PRESENT APPEARANCE OF ST. AUGUSTINE, AS GIVEN BY THE AUTHOR OF
THANATOPSIS--ITS CLIMATE AND SALUBRITY.
St. Augustine has now attained, for this side of the Atlantic, a period
of most respectable antiquity. In a country like America, where States
are ushered into existence in the full development of maturity, where
large cities rise like magic from the rude forest, where the "oldest
inhabitant" recollects the cutting down of the lofty elms which shadowed
the wigwam of the red man, perchance on some spot now in the heart of a
great city; an antiquity of three centuries would be esteemed as almost
reaching back (compared with modern growth) to the days of the Pharaohs.
The larger number of early settlements were unsuitably located, and were
forced to be abandoned on account of their unhealthiness; but the
Spanish settlement at St. Augustine has remained for near three hundred
years where it was originally planted; and the health of its inhabitants
has, for this long period, given it a deserved reputation for salubrity
and exemption from disease, attributable to locality or extraneous
influences or causes.
The great age attained by its inhabitants was remarked by De Brahm; the
number and healthfulness of the children that throng its streets,
attract now, as they did then, the attention of strangers. This
salubrity is easily accounted for, by the almost insular position of the
city, upon a narrow neck of land nearly surrounded by salt water; the
main shore, a high and healthy pine forest and sandy plains, so near the
ocean as to be fanned by its constant breezes, and within the sound of
its echoing waves; a situation combining more local advantages for
salubrity could hardly be imagined. While it will never probably
increase to any great extent in population, it will hardly be likely to
decrease. Its health, easy means of support, unambitious class of
inhabitants, with their strong attachments and family and local ties,
will contribute to maintain St. Augustine as the time-honored ancient
city, with its permanent population, and its visitors for health, for
centuries perhaps yet to come.
I cannot perhaps better conclude these historic notices than by giving
the impressions of the author of Thanatopsis,[43] one whose poetic fame
will endure as long as American literature exists. Writing from St.
Augustine in April, 1843, he says:
"At length we emerged upon a shrubby plain, and finally came in sight of
this oldest city of the United States, seated among its trees on a sandy
swell of land, where it has stood for three hundred years. I was struck
with its ancient and homely aspect, even at a distance, and could not
help likening it to pictures which I had seen of Dutch towns, though it
wanted a wind-mill or two to make the resemblance perfect. We drove into
a green square, in the midst of which was a monument erected to
commemorate the Spanish constitution of 1812, and thence through the
narrow streets of the city to our hotel.
"I have called the streets narrow. In few places are they wide enough to
allow two carriages to pass abreast. I was told that they were not
originally intended for carriages; and that in the time when the town
belonged to Spain, many of them were floored with an artificial stone,
composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the
hardness of rock; and that no other vehicle than a hand-barrow was
allowed to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this
ancient pavement; but for the most part it has been ground into dust
under the wheels of the carts and carriages introduced by the new
inhabitants. The old houses, built of a kind of stone which is seemingly
a pure concretion of small shells, overhang the streets with their
wooden balconies; and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the
side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls
you see branches of the pomegranate, and of the orange-tree now fragrant
with flowers, and rising yet higher, the leaning boughs of the fig with
its broad luxuriant leaves. Occasionally you pass the ruins of
houses--walls of stone with arches and stair-cases of the same material,
which once belonged to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with
men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them
speaking to each other in a strange language. You are told that these
are the remains of those who inhabited the country under the Spanish
dominion, and that the dialect you have heard is that of the island of
Minorca.
"'Twelve years ago,' said an acquaintance of mine, 'when I first visited
St. Augustine, it was a fine old Spanish town. A large proportion of the
houses which you now see roofed like barns, were then flat-roofed; they
were all of shell rock, and these modern wooden buildings were then not
erected. That old fort which they are now repairing, to fit it for
receiving a garrison, was a sort of ruin, for the outworks had partly
fallen, and it stood unoccupied by the military, a venerable monument of
the Spanish dominion. But the orange-groves were the wealth and ornament
of St. Augustine, and their produce maintained the inhabitants in
comfort. Orange-trees of the size and height of the pear-tree, often
rising higher than the roofs of the houses, embowered the town in
perpetual verdure. They stood so close in the groves that they excluded
the sun; and the atmosphere was at all times aromatic with their leaves
and fruit, and in spring the fragrance of the flowers was almost
oppressive.'
"The old fort of St. Mark, now called Fort Marion--a foolish change of
name--is a noble work, frowning over the Mantanzas, which flows between
St. Augustine and the island of Anastasia; and it is worth making a long
journey to see. No record remains of its original construction; but it
is supposed to have been erected about a hundred and fifty years
since,[44] and the shell rock of which it is built is dark with time. We
saw where it had been struck with cannon balls, which, instead of
splitting the rock, became imbedded and clogged among the loosened
fragments of shell. This rock is therefore one of the best materials for
fortification in the world. We were taken into the ancient prisons of
the fort-dungeons, one of which was dimly lighted by a grated window,
and another entirely without light; and by the flame of a torch we were
shown the half obliterated inscriptions scrawled on the walls long ago
by prisoners. But in another corner of the fort, we were taken to look
at the secret cells, which were discovered a few years since in
consequence of the sinking of the earth over a narrow apartment between
them. These cells are deep under ground, vaulted over-head, and without
windows. In one of them a wooden machine was found, which some supposed
might have been a rack, and in the other a quantity of human bones. The
doors of these cells had been walled up and concealed with stucco,
before the fort passed into the hands of the Americans.
"You cannot be in St. Augustine a day without hearing some of its
inhabitants speak of its agreeable climate. During the sixteen days of
my residence here, the weather has certainly been as delightful as I
could imagine. We have the temperature of early June as June is known in
New York. The mornings are sometimes a little sultry; but after two or
three hours a fresh breeze comes in from the sea sweeping through the
broad piazzas, and breathing in at the windows. At this season it comes
laden with the fragrance of the flowers of the Pride of India, and
sometimes of the orange tree, and sometimes brings the scent of roses,
now in bloom. The nights are gratefully cool; and I have been told by a
person who has lived here many years, that there are very few nights in
summer when you can sleep without a blanket.
"An acquaintance of mine, an invalid, who has tried various climates,
and has kept up a kind of running fight with death for many years,
retreating from country to country as he pursued, declares to me that
the winter climate of St. Augustine is to be preferred to that of any
part of Europe, even that of Sicily, and that it is better than the
climate of the West Indies. He finds it genial and equable, at the same
time that it is not enfeebling. The summer heats are prevented from
being intense by the sea-breeze, of which I have spoken. I have looked
over the work of Dr. Forry on the climate of the United States, and have
been surprised to see the uniformity of climate which he ascribes to Key
West. As appears by the observations he has collected, the seasons at
that place glide into each other by the softest gradations; and the heat
never, even in midsummer, reaches that extreme which is felt in the
higher latitudes of the American continent. The climate of Florida is,
in fact, an insular climate: the Atlantic on the east, and the Gulf of
Mexico on the west, temper the airs that blow over it, making them
cooler in summer and warmer in winter. I do not wonder, therefore, that
it is so much the resort of invalids; it would be more so if the
softness of its atmosphere, and the beauty and serenity of its seasons
were generally known. Nor should it be supposed that accommodations for
persons in delicate health are wanting; they are, in fact, becoming
better with every year, as the demand for them increases. Among the
acquaintances whom I have made here, I remember many who having come
hither for the benefit of their health, are detained for life by the
amenity of the climate. 'It seems to me,' said an intelligent gentleman
of this class, the other day, 'as if I could not exist out of Florida.
When I go to the north, I feel most sensibly the severe extremes of the
weather; the climate of Charleston itself appears harsh to me.'
"The negroes of St. Augustine are a good-looking specimen of the race,
and have the appearance of being very well treated. You rarely see a
negro in ragged clothing; and the colored children, though slaves, are
often dressed with great neatness. In the colored people whom I saw in
the Catholic church, I remarked a more agreeable, open, and gentle
physiognomy than I have been accustomed to see in that class.
"Some old customs which the Minorcans brought with them from their
native country, are still kept up. On the evening before Easter Sunday,
about eleven o'clock, I heard the sound of a serenade in the streets.
Going out, I found a party of young men with instruments of music,
grouped about the window of one of the dwellings, singing a hymn in
honor of the Virgin,[45] in the Mahonese dialect. They began, as I was
told, with tapping on the shutter. An answering knock within had told
them that their visit was welcome, and they immediately began the
serenade. If no reply had been heard, they would have passed on to
another dwelling. I give the hymn as it was kindly taken down for me in
writing, by a native of St. Augustine. I presume this is the first time
that it has been put in print; but I fear the copy has several
corruptions, occasioned by the unskillfulness of the copyist. The letter
_e_, which I have put in italics, represents the guttural French _e_,
or, perhaps, more nearly the sound of the _u_ in the word but. The _sh_
of our language is represented by _sc_ followed by an _i_ or an _e_; the
_g_, both hard and soft, has the same sound as in our language.
"'Disciar_e_m lu dol
Cantar_e_m aub' alagria
Y n'arem a da
Las pascuas a Maria
O Maria!
"'Sant Grabiel,
Qui portaba la ambasciado
Des nostro rey del cel,
Estaran vos prenada
Ya omitiada
Tu o vais aqui surventa
Fia del Dieu contenta
Para fe lo que el vol
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"'Y a milla nit
Pariguero vos regina
A un Dieu infinit,
Dintra una establina.
Y a milla dia,
Que los angles von cantant
Pau y abondant
De la gloria de Dieu sol
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"'Y a Libalam,
Alla la terra santa
Nus nat Jesus
Aub' alagria tanta
Infant petit
Que tot lu mon salvaria
Y ningu y bastaria
Nu mes un Dieu tot sul
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"'Cuant de Orion lus
Tres reys la stralla veran
Dieu omnipotent
Adora lo vingaran
Un present inferan
De mil _e_ncens y or
A lu beneit seno
Que conesce cual se vol
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"'Tot fu gayant
Para cumple la prumas
Y lu Esperit sant
De un angel fau gramas
Gran foc ences,
Que crama lu curagia
Dieu nos da lenguagia
Para fe lo que Dieu vol
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"'Cuant trespasa
De quest mon nostra Senora
Al cel s' empugia
Sun fil la matescia ora
O! Emperadora
Que del cel san eligida
Lu rosa florida
Me resplenden que un sol
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"'Y el tercer giorn
Que Jesus resunta
Dieu y Aboroma
Que la mort triumfa
De alli se balla
Para perldra Lucife
An tot a sen penda
Que de nostro ser el sol
Disciar_e_m lu dol, &c.
"After this hymn, the following stanzas, soliciting the customary gift
of cakes or eggs, are sung:--
"'Ce set que vam cantant,
Regina celestial!
Damos pan y alagria
Y bonas festas tingan
Y vos da sus bonas festas
Danos dines de sus nous
Sempre tar_e_m lus neans Uestas
Para recibi un grapat de nes,
Y el giorn de pascua florida
Alagramos y giuntament
As qui _e_s mort par dar nos vida
Y via glorosiamente,
A questa casa esta empedrada
Bien halla que la empedro;
San amo de aquesta casa
Baldria duna un do
Formagiado o empanada
Cucutta a flao;
Cual se val casa rue grada,
Sol que no rue digas que no.'
"The shutters are then opened by the people within, and a supply of
cheese, cakes or other pastry, or eggs, is dropped into a bag carried by
one of the party; who acknowledge the gift in the following lines, and
then depart:--
"'Aquesta casa reta empedrada
Empedrada de cuatro vens;
Sun amo de aquesta casa
Es omo de compliment.'
"If nothing is given, the last line reads thus:--
"'No es homo de compliment.'"