now; Mr. Mokes gives a chowder
dinner to-day over on the North Beach.”
“I would not give much for chowder made by a Mokes,” said John, with the
scorn of an old camper-out in his voice.
“Oh, Mokes does not make it, Mr. Hoffman. What are you thinking of?
Mokes make chowder! By no means. He has his servant and the boatmen to
do all the work, and sends over his wines and ice beforehand. It will be
an elegant dinner, I assure you.”
“On the beach?”
“Yes, on the beach. Unfortunately, tables can not be transported,
unless, indeed, Dundreary should arrive with his ‘waft.’ But the
table-cloth will be damask, with a monogram worked in gold thread, and
the conversation will be strictly Fifth Avenueish, I will answer for
that.”
“Great is the power of youthful beauty,” I said, when we had reached our
room again. “Here is Mokes with his money and wines, the Professor with
his learning and bones, the Captain with his beauty and buttons, all
three apparently revolving around that giddy little cousin of mine. And
now comes John Hoffman!”
“With all his ancestors behind him! Has he taken her to the demi-lune
yet?” said Sara, opening the _Princess of Thule_, which she read after a
dose of Florida history, like sugar after a pill. “Do you know, Martha,
I think poor Lavender is rather unfairly treated by the author of this
book. He is ordered about by Ingram, and most unmercifully snubbed by
Sheila, who, after all, manages to have her own way, ‘whatever.’”
Now I had thrown John Hoffman purposely into my list of Iris’s admirers
in order to provoke something like a denial from Sara--these two seemed
to feel such a singular kind of interested dislike toward each other;
but my little bait caught nothing; Sara remained impassive.
Toward sunset the same evening we waited on the Plaza in company with
the entire population of the town for the distribution of the one mail,
accomplished with some difficulty by the efficient, active, Northern
postmaster, in consequence of the windows being darkened with flattened
noses, and the doorways blocked up, to say nothing of beatings on the
walls, impatient calls through the key-hole, and raids round the back
way by the waiting populace. Having wrestled manfully for our letters,
we all strolled down Tolomato Street, reading as we went. Iris journeyed
languidly through the sand; she had received no letters, and she had
Mokes on her hands, Mokes radiant with the rejection of his private
three-cornered chowder party, and the smiles she herself had bestowed
upon him over on that wicked North Beach. “Oh, for a horse!” she sighed.
“Nay, I would even ride in a Florida cart.”
[Illustration: A FLORIDA CART.]
Aunt Diana was weary, but jubilant; she had the Professor and the Trojan
war, and did her duty by them. Miss Sharp ambled along on the other
side, and said “Indeed!” at intervals. Sara read her letters with a
dreary sort of interest; her letters were always from “Ed.,” she used to
say. John and I, strolling in advance, carried on a good, comfortable,
political fight over our newspapers.
“Another cemetery,” said Sara, as the white crosses and head-stones
shone out in the sunset on one side of the road.
Mokes, stimulated to unusual conversational efforts by the successes of
the day, now brought forward the omnipresent item. “This is--er, I
suppose, the old Huguenot burying-ground, a--er--a spot of much
interest, I am told.”
“Yes,” replied Sara. “This is the very spot, Mr. Mokes.”
“Oh no, Miss St. John,” said Aunt Diana, coming to the rescue, “you
mistake. This is Tolomato.”
“It makes no difference. I am now convinced that they are _all_ Huguenot
burying-grounds,” replied Sara, calmly.