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OLD 
 
 Saint Augustine 
 
 A Story of Three Centuiaes 
 
 BY 
 
 -A 
 
 CHARLES B; REYNOLDS 
 
 I "dec 2j1E^^/ 
 
 St. Augustine, Florida 
 
 E. H. REYNOLDS 
 
 1SS5 
 

 Copyright, 1884. 
 
 By Chas. B. Reynolds. 
 
 All Rights Reserved, 
 
Unstable as the ever shifting sands of its harbor bar 
 have been the changing fortunes of St. Augustine. To 
 tell the story, briefly, clearly and with accuracy of his- 
 torical detail, is the endeavor in the following chapters. 
 
 Some of the illustrations are from drawings by old-time 
 artists, who were actors here in the scenes of long ago. 
 Some have been printed on the camera by the sunlight 
 of to-day; they are new pictures, but of such things 
 as are old — the massive walls of a decaying fortress, the 
 pillars of a crumbling gateway, an ancient cathedral, a 
 more ancient palm tree. All are memorials which speak 
 of the past, for this is our theme. 
 
 The purpose of the book will be attained, if with its 
 aid the reader shall see the St. Augustine of the present 
 tinged and illumined with the light of its past. 
 
 St. Augustine, Florida. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 I. The Spaniard's Mission, - - - ii 
 
 II. The Huguenots in Florida, - - 14 
 
 III. The Coming of Menendez, - - - 20 
 
 IV. Founding a City, ... - 25 
 V. Fort Caroline, 29 
 
 VI. Matanza, 34 
 
 VII. French Vengeance, - - - - 43 
 
 VIII. After Twenty Years, - - - 49 
 
 IX. The English Sea-Kings, - - - 51 
 
 X. The Franciscans, .... 62 
 
 XI. The Boucaniers, 69 
 
 XII. British Cannon Balls, ... 75 
 
 XIII. The Minorcans, 83 
 
 XIV. Rangers and Liberty Boys, - - 91 
 XV. The Old World in the New, - - 100 
 
 XVI. The Seminole, loS 
 
 XVII. Later Years, 118 
 
 XVIII. Fort Marion, 125 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 ^ Fort Marion, - - - - Frontispiece. 
 
 From the Harbor. 
 
 ^ The River OF Dolphins, 15 
 
 After the drawing by Jacques Le Moyne, in his Brevis Nar- 
 ration Frankfort, 1591. 
 
 ^The Pillar of Stone, 17 
 
 After the drawing by Jacques Le Moyne. 
 
 ^FoRT Caroline, 31 
 
 After the drawing by Jacques Le Moyne. 
 
 i Spanish Fort at Matanzas Inlet, - - - 51 
 
 Formerly defending the approach from the south. 
 
 ^ Fort Marion, 75 
 
 From the Southwest ; showing glacis, southwest bastion and 
 sentry-box, west curtain and east curtain, with sally-port. 
 
 ^Plan of British St. Augustine, - - - 91 
 
 After the drawing by T. Jefferys in the "Description of East 
 Florida," by Wm. Stork, London, 1769. 
 
 'Ruins of the City Gate, ----- loi 
 
 From the Northwest, showing Fort Marion in the distance. 
 
 ^The Old Palm Tree, . . . . . joi 
 
 Showing part of St. Francis street. 
 
 - House on St. George Street, - - - - 105 
 
 From the South. 
 
 - House on Charlotte Street, - - . . 105 
 
 From the South. 
 
 \ Garden Overlooking Plaza, - - - - 121 
 
 Showing Spanish monument. 
 
 ' The Cathedral, 121 
 
 From the Plaza. 
 
 ^ Fort Marion, 125 
 
 Portion of the west curtain, showing, on left, fig tree growing 
 from the wall. 
 
 ^ Fort Marion, - 133 
 
 Interior, showing portion of court, entrances to casemates, and 
 inclined plane leading to ramparts. 
 
 #*:j,The artotypes are from negatives taken by Mr, W. A. Cox. 
 
THE TIME AND THE ACTORS. 
 
 For the beginning of the story we must go back over 
 three hundred years to the middle of the Sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 It was an age of romance, when the caravels of 
 Columbus had but just pierced the cloud of mystery 
 and gloom shutting out the west, and all Europe was 
 ringing with tales of the wondrous new-found realms 
 beyond the sunset. It was an age of credulous beliefs 
 and magnificent undertakings, when bold-hearted adven- 
 turers sailed forth in search of El Dorados and empires 
 rich in barbaric treasure. It was the age of Rome's 
 temporal dominion, when he who held the Keys of St. 
 Peter laid claim to the entire New World, and parceled it 
 out among his faithful children. An age of faith, when 
 in every happening devout believers recognized the direct 
 personal manifestation of a controlling supreme God; of 
 intense religious feuds, when difference of creed meant 
 enmity the most unrelenting and cruelty the most merci- 
 less; of fanaticism, when deluded men, believing them- 
 selves chosen instruments of the Most High, mistook the 
 
X The Time and the Actors. 
 
 instigation of the Devil for the inspiration of God; of 
 heroes, when at the hands of such bigots brave men 
 knew how to die rather than surrender the faith that was 
 dear to them; finally, of a new knight errantry, when, 
 indignant at a sovereign's apathy, individuals took 
 upon themselves single-handed the task of avenging 
 their martyred countrymen. 
 
 These were the times and the actors; and such were 
 the motives that we shall find reflected in the opening 
 chapters of St. Augustine's strangely chequered history. 
 
I. 
 
 THE SPANIARD'S MISSION. 
 
 pXiN arrogated to herself exclusive dominion of 
 the New World. Its whole vast territory was 
 doubly hers, first by right of discovery, and 
 then by Papal grant. 
 
 In Mexico and Peru she had abundantly made good 
 this claim by the glorious achievements of the Conquista- 
 dors; but in Terra Florida each successive attempt at 
 conquest had resulted in a failure more disastrous than 
 the last. Expedition after expedition, made up of the 
 flower of Spanish chivalry, had landed on the shores of 
 Florida, and set out with buoyant step upon a triumphal 
 march to win the fabled treasures of the interior; and the 
 forests had closed behind them. Exhausted by their 
 wanderings to and fro, entangled in swamp and hamak, 
 harassed by savage foes, faint with famine and stricken 
 with fever, one brave band after another had lost courage, 
 grown disheartened and turned back. From some a 
 handful of straggling survivors had returned to tell the 
 tale of woe; others had wasted away until the miserable 
 remnant fell into captivity; and still others had perished 
 
12 Old St. Aug7istine, 
 
 utterly. The history of Spanish endeavor in Florida had 
 been a pitiful record of disappointment. Here amid the 
 pines and savannas had been proven the truth of the 
 ancient belief that the world beyond the sunset was a 
 world of misery and death. 
 
 But the dream of glory to be attained in Florida was 
 not yet dispelled. Over the land still hung the halo of 
 romance; within its mysterious forests treasure and fame 
 were yet waiting to reward the hero whose heart should 
 be bold to win them; and there was yet one Spaniard, at 
 least, who, undismayed by the fate of Narvaez and De 
 Soto, would undertake to wipe out the shame of Spanish 
 failure in North America, and win for himself a place 
 with the heroes of his age. This new name in the story 
 of Florida adventure was that of Don Pedro Menendez 
 d'Aviles, nobleman, companion of Pizarro, soldier, bigot. 
 In 1565 Menendez received from the Spanish sovereign, 
 Philip IL, a commission to subdue Florida. 
 
 The enterprise was to be a conquest of territory and 
 treasure; and also much more than this, a mission for the 
 salvation of souls. The New World was peopled by the 
 heathen — lost sheep led away by the Demon; and they 
 must be brought back into the fold of the Church. To 
 the standard of Menendez, along with mail-clad warrior 
 came black-robed priest, with the helmeted knight the 
 cowled friar, beside the banner of Castile was borne aloft 
 the gilded crucifix, and with pike and arquebuse and 
 other munitions of war were provided the accessories of 
 the mass. 
 
 Moreover there was need of haste. A most alarming 
 report had been brought to Menendez. The soil of 
 
The Spaniard's Alzssion, 13 
 
 Florida was polluted by the feet of heretics; the land 
 promised by the Holy Father to the faithful had been 
 invaded by the children of the Arch-Demon. The tres- 
 passers must be rooted out and exterminated with fire 
 and sword. Upon the instant, the Florida enterprise was 
 transformed into a holy war and exalted to a crusade. 
 Zealots flocked to take part in the pious undertaking. 
 As a century before, in the far East, their ancestors had 
 wrested the Holy Sepulchre from the hand of the Infidel, 
 so now, in the West, the knights of Biscay and the Astu- 
 rias would rescue the New World from the accursed pro- 
 fanation of the impious heretics. The ranks of the new 
 crusaders were soon filled; and in June Menendez was 
 prepared to set forth on his mission. 
 
 Who were these heretics in Florida; and how had they 
 come here, in defiance of the proclamations of the King 
 of Spain, and in contempt of the anathemas of the Pope 
 of Rome? 
 
II. 
 THE HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA. 
 
 HORTLY after mid-day of the 2 2d of June, 
 1564, the people of the Indian village of 
 Seloy, on the Florida coast, looking out across 
 
 the bay and marsh and beyond the drifted sand dunes of 
 the beach, descried three sails approaching from the 
 south. Athwart the bar the strange ships came to anchor; 
 and at 3 o'clock in the afternoon two boats put off, and 
 rounding the point of the island opposite the town, rowed 
 toward the land. In the village all was instant commo- 
 tion. The laborers came in from the maize fields; the 
 fishermen stranded their dug-outs; and the boys left their 
 game of ball-throwing at the wicker target. Here collected 
 the warriors, their ear ornaments of inflated fish bladders 
 shining in the sun; and there were gathered the women, 
 clad in kirtles of woven moss, their bangles of silver and 
 gold plates, tinkling as they walked. Then, all came 
 trooping down to the shore to welcome the strangers — 
 all save the chief, or Paracoussy, who must needs main- 
 tain the dignity of his savage royalty, and so held aloof, 
 seated in state beneath his palmetto bower. 
 
 The new-comers were hailed with great joy, for the 
 Indians recognized them as friends. Their ensigns bore 
 the Fleur-de-Lis of France; and their leader, Rene de 
 

 4i'AiAS 
 
The Huguenots in Floi^ida. 15 
 
 Laudonniere, had been on this same coast two years 
 before. At that time the Indians had been treated with 
 such kindness that at the departure of the expedition 
 they had run along the shore, with cries and lamentations 
 bewailing the loss of their new-found friends and entreat- 
 ing them to remain. Now, overjoyed at the Frenchmen's 
 return, the people of Seloy received Laudonniere with 
 the warmest welcome and overwhelmed him with gifts. 
 But let him tell it in his own naive way, as translated 
 for us in the musty old English text of Hakluyt. "I 
 went on land," he writes — 
 
 |)aDmg: tl)U2! £iearcl)eti t[)e EiUer, Sf tuent on lanti to gpeaike 
 ^\X\i X\t SfnlJtanfi tol^icb toaiteti for us upon X\t s^ore, tol)ic(), 
 at our comming: on lanU, came before tis crpini]: \i\\X\ a loutir 
 toopce, ixi. X\z\x 3'nKian lanffuacje : Antipola Bonaffou, inM^'b 
 ifi as mticf) to sap, as brother, frienti, or some sucl) Ufee 
 tl)tncs:, ^iter t|)ep !)ali maUe berp muci) of us, t\tv sjjeraeti tts 
 t|)eir Paracouffy, t^at is to sap, t^eir %m% antJ (^o^rmour, 
 to tol)om S" presented certaine topes tol)ereii3ttb ^e toas toell 
 pleaseti. S(nU, for mj> otone part, 3f prapse (^oti continuallp 
 for t()e great lotje to^icf) 3" ^aije founU \\i tl;ese ^autiages, 
 to^irl) toere sorrp for notljing: but tl)at tlje ntffljt approcl)eli 
 anti matie us retire unto our sf)ips, 
 
 jFor, t|)cug:]^ t^ep enlieaijoureti bp al meanes to maie us 
 tarp ^\X\ tl)em, anti sf)etDetJ \^^ signs tlje tiesire t|)at i!s^tv !)ati 
 to present us ^x^i^ some rare t|)in5S, pet, nevertheless, for 
 manp iust anti reasonable occasions, 3f tooullJ not stap on 
 s|)ore all nis;l)t ; but epcusintj mpselfe for all t|)eir offers, 3" 
 embarfeeU mpselfe againe, anU returntti tolaarti mp sbips. 
 |)otobeit, before mp departure, % name^ tMs Eiuer tlje Eiijer 
 of Dolphines, because at mine arriiiall 3 sato t^ere a 
 great number of i^olpbines, tol)ic|^ toere plaping va t^e mouti) 
 thereof. 
 
1 6 Old St. Auzttstine. 
 
 s 
 
 So the Frenchmen, laden with gifts of painted deer- 
 skins, went back to their ships; and on the following 
 morning weighed anchor and sailed away from Seloy. 
 We shall hear of this Indian village again. As seen by 
 Laudonniere on that June day, three hundred years ago, 
 it was a collection of palmetto-thatched huts, surrounded 
 by maize fields. In the central square stood the great 
 council house, where before setting out for war the chief 
 and his counsellors gathered to drink the cassine, that 
 black drink of virtue so potent that to quaff it was the 
 crucial test of manly valor. Here, too, the assembled war- 
 riors waited on the incantation of the sorcerer; and here, 
 on their return again, they hung the scalps taken in battle. 
 Without the council hall, aloft on its staff was the effigy 
 of an antlered stag, looking out over the ocean toward 
 the sunrise. For annually, at the coming of spring, the 
 people of Seloy selected the skin of a huge deer, stuffed 
 it with choicest herbs and decked it wnth fruits and 
 flowers; and then bearing it with music and song to the 
 appointed spot and setting it up on its lofty perch, 
 consecrated it as a new offering to the Sun god, that 
 because of it he might smile upon the fields and fructify 
 the planted seed and send to his children an abundant 
 harvest. 
 
 From Seloy the French sailed north forty miles, until 
 they came to a stream^ which on the previous voyage had 
 been named the River of May. Here likewise the In- 
 dians hailed them with great joy, greeting them while 
 yet far off from shore wilh the salutation Antipola! Anti- 
 pola! Vv' hen they reached the land, the Paracoussy Sa- 
 tourioua with two of his sons, as fair and mighty persons 
 
The Huguenots in Florida, i 7 
 
 as might be found in all the world, thought the French, 
 hastened down to meet them, ''having nothing in their 
 mouths but this word — amy, amy, that is to say, friend, 
 friend." The first demonstrations of delight over, noth- 
 ing would do but that Laudonniere must accompany 
 Satourioua to the goodly hill, where a pillar of stone 
 bearing the French coat of arms had been erected by 
 Ribault, the captain of the first expedition, two years 
 before. The monument was found wreathed with gar- 
 lands, and about its foot were many little baskets of 
 fruit and maize, with quivers full of arrows and other 
 tokens of the Indian's veneration. Gathering about the 
 mysterious symbol, Satourioua and his people rever- 
 ently kissed the shaft; and besought the French to do 
 the like; "which we would not deny them," writes Lau- 
 donniere, "to the end we might draw them to be more in 
 friendship with us." An exchange of presents followed, 
 the Paracoussy giving the Captain a wedge of silver, and 
 Laudonniere presenting in return a cutting-hook and 
 some gilded trinkets; and thus, with expressions of 
 mutual good will and tokens of friendship, French and 
 Indians renewed the league of perpetual amity and alli- 
 ance made with Ribault. 
 
 After more coasting and exploration, a site was finally 
 selected, and a hymn of thanksgiving having been sung, 
 and a prayer made for divine protection, "after which 
 every man began to take courage," soldiers and sailors 
 set about the building of a fort. The Indians joyfully 
 assisted in the work, and with their aid the structure was 
 soon completed. Jacques Le Moyne, the artist, who 
 came out with the expedition, has pictured the fort for 
 
1 8 Old St. A^igustine. 
 
 us, a triangular structure of logs, which, in honor of the 
 young French King, Charles IX., they named Fort 
 Caroline. 
 
 Laudonniere and his companions were French Protest- 
 ants, Huguenots, Lutherans — in a word, heretics. They 
 had come to establish here in Florida a Protestant colony, 
 which should provide an asylum and harbor of refuge 
 from the persecutions that threatened to overwhelm the 
 New Religion in their native France. 
 
 When Fort Caroline was completed, the ships were sent 
 home for reinforcements. Weeks and months passed by, 
 but they did not come again. The French at the River 
 of May occupied themselves in strengthening the fortifi- 
 cations, and led on by the delusive stories of distant gold 
 mines, spent much time and endured many hardships in 
 fruitless quest of the precious metal. They fell into disas- 
 trous conflicts with the Indians. Sickness came. Laudon- 
 niere was worn out with nervous excitement and pros- 
 trated by a fever. The provisions were exhausted. 
 Famine followed. Then mutiny. At length, despairing 
 of succor, the wretched colonists built a crazy craft, 
 abandoned New France and were putting to sea, when 
 along came John Hawkins, on his way home from a slave 
 trading expedition. English sea-king and Spaniard-hater, 
 the bluff admiral very gladly fitted out the Frenchmen 
 with supplies of food; and left them one of his ships. 
 They made all haste to embark, and were awaiting a 
 favorable wind to bear them away from Florida. But 
 they did not sail. For on the 29th day of August (1565) 
 seven ships arrived off the bar of the River of May. 
 They were from France. Admiral Jean Ribault was in 
 
The Huguenots hi Flo7'ida. 
 
 19 
 
 command, and with him were 300 colonists. The rein- 
 forcements had come at last. All was bright once more at 
 Fort Caroline; and never were pioneers in a new land 
 more buoyant with hope than were these Huguenots on 
 the banks of the River of May, as they now set about 
 in earnest the establishment of Protestant New France. 
 
 These were the French heretics in Florida, whom 
 Menendez was commissioned to destroy, root and branch, 
 from the soil given by the Pope to the Spaniard. 
 
III. 
 THE COMING OF MENENDEZ. 
 
 N San Pedro's Day, June 29th, 1565, with royal 
 commission and Papal blessing, Menendez set 
 sail from Cadiz. He commanded a fleet of thirty- 
 four vessels and a company of 2,600 men, knights of Bis- 
 cay and the Asturias, soldiers, seamen, Franciscans, 
 Jesuits and negro slaves. 
 
 In mid-ocean the ships were overtaken and scattered 
 by a furious tempest; but the expedition, bent on a holy 
 mission, was under divine protection. So reasoned Men- 
 endez, and his courage did not falter. Again and again 
 during the voyage, signal manifestations of the heavenly 
 approval were granted them. Once, overcome by terror in 
 the storm, the pilots lost their reckoning and knew not 
 which way to steer, but divine guidance led them to their 
 course again. When they were becalmed, writes Fran- 
 cisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, chaplain of the expe- 
 dition, God in answer to their prayers sent them speedy 
 winds again; and Providence ordained that they should 
 come to dangerous shoals in the daytime, that so being 
 aware of their peril they might pass in safety. Again, in 
 
The Coming of Menendez. k|. 21 
 
 the Bahama Channel the Admiral's galleon, the San 
 Falayo^ struck upon a reef, the waters rushed into the 
 hold, the sailors gave themselves up for lost, and the ship 
 must surely have perished, had not the Holy Mother in 
 quick response to their supplications sent two heavy 
 waves, which lifted the San Falayo and bore her safely 
 off into deep water again. Yet once more came a token 
 from above. The fleet lay idly drifting on a glassy sea, 
 the captains grew disheartened and the crews began loudly 
 to murmur, when, writes Mendoza, "God showed us a 
 miracle from on high;" for in the night a great meteor 
 blazed out in mid-heaven, and sweeping on before them, 
 its brightness lasting while one might repeat two Credos^ 
 sank toward the west, where lay the land of Florida. 
 
 Thus borne on by heaven-sent winds and led by celes- 
 tial lights, at length, on the 29th of August, the day in 
 the Spanish calendar sacred to San Augustin, the Span- 
 iards came in sight of the coast; and at the first welcome 
 glimpse of land, soldiers and sailors, led by the priests, 
 chanted together a Te JDeum of praise and thanksgiving. 
 
 But if the crews rejoiced, how much greater must have 
 been the satisfaction of their commander, when from the 
 high deck of the San Falayo he first beheld the shadowy 
 outline of his kingdom; and how must his heart have 
 swelled with anticipation as fancy painted the glorious 
 conquests in store for him. Here at last is Terra Florida^ 
 the Florida of the sixteenth century, which means the 
 whole vast continent from Mexico to the boundless north, 
 and from the Atlantic westward to the back of the world 
 — who knows just where? Before him lies the empire 
 which he is to claim as his own, for of Florida (so reads 
 
2 2 .,. Old St. Augustine. 
 
 the royal commission) he is to be Adelantado for life. 
 Here, in this magnificent theatre of the New World, will he 
 achieve a conquest that shall outshine the most glorious 
 exploits of the Conquistadors, and forever join his name 
 with theirs. As Vasco Nunez de Balboa, advancing 
 into the waters of the Great South Sea, made valiant 
 boast, swearing on his sword, to hold against all comers 
 that mighty ocean for his sovereign Don Ferdinand, 
 so will he, Pedro Menendez d'Aviles, undertake to de- 
 fend against the world this unexplored and illimitable 
 continent for his Most Catholic Majesty Don Philip II. 
 As Francisco Pizarro has made his name immortal by 
 wresting the plates of gold from the Temple of the Sun, 
 and rifling the treasure from the tombs of the Incas, in 
 the great and holy city of Cuzco with its hundred thou- 
 sand houses, so will he, Pedro Menendez, sack the wealth 
 of Chigoula, the wonderful city hidden somewhere here 
 in Florida, ''whose inhabitants [ran the story of Indian 
 captives taken to Spain] make none account of gold and 
 silver and pearls, seeing they have thereof in abundance." 
 As Hernando Cortez has sent the fleets back to Spain 
 laden with bars of precious metals from the mines of the 
 Montezumas, so now will he dispatch the galleons from 
 Florida, and send them home freighted with treasure 
 untold from the crystal mountains of Apalatcy, those 
 wondrous peaks, whose summits ''shine so bright in the 
 day that they cannot behold them and so travel unto them, 
 by night." Nay, besides the rivers of golden sands, the 
 stores of "Christal, golde and Rubies and Diamonds," the 
 mines and the pearl fisheries, and cities and mountains of 
 wealth, beyond these and more wonderful than them all. 
 
The Coming of Menendez. 23 
 
 is the magic fountain into whose waters he, Pedro Menen- 
 dez, may yet plunge and — why not? — Hve forever, Adelan- 
 tado of a continent. Such is the magnificent dream that 
 rises before the Admiral of the Spanish fleet as the ships 
 draw near the Florida coast. But first and now, the 
 darker mission; before the search for fame and treasure, 
 the hunt for the heretics. 
 
 The fleet sailed north along the coast, and not long 
 after, late one afternoon, the Spanish lookout descried the 
 French ships lying at anchor off the River of May. At 
 eleven o'clock that night, Tuesday, September 4th, the 
 San Palayo and her consorts came to anchor within hail 
 of Ribault's flagship, the Trinity. The Spaniards worked 
 noiselessly and the French looked on without speaking. 
 "Such a silence," says Mendoza, "I never knew since I 
 came into the world." At last a trumpet sounded from 
 the deck of the San Palayo. From the Trinity came an 
 answering salute. Then with much courtesy Menendez 
 inquired, ''Gentlemen, whence comes this fleet?" 
 
 "From France," was the response. 
 
 "What is it doing here?" 
 
 "Bringing infantry, artillery and supplies for a fort which 
 the King of France has in this country, and for many 
 more which he will build." 
 
 "And you, are you Catholics or Lutherans?" 
 
 Many of the French at once cried out, "We are Luth- 
 erans, of the New Religion." Then they asked who he 
 was and whence he came. Through the gloom they 
 heard the answer: 
 
 "Pedro Menendez is he whom you question, the 
 Admiral of these ships, the fleet of the King of Spain, 
 
24 Old St, Augustine. 
 
 Don Philip II., which comes to this country to fall upon 
 and behead all Lutherans who are upon its shores, and 
 those who are on the seas. The instructions I hold from 
 my King, and which are so explicit that they leave me 
 no latitude nor authority to pardon you, I shall execute 
 in full. Immediately after the break of day, I shall board 
 your ships. If I find there any Catholics they shall be 
 spared; but all who are heretics shall die." 
 
 Here the French interrupted him and with jeers and 
 derisive taunts called out to him not to wait until the 
 morning but to board their ships at once; whereupon the 
 Spanish Admiral, provoked to great fury, gave the com- 
 mand to arms, ordered the cables cut and in his wrath 
 sprung down to the deck to hasten w^ith his own hands 
 the execution of the order. With all expedition the San 
 Palayo bore down on the Trinity^ but the Frenchmen too 
 had cut their cables, and putting straight out to sea soon 
 eluded their pursuers. "These crazy devils are such good 
 sailors," records Mendoza, ''and manoeuvered so well that 
 we could not capture a single one of them." At break of 
 day the Spaniards gave over the chase and returned to 
 the River of May. Here they found the French from 
 Fort Caroline drawn up on the shore to receive them; and 
 not risking an attack they sailed to the southward. 
 
 That night, it being the eve of the nativity of Our Lady 
 of September, the larger ships of the Spanish fleet lay off 
 the bar of the River of Dolphins; and the smaller ones, 
 entering the harbor, came to anchor before the village of 
 Seloy. 
 
IV. 
 
 FOUNDING A CITY. 
 
 ATURDAY, September 8th, witnessed a mem- 
 orable scene at the River of Dolphins. In the 
 morning, the first beams of the sun, rising from 
 the sea, shone upon the antlered front of the consecrated 
 stag, in the heathen village of Seloy; at night its last rays 
 from the pine forests of the west illumined a cross, stand- 
 ing amid the sentried fortifications of the Christian town 
 of San Augustin. 
 
 Long before dawn, the crews had begun the labor of 
 disembarking. The seamen landed artillery and stores; 
 the infantry took possession of the great council house 
 of Seloy; the negro slaves fell to the task of throwing up 
 earthworks about it; and the priests having set up a 
 cross, erected an altar and provided the sacred utensils of 
 the mass. 
 
 At noon, clad in the uniform of his knightly • order, 
 hose and doublet, slashed sleeves, and the cross of Sant- 
 iago on the breast, burnished casque and waving plume, 
 Menendez left the San Palayo; and amid fanfare of trum- 
 pet, roll of drum and salvos of artillery was rowed in 
 
26 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 state to the shore. Arrived there, a procession was 
 formed. At the head walked chaplain Mendoza, bear- 
 ing aloft the crucifix. Then came Menendez, drawn 
 sword in one hand and royal commission in the other. 
 After him marched the priests, and behind them, their 
 armor glistening in the sunlight, followed the companies 
 of infantry. Over them flaunted the great yellow banner 
 of Spain. Chanting they marched to the majestic meas- 
 ures of the Te Deum Laudamus. When they reached the 
 altar, Menendez knelt and reverently kissed the crucifix; 
 and the others followed his example. Then all gathered 
 about the altar for the solemn ceremonies of the mass. 
 
 It was a motley throng — the priests robed in the stole 
 and chasuble of their sacred office, the warriors clad in 
 suits of mail, the naked negroes toiling in the trenches: 
 and pressing in a circle without, the bewildered Indians, 
 mute in their wonder and vaguely imitating the mysteri- 
 ous actions of the strangers. It was a group in which 
 were many contrasts most sharply defined. Here stood 
 the Spanish Adelantado, representative of the proudest 
 nation upon the globe, now come hither to subdue a con- 
 tinent; and a little apart from him was the Indian Para- 
 coussy, whose petty reign should from that hour cease. 
 Here crowded the conquistadors, eager for spoils; and 
 there bent the negro toilers, precursors of the tens of 
 thousands of their unhappy race who should follow them 
 to slavery in America. Contrast most strange of all — 
 this celebration of Christian rites, while the heathen deer 
 high on his staff stolidly faced the east. 
 
 The mass being ended, Menendez took formal posses- 
 sion of Florida in the name of Philip II., and in honor 
 
Founding a City, 27 
 
 of the saint upon whose day the fleet had sighted the 
 Florida coast, he named the new town San Augustin. 
 Then having read aloud his commission, he took from 
 officers and men a renewal of their oaths of allegiance, 
 and was saluted by all present as Adelantado of Florida. 
 Soldiers and sailors sent up a cheer; the artillery shook 
 the earth with a salute; the ships in the bay responded 
 with their thunder; and booming over the water came 
 the answering echoes from the great guns of the San 
 Palayo far out beyond the bar. 
 
 So passed the natal day of San Augustin, the new 
 Christian town planted on the site of the pagan Indian 
 village. The sun sank behind the rim of pines in the 
 west; the glory of gold and crimson and purple faded 
 out from sky and sea; the birds hushed their songs; the 
 gloom of night drew on apace; and from the sea came 
 the monody of the surf rolling in on the shore. 
 
 The sunlight has faded from our story. There is no 
 more of glitter. The pageantry is over. The ceremo- 
 nies of the town's establishment are not yet completed. 
 Other rites are to follow, but they will be sombre 
 and pitiless. The ancient Picts bathed the foundation- 
 stones in human blood, that their structures might long 
 endure. Some such terrible baptism must be provided for 
 San Augustin, if this planting of Spanish dominion in 
 North America is to be made more secure than the futile 
 attempts of other Spaniards here in Florida. Victims for 
 the human sacrifice are not wanting. Yonder at Fort 
 Caroline are the heretics, Lutherans, apostate followers 
 of a renegade German monk, and trespassers on this 
 domain of the Spanish monarch, who for the honor of 
 
28 
 
 Old St. Augustiiie, 
 
 Adelantado, Church and King, must be rooted out with 
 fire and the sword. So reasons the Spaniard; and Pedro 
 Menendez will not fail to put into execution what his 
 cruel heart contemplates, for his soul is full to the brim 
 of fiercest hate, and his arm is nerved by the most 
 powerful of all motives in this year of grace, 1565, the 
 unreasoning determination of a religious bigot. . 
 
 CO"" 
 
FORT CAROLINE. 
 
 ONDAY, September lo, as Menendez was re- 
 turning from the Sa7i Falayo, which was to sail 
 that night for Spain, the breeze died out with 
 the sunset, and the Adelantado lay all night becalmed off 
 the bar of San Augustin. In the dim gray of the coming 
 dawn, his shallop still at anchor, Menendez and his com- 
 panions were terrified by the apparition of the Trinity 
 driftmg down upon them with the tide. Not a breath of 
 air was stirring; no human agency could save them; 
 destruction was imminent. In their extremity the trem- 
 bling crew fell upon the deck in supplication of Our Lady 
 of Utrera. Behold a miracle! "Straightway," writes Men- 
 doza, "one would say that Our Lady herself came down 
 upon the ship." A sudden flaw of wind struck the idle 
 sail, and lifting the shallop bore it on the crest of a wave 
 over the bar. There it was safe, for the French ships 
 could not follow. They waited outside for the rising of 
 the tide. 
 
 Ribault was in command of the French fleet, and with 
 him was the entire fighting contingent from Fort Caroline. 
 
30 Old St. Augustine , 
 
 They had come for an attack, before the Spaniards had 
 intrenched themselves. The Adelantado was ill prepared 
 for this unexpected coming of the enemy, but his courage 
 was not shaken. The enterprise, undertaken for the glory 
 of God and the Church, was not thus to fall into the 
 hands of the Arch-Demon. Again the Spaniards prayed. 
 Behold another miracle! The very elements of heaven 
 were marshalled to their deliverance. On a sudden, while 
 the sky was yet clear, the sun shining bright and the sea 
 calm, out of the northeast came a blast of wind. It 
 sprung at once to a gale, increased in fury and gathered 
 the might of a hurricane. Such a tempest, the Indians 
 said, had never been known on the coast before. The 
 rain beat dcwn in blinding floods. The sea was lashed 
 to fury. The French ships struggled and labored in the 
 storm, striving in vain to gain an offing; the waves 
 rising to the maintopmasts threatened to engulf them. 
 Finally the Spaniards saw them driving helplessly to the 
 southward. Then they disappeared in the gloom of the 
 storm. In such a sea, on the Florida co?st, the heretics 
 must perish. The Spaniards were saved. Thus had 
 Providence interposed once agan to avert their destruc- 
 tion; ''so, "writes the pious Mendoza, "God and the Holy 
 Virgin have performed another great miracle in our 
 behalf;" and soldiers and priests joined in a service of 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 Heaven had destroyed the ships. Now to fall upon 
 the rest of the French at Fort Caroline. A mass was 
 said. Menendez selected 500 arquebusiers and pikemeii, 
 gave the command to march, and himself led the way. 
 For four days, led by Indian guides, they threaded the 
 
Fort Caroline, 31 
 
 mazes of the pines, waded the swamps and hewed their 
 way through scrub and hamak. Day after day, night 
 after night, the never-ceasing floods of rain poured down 
 upon them. At 10 o'clock of the fourth night, drenched, 
 bruised, exhausted with fatigue and privation, they 
 reached the River of May, and on a bluff overlooking Fort 
 Caroline threw themselves down to await the dawn. 
 
 How was it within the fort? Ribault had left no 
 defenders. Laudonniere lay in bed sick with a fever. 
 The garrison w^as a beggarly assemblage of incapables. 
 There were Challeux the carpenter, old and helpless; Le 
 Moyne the artist, who could wield a pencil but not a pike; 
 the boys who kept Ribault's dogs; and lackeys, women 
 and children. The pitiful few who could bear arms at all 
 were worn out by their protracted guard duty during the 
 four days and nights of continuous tempest. Through 
 the weary hours of this night, as before, the tired sentinels 
 paced the ramparts in the storm; but, "when the day 
 was therefore come," says the chronicle, "and the captain 
 of the guard saw that it ramed worse than it did before, 
 he pitied the sentinels all too moyled and wet, and think- 
 ing that the Spaniards would not have come in such a 
 strange time, he let them depart and went to his lodging." 
 Little did he know the determined will of the Adelantado, 
 Don Pedro Menendez d'Aviles; little did he dream that at 
 the very moment his compassion sent the exhausted sen- 
 tinels to their quarters, 500 p kemen were concealed 
 among the pines on the bluff, within trumpet call, waiting 
 like savage beasts to spring upon their prey. 
 
 Morning came, the morning of San Mateo's Day. Men- 
 endez had spent the night in vigils and prayer. With the 
 
32 Old St. Augustine, 
 
 first streak of light he marshalled his command. The 
 signal was given for the attack. Breaking into a run and 
 raising their battle cry, Santiago! the Spaniards rushed 
 upon the fort. 
 
 "Victory! God is with us!" shouted Menendez. "Upon 
 them!" 
 
 Laudonniere's trumpeter first saw the Spaniards; and 
 gave the alarm. Too late. In through the postern of the 
 gate poured the Spaniards. Out of bed leaped the 
 French. Undressed, unarmed, out they came, old and 
 young, well and sick, men, women and cWldren, dazed, 
 bewildered, panic-stricken, pell-mell, headlong on to the 
 Spanish pikes. Back through the tents and barracks they 
 fled again. Close upon them followed the furious Span- 
 iards. Some of the French in terror threw themselves 
 over the walls and escaped. Some were spared — to be 
 hung, if we credit the French account; to be given over 
 to the Inquisition, if we accept the Spanish version. The 
 rest were cut down, stabbed, butchered. The assault 
 was not more impetuous than the end swift. A trumpet 
 sounded the victory. The standard of Spain floated over 
 Fort Caroline. 
 
 Among those who escaped wxre Le Moyne, Challeux 
 and Laudonniere. The fugitives made their way toward 
 the mouth of the River of May, where lay two small ships, 
 left by Ribault. In the marsh, the water up to his chin, 
 Laudonniere stood all night long, praying aloud. There 
 in the morning a boat's crew found him helpless, without 
 strength to move even a finger; and lifting him in, 
 they bore him to the ships. After much disaster and 
 suffering, surviving hunger, thirst and shipwreck, the 
 
Fort Caroline, 
 
 ZZ 
 
 refugees reached France. Each of the three named sub- 
 sequently published accounts of their Florida misfortunes; 
 and Le Moyne prepared from memory a series of illus- 
 trations of the French expedition in Florida. 
 
 Menendez made thorough work at Fort Caroline. In 
 Laudonniere's quarters were discovered certain gilt-bound 
 books, out of which the heretic Lutheran priests were ac- 
 customed to pre'ach their impious doctrines; and these 
 accursed volumes were at once consigned to the flames. 
 If we accept the statement of chaplain Mendoza, a great 
 Lutheran cosmographer and magician was found among 
 the dead. The names of fort and river were changed to 
 San Mateo, in honor of the Saint upon whose day this 
 great triumph had been achieved. Having thus perfected 
 the work of blotting out the heretics, and leaving in Fort 
 San Mateo a garrison of 300 men, the Adelantado set out 
 on his return to San Augustin. A messenger was sent on 
 ahead to announce the joyful tidings; and the priests 
 went out to meet the victors. A triumphal procession 
 was formed, Mendoza, in new cassock and surplice, bear- 
 ing the crucifix at its head; and chanting the Te Deum^ 
 the victorious band entered San Augustin at the vesper 
 hour. 
 
 The mass of thanksgiving for the signal victory over 
 the Arch-Demon was hardly finished, when Menendez 
 was called to go forth on a mission yet darker than that 
 of Fort Caroline. 
 
VI. 
 MATANZA. 
 
 HE river, or sound, named by the French the 
 River of Dolphins and by the Spaniards San 
 Augustin, runs parallel with the ocean, from 
 which it is separated by a narrow strip of land, to a point 
 thirteen miles south, where by another inlet it is again 
 connected with the sea. To follow the beach, coming 
 from the south, one must cross this lower inlet, and pro- 
 ceed along the shore of the island formed by river and 
 sea. 
 
 On the day following his return from Fort Caroline, 
 while Menendez, worn out with fatigue, was taking his 
 siesta^ an Indian runner brought word that a company of 
 men had been discovered on the beach at the lower inlet, 
 which they could not cross. The Adelantado awoke to 
 immediate action. At the head of a chosen band of fifty 
 picked soldiers, he left San Augustin at dusk, crossed 
 over to the island, marched south along the coast, and 
 reached the northern shore of the inlet before dawn. 
 From his lookout in a tree, with the first faint light of 
 San Miguel's Day, Menendez descried the company on 
 
Matanza, 
 
 35 
 
 the southern shore. Their number was large; and he 
 well knew who they were. 
 
 When day had fully come, the Spanish commander 
 
 manoeuvered his men among the sand hills, so that to 
 those on the other side his force of fifty might appear to 
 be many more. After these demonstrations he patiently 
 waited. One of the strangers plunged into the water 
 
6 Old St, Augustine. 
 
 from the opposite shore and swam across the inlet. He 
 was a Frenchman. His companions, he said, had been 
 shipwrecked. The conversation that followed recalls the 
 parley between the San Palayo and the Trinity at the 
 River of May. 
 
 ''What Frenchmen are they?" asked the Adelantado. 
 
 "Two hundred of the command of Jean Ribault, Ad- 
 miral and Captain-General of this country for the King of 
 France," was the reply. 
 
 "Catholics or Lutherans ?" 
 
 "All Lutherans of the New Religion." His captain^ 
 he added, had sent him over to ask who they were. 
 
 "Tell him, then," was the ominous reply, "that it is the 
 Viceroy and Adelantado of this land for the King Don 
 Philip; and that his name is Pedro Menendez." 
 
 The Frenchman swam back to his comrades. By and 
 by he came again and said that his captain wished to treat 
 with the Spaniards. Menendez sent them a canoe. The 
 captain and ten others came over. They begged Menen- 
 dez to furnish them boat^, in which they might proceed 
 to a fort, which they had to the north. 
 
 "Are you Catholics or Lutherans ?" asked Menendez. 
 
 "We are all of the New Religion." 
 
 Then said the Adelantado : "Gentlemen, your fort 
 is taken and its garrison destroyed;" and he showed 
 them some of the spoils from Fort Caroline and two of 
 its garrison, who having declared themselves Catholics 
 had been spared alive. 
 
 Then the French captain asked for ships to take his 
 company to France. The Spaniard replied that he had 
 no ships for such a purpose. France and Spain were not 
 
Matanza. 3 7 
 
 at war, urged the Frenchman; their Kings were friends 
 and brothers; would the Adelantado not graciously per- 
 mit these shipwrecked men to remain at his fort, until 
 they could obtain passage to France. If Catholics and 
 friends, replied the Spaniard, yes; but since they were of 
 the New Sect, he could regard them only as enemies. 
 He should wage war upon them even to blood and fire, 
 and should pursue them with all cruelty, wherever he 
 might encounter them in this land, to which he had come 
 to plant the Holy Faith for the salvation of the Indians. 
 If they were willing to surrender their standards, give up 
 their arms, and submit themselves to his mercy, well and 
 g^ood; *'he should do with them as God might give him 
 ^race." 
 
 The French captain went back and consulted with his 
 men. He came again, this time with another plea. 
 Many of his comrades were noblemen of high birth; they 
 offered a ransom of 50,000 ducats for their lives. No, 
 the Spaniard replied, although a poor man, he was not 
 mercenary; and if in the end he should treat them with 
 leniency, he would wish to be free from suspicion of a 
 sordid motive for doing so. Again the Frenchman 
 came over, with the proffer of a still larger ransom. "Do 
 not deceive yourselves," answered Menendez; "though 
 heaven should come down to earth, I would not do other 
 than I have said." 
 
 The parley was ended. The French castaways, ex- 
 hausted by their long buffetings with the waves, worn 
 out by the hard march through the wilderness, bedrag- 
 gled, famished and utterly disheartened; too weak to 
 light, too weak to retreat, threw themselves upon the 
 
38 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 mercy of the Spaniard, and committed themselves to him, 
 to do with them ^'as God should give him grace." 
 
 A boat was sent across the inlet, and returned with the 
 standards and arms. Then it brought over the captain 
 and eight of his men. They were supplied with food 
 and drmk and conducted behind the sand dunes out of 
 the sight of their comrades on the other shore. "Gen- 
 tlemen,'' said Menendez, "my men are few and you are 
 many; it would be easy for you to avenge upon us the 
 deaths of your friends at the fort. You must, then, 
 march with your hands bound behind you, to my camp, 
 four leagues hence." To this they assented. The sol- 
 diers took the match-cords from their arquebuses; and 
 the arms of the French were securely bound behind their 
 backs. The others came over ten at a time, and the men 
 of each company, on their arrival, were bound in like 
 manner. In all there were two hundred and eight of them. 
 
 Then the chaplain, Mendoza, interposed. It was the 
 final opportunity. If any were Catholics, let them sig- 
 nify it. Eight sailors so declared themselves, and were 
 placed apart. "We are all of the New Sect," said the 
 rest; "this is our faith; we have no other." 
 
 The sun was low in the west. There was need of expedi- 
 tion in the terrible work now to be done. Menendez gave 
 the command to march. Divided into squads of ten, their 
 arms tied behind, a guard in front of them and another in 
 their rear, the wretched victims were driven to the sham- 
 bles. Leaving his secret instructions with the soldiers, 
 Menendez went on in advance. At a certain point, 
 before determined, he drew with his lance a mark in the 
 sand. When the first band of ten Frenchmen came to 
 
Matanza. 39 
 
 this mark, the vanguard turned upon the leading rank of 
 prisoners and stabbed, each his man; and the rear guard 
 stabbed from behind, each his victim, those in the second 
 rank. When the second squad of ten came to the fatal 
 mark they were struck down in the same way; then the 
 third, and the fourth, and those that came after; and so 
 the horrible matanza — the well-planned, systematic butch- 
 ery, where each one struck his appointed blow — was con- 
 tinued so long as the light shone, and went on, after the 
 setting of the sun, into the night, until at length the deed 
 of blackest darkness was finished in darkness. 
 
 When the last heretic had been stabbed in the back, 
 the Spaniards returned a second time in triumph to San 
 Augustin. 
 
 And here this dark chapter should end; but the story 
 is not yet finished. What follows is a repetition almost in 
 detail of that which has been told. Let us hasten over it. 
 
 Upon the following day the Indians came again to San 
 Augustin. Another company had been discovered on 
 the beach at the inlet. With 150 men the tireless Span- 
 iard again set forth. Another night march, another impa- 
 tient waiting for the dawn, another manoeuver of the 
 troops; and again a messenger swam across the inlet. 
 His company, he said, was that of Admiral Jean Ribault; 
 and after the story of their shipwreck, came the request 
 for boats to take them to Fort Caroline. Then the 
 Frenchman inquired whom he was addressing. ''Pedro 
 Menendez," was the answer; and the messenger was sent 
 back with the news of the capture of Fort Caroline. 
 
 A canoe having been sent for him, Jean Ribault him- 
 
40 Old St. AtcgMstine, 
 
 self came over with eight of his officers. The Spanish 
 Adelantado received the French Admiral with punctilious 
 courtesy, and set a collation before him. Having con- 
 vinced Ribault of the death of those who had been left 
 at Fort Caroline, Menendez led him to the horrible spot 
 where the flocks of unclean birds were gathered, and 
 showed him by the ghastly evidence there what fate had 
 overtaken the first band of castaways two days before. 
 
 Again came the ineffectual plea for clemency. What 
 had happened to himself, said Ribault, might have be- 
 fallen Menendez; their Kings were brothers and friends, 
 so as a friend should the Adelantado act toward him. 
 Menendez was unmoved. Then the French offered ran- 
 som; and it was refused. The interviews concluded as 
 before; the Spaniard's final answer was that "the French 
 might surrender themselves to his mercy, and he should 
 do with them as God might direct." 
 
 That night 200 of the French withdrew and marched 
 south into the wilderness; any fate, even to be devoured 
 by the savages, was preferable to that of falling into the 
 hands of the Spaniard.* The next morning Menendez 
 sent a boat across the inlet, and Ribault came over, bring- 
 ing his standards, arms and commission; and surrendered 
 them to Menendez. The Adelantado conducted him 
 behind a sand hill and repeated the treacherous pretext 
 he had used before. Night was approaching, he said; 
 his fort was distant; they had far to go; his men were 
 few; the French were many; they must be bound. The 
 Admiral submitted. 
 
 * They subsequently surrendered, and most of them found their way back tc 
 France. 
 
Matanza. 4 1 
 
 Once more, across this Stygian flood, the ferry boat of 
 death with Charon at the oar began its passing. Back 
 and forth, from shore to shore, it fared, bringing the vic- 
 tims ten at a time, until the one hundred and fifty had 
 been ferried over. As each company of ten arrived, they 
 were conducted behind the sand hills; and their arms 
 were pinioned. • "When all were tied," writes the Spanish 
 priest, Don Solis las Meras, brother-in-law of Menendez, 
 and present at this scene, "when all were tied, the Adelan- 
 tado asked if they were Catholics or Lutherans, or if any 
 wished to make confession. Jean Ribault answered that 
 all there were of the New Religion; and then he began to 
 repeat the psalm Domine^ fnemento met; having finished 
 which, he said that from dust they came and to dust they 
 must return again; and that in twenty years, more or 
 less, he must render his final account;" and now the Ade- 
 lantado might do with him as he saw fit. This man, Jean 
 Ribault, who spoke thus, we may be sure, walked erect 
 and with an unflinching step to his fate. 
 
 Four who declared themselves Catholics were placed 
 on one side, and with them the drummers and fifers, one 
 of whom, Nicolas Burgoigne, we shall hear of again. 
 Then, as in the Florida pines to-day one may see the 
 horsemen forcing the cattle into the slaughter pens, the 
 Spaniards drove their wretched victims on to their doom. 
 On the same sandy reach, still red with its sanguinary 
 dye, Menendez drew for this new band of martyrs another 
 mark on the ground. When Ribault and his comrades 
 reached this fatal bound, the horrible scene of that other 
 day was re-enacted; and with each succeeding band the 
 matanza was repeated; the butchers struck and the vie- 
 
42 Old St. Augustine, 
 
 tims fell. And when all had been slain, the Spaniards 
 marched on, and returned once more in triumph. 
 
 Thus at the founding of San Augustin was thrice pro- 
 vided a human sacrifice, and a libation poured out so 
 copious, that were there virtue in the old pagan rites the 
 walls of this Spanish city in Florida must endure for all 
 time. 
 
VII. 
 
 FRENCH VENGEANCE. 
 
 HE time is three years later. The scene is 
 changed to San Mateo. Enter, for the last 
 stormy act in this lurid drama, the Chevalier 
 Dominique de Gourgues, French Catholic, soldier of for- 
 tune, sometime since Spanish galley slave; now come to 
 repair the outraged honor of his native land and to 
 avenge the death of his countrymen. He has sold his 
 estates that he may fit out an expedition, has gathered a 
 picked company of soldiers and seamen, and sailed out 
 of France with a commission to kidnap slaves on the 
 coast of Africa. Once at sea, he has undeceived his 
 companions; the enterprise, he tells them, is not to steal 
 negroes; it is a mission of vengeance. He rehearses the 
 atrocious cruelties cf the Spaniards, with the terrible fate 
 of the Huguenots in Florida, and details his scheme of 
 retaliation — will they follow him ? The answer is a 
 cheer. 
 
 When the three ships come in sight of the forts at San 
 Augustin and San Mateo, the Spaniards, taking them for 
 friends, fire salutes of welcome. The Frenchman responds, 
 
44 ^^'^ ^i' Atcgttstine. 
 
 and sails on. Entering a river beyond, he finds the banks 
 Hned with a hostile array of Indians, drawn up under the 
 Paracoussy Satourioua, and prepared for battle. A trum- 
 peter, on3 of the fugitives who had escaped from Fort Caro- 
 line, is sent ashore. The Indians recognize him. The 
 ships, they learn, are French, not Spanish. The trumpeter's 
 message is heard with joy; and immediately savage hos- 
 tility is changed to eager welcome. Later, when De 
 Gourgues comes achore and begins to declare his purpose 
 of revenge, Satourioua impatiently interrupts him with 
 the story of the wrongs which his own peop'e have en- 
 dured at the hands of the Spaniards. Well have the 
 Paracoussy and his tribe kept the pledge made to Lau- 
 donniere that his friends should be their friends and h's 
 enemies their enemies; and many an incautious Spaniard 
 at San Mateo and San Augustin has been ambushed and 
 slain by the unseen Indian foe. 
 
 The French landed their equipments, and made prepara- 
 tions for attacking the forts; and meanwhile their savage 
 allies performed the ceremonies which were always observed 
 before the Florida Indian went into battle. The black 
 drink was mixed; and nothing would do but that De 
 Gourgues must quaff a heroic draught. The painted 
 sorcerer with painful contortions and grimaces of suffer- 
 ing fell into his mystic trance, and from the vision brought 
 information of the strength and disposition of the enemy. 
 The chiefs, decked out in totems and forbidding in war 
 paint, gathered in a circle, squatting on the ground; and 
 in the center uprose Satourioua. On his right stood a 
 vessel of water, on his left burned a fire. Taking a shal- 
 low dishful of the water in his right hand and holding it 
 
French Vengeance, 45 
 
 aloft toward the sun, the chief prayed to that luminary 
 that a victory might be granted them over the Spaniards; 
 and dashing the water to the ground, implored that so 
 might the blood of the enemy be poured out. Then lift- 
 ing up the great vessel of water he emptied it out upon 
 the fire, exclaiming, "So also may you extinguish the lives 
 of your foes." And all the rest responded with shouts and 
 cries of hate and rage. 
 
 Again De Gourgues inflamed the hearts of his follow- 
 ers by a fresh recital of the wrongs they had come tc 
 avenge; and then Frenchmen and Indians took up their 
 march. 
 
 The Spaniards, four hundred strong, were intrenched 
 in two small forts near the mouth of the Rio de San Mateo 
 and in Fort San Mateo (formerly Fort Caroline), which 
 had been so strengthened and equipped that the Span- 
 iards boasted the half of France could not take it. The 
 avengers sought first the smaller forts. Making their way 
 as best they could through the swamps, across the treach- 
 erous ooze of marshes and over the cruel oyster beds con- 
 cealed beneath the water, from which they emerged with 
 lacerated feet and bleeding limbs, they came at length to 
 the first fort and prepared for the attack. 
 
 "To arms ! The French !" cried a sentinel; and from 
 the fort, upon the advancing column, came a cannon ball 
 from the muzzle of one of Laudonniere's own cannon. At 
 this, Olotacara, an impetuous savage, bounded from his 
 place in the ranks, leaped upon the platform, scaled the 
 rampart and ran the gunner through with his pike. 
 French and Indians followed with a rush. It was soon 
 over. The fort was taken. By command of De 
 
46 Old St. Augustine, 
 
 Gourgues fifteen of the Spaniards were reserved; of the 
 rest not one escaped. 
 
 Panic-stricken at the capture of the first fort, the garri- 
 son of the other one, across the river, rushed out for 
 flight into the forest. Hemmed in by the infuriat:d sav- 
 ages on one side, and on the other by the French, there was 
 no escape. As before, fifteen were reserved; and of the 
 others, the historian of the expedition records, "all there 
 ended their days." 
 
 Then on to Fort San Mateo. Here the garrison, hav- 
 ing been alarmed, were in readiness for them; and "no 
 sluggards of their cannon shot," played their ordnance 
 upon the French so incontinently that their courage 
 failed; and retreating to the shelter of the woods, they 
 took up their position on that very bluff where three years 
 before Menendez had concealed his pikemen. Here, 
 since it was late in the day, De Gourgues would have 
 waited, deferring the assault until the morrow. But 
 the Spanish commandant, who must needs hasten his own 
 swift destruction, gave the word for threescore shot to 
 sally out from the fort to discover the number and valor 
 of the enemy. The Spaniards falling thus into a trap of 
 their own making, De Gourgues hemmed them in before 
 and behind, and hewed them down — all save the fifteen 
 reserved with ominous purpose. Seeing this, the rest of 
 the garrison in terror fled from their fort and plunged 
 into the forest. There, turn what way they might, the 
 soldier's pike confronted them and the savage sprang out 
 upon them. In the stern work of retribution the arm of 
 neither Frenchman nor Indian grew weary until the last 
 one was fallen and the vengeance done. 
 
French Vengeance. 47 
 
 And what of the captives, the three fifteens, reserved with 
 sinister intent by De Gourgues ? This is the record of 
 their fate, given in the old chronicle — 
 
 %\t regt of X\t ^paniarUcg \z\^^ Icti atoap prifioncrs \isx'C^ 
 m^t ot|)erfi, after t()at t|)e (^enerall l)ali fiI)etDCti tijem t^^ torong; 
 tD()ic|) tl)ej) |)ati tione toitfjout occasion to all X\z jFrencf) 
 iQation, toere all ()ang:cK on t^e ijousN of i\)t same treeg 
 to|)ercon t[)e JFrencb Nng:; of tobicf) numljcr fiue |)ati been 
 ^^angeti ftp one ^paniarli, to^tl^j ncto perceii)in5 Mmeelfe in 
 Ij^e lii^ mifiierable estate, confeggeli |)i6 fault anlr t[)e itist 
 iutisment toMcl^ <^t>i ^at( trouff^t npon I)im» 
 
 ^ut ix^, fiteati of t[)e toritinff to()ic(i Peiro ^elenUe^ l^aU 
 |)an5eli oijer t|)em, importing: t()e6e toorlieB iyi Spaniel), " 3f tioe 
 not Hi^xi as unto JFrencI) men, but as unto lttt()eran6/* 
 (25ourg:tte6 caufieti to be imprinteU toiti) a searing: iron on a 
 table of JFirretoooIi, " 3f ^oe not t()is as unto ^paniarUes, nor 
 as unto ;plariners, but as unto ©traitors, Eobbers, anJj f^ViX- 
 tl)erers/* 
 
 A fire, which had been kindled by some Indians that 
 they might broil fish to feast the Frenchmen, lighted the 
 train of the powder magazine and blew up the store- 
 houses of the Spaniards; and the Indians, who had helped 
 to build Fort Caroline, now demolished its walls and 
 leveled it with the ground. The joy of the savages at 
 the destruction which had overtaken their enemies knew 
 no bounds; and they came in from all the villages, flocking 
 to De Gourgues to honor him with praises and gifts as 
 their friend and deliverer. One ancient crone declared 
 that "she cared not any longer to die, since she had seen 
 the French once again in Florida and the Spaniards 
 chased out." 
 
 Having assembled his company to return thanks to 
 
48 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 God for their victory and to pray for a safe voyage home 
 again, and taking leave of the Indians, who cried aloud 
 with sorrow at his going, Dominique De Gourgues, his 
 mission accomplished, set sail for France, where in due 
 time he arrived, having eluded the pursuit of "eighteen 
 Pinnesses and a great Shippe of two hundred Tunnes, full 
 of Spanyardes, which being assured of the defeat in 
 Florida, followed him to make him yeeld another account 
 of his voyage, than that wherewith hee made many French- 
 men right glad." 
 
VIIL 
 
 AFTER TWENTY YEARS. 
 
 WENTY summers have come and gone, since that 
 September day of Spanish pomp in Seloy. The 
 romance of Florida has departed. No city of 
 gold has been found, nor mountain of treasure, nor pearl 
 fishery, nor fountain of youth. One illusion after another, 
 all have vanished. The magnificent dream is over, 
 
 Florida is an unprofitable possession, it has contrib- 
 uted no revenues to the crown, nor will it ever; but with 
 jealous hand the Spanish monarch maintains his grasp 
 upon the barren province. Though he will not occupy 
 the land himself, others may not enter; and here at San 
 Augustin he is constructing his fortifications to menace 
 the other nations. 
 
 The town is an insignificant military post, whose garri- 
 son is dependent for sustenance upon the supply ships 
 from Spain. Opposite the fort, on the northern shore of 
 the island, at the southern point, now called by the sol- 
 diers La Matanza (The Place of Slaughter), and at 
 other points north and south along the coast, beacons 
 have been erected to light the plate fleets from Mexico 
 
50 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 and Peru, passing through the Florida channel on their 
 way to Old Spain. 
 
 Well had it been for the French, twenty years before, 
 had the warning ray of some mighty beacon flashed out 
 over the waters to turn them from the fatal coast. 
 
 The storms of twenty winters have bleached the sands 
 of that haunted shore, where with his companions sleeps 
 the martyr, Jean Ribault. The illustrious Cavalier, Don 
 Pedro Menendez d'Aviles, Adelantado of the Provinces of 
 Florida, Knight Commander of Santa Cruz, of the Order 
 of Santiago, and Captain-General of the Oceanic Seas, 
 died in, the year 1574, honored by Pope and sovereign 
 and in the full flush of his fame. Eight years later, in 
 1582, "to the great griefe of such as knew him," died 
 the Chevalier Dominique De Gourgues. The Para- 
 coussy Satourioua, too, has gone the way of his race; 
 and after the custom of their tribe, his subjects have 
 planted about his grave the circle of arrows, placing in 
 the center his cassine cup, chiefest memorial of wisdom 
 and valor; and with wailing and tearing of hair have 
 observed the appointed thirty days of mourning. 
 
 So one by one the personages, whose deeds have been 
 recorded in the first chapters of our story, have passed 
 away. Spanish bigot. Huguenot victim, French avenger, 
 savage ally — each has played his part, and gone to his 
 reward. New actors take their places. 
 
 In 1586 came the English Sea-Kings. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE ENGLISH SEA-KINGS. 
 
 HE English seaman of the Sixteenth century was 
 cast in heroic mould. It was the time of Gil- 
 bert, Frobisher, Grenville, Drake and Raleigh. 
 These were the captains; and their crews were of like 
 spirit — eager to sail out into the wonderful New World, 
 explore untried seas, extend the glory of the English 
 name, and above all to burn gunpowder against the 
 Spaniard. For to English seaports, with the tales of new- 
 found El Dorados beyond the sea, came dark stories of 
 Spanish cruelty to British seamen in the Western waters. 
 Armed with his Papal Bull of Donation, giving him sole 
 right and title in the two Americas, the pretentious Don 
 regarded as intruders all others who dared to trespass on 
 his domain. French Huguenot or English heretic, it was 
 all one to him — the ship was scuttled or burned, and the 
 crew turned over to the Inquisition. What that meant, 
 English seamen too well knew. Some of them had been 
 stretched upon the rack at Seville; and had seen their 
 comrades give out their lives amid the flames of the 
 auto-da-fd at Madrid. Chained to the oars and with 
 
52 Old St. Angles tine. 
 
 backs bared to the lash of the slave-driver, men of Devon 
 were enduring the torture of heat and thirst and scourg- 
 ing in the banks of Spanish galleys. Clad in the oppro- 
 brious San Benito, men of Plymouth were wearing out 
 their lives in the gloom of Peruvian mines; and yet other 
 Englishmen were rotting in the dungeons of the Ever- 
 lasting Prison Remediless at Cartagena. The memory of 
 these things, which had been endured, nay, were even 
 now being suffered by comrade and friend, and by son 
 and brother, nerved the English sailor's arm to strike a 
 blow at the Spaniard wherever found. 
 
 To resentment for individual wrongs was added the 
 broader motive of patriotism. England and Spain were 
 not at open war, but the peace between them was far 
 from being hearty or long enduring. Philip II. was col- 
 lecting his invincible armada, to overwhelm the British 
 Islands and add them to his already colossal empire of 
 two-thirds the known world; and Queen Elizabeth, fear- 
 ing to precipitate the blow, which she knew must come, 
 maintained a policy of discreet inaction. Not so her 
 loyal sea captains. They burned with impatience to be 
 away to cut off the gold-trains and intercept the plate- 
 fleets; and, by crippling the Spanish monarch's resources^ 
 delay, if they might not finally avert, the coming of the 
 armada. Many a stately carack from the Indies, sailing 
 home to Old Spain, struck her colors at the English sea- 
 king's bidding; and more than once, when the Spanish 
 prize had been taken, along with the bars of silver and 
 the ingots of gold, they brought forth from her hold, as 
 from the dead, some maimed wretch of an English cap- 
 tive — and so by one stroke was England's enemy spoiled 
 
The E7iglish Sea-Kings, 53 
 
 of his treasure, and the familiars of the Holy Office 
 were cheated of their prey. 
 
 Two expeditions already had "that right rare and 
 thrice worthy Captaine, Francis Drake," led against the 
 Spaniards in the West; first, when at Nombre de 
 Dios he showed his men the way to the Treasury of 
 the World, and a second time, when in the Golde7i 
 Minde he ploughed a furrow round the whole world; 
 and from each voyage he had returned again to 
 Plymouth with great store of silver and gold, that 
 would else have gone to swell the invader's might. 
 But notwithstanding this staying of his treasure, the in- 
 domitable Spanish monarch went on adding galleon to gal- 
 leon and armament to armament; and year by year the 
 rumors that reached the ports of the sturdy little island 
 grew more alarming. So it happened that in 1585, Philip 
 having laid an embargo on English ships, and thus given 
 him provocation anew, Francis Drake must needs go 
 forth again to sack the cities of the Spanish Main. 
 
 On September 14, 1585, admiral of a fleet of twenty- 
 iive ships and pinnaces and a company of 2,300 men, 
 Drake sailed out of Plymouth. One of his captains was 
 the Arctic explorer, Martine Frobisher, not long before 
 this returned from his search for the Northwest Passage 
 to Cathay, and from guiding his pioneer bark amid the 
 icy perils under the North Star, now come to court new 
 hazard in fighting Spaniards beneath the Southern Cross. 
 Making for the coast of Spain, the Englishmen over- 
 hauled a stout Spanish ship laden with Poore John (the 
 sailors' name for dried Newfoundland fish); extorted 
 from the Governor of Bayonne a present of "wine, oyle, 
 
54 
 
 Old St. A Mp'ustine, 
 
 s 
 
 apples, marmalad and such like;" and off Vigo captured 
 a flotilla of caravels, in one of which they found "a great 
 crosse of silver of very faire embossed worke and double 
 gilt all over, having cost a great masse of money." Com- 
 ing to the Cape Verde Islands, they took Porta Praya and 
 St. lago; and having dallied long for the ransoms of 
 those wretched towns, finally set out on their mission, 
 and turned their prows 
 
 " Westward ho ! with a rumbelow, 
 And hurra for the Spanish Main, O ! " 
 
 The fleet arrived off San Domingo, Hispaniola, on 
 New Year's Day, 1586. Two companies of troops 
 landed, entered the gates on opposite sides of the city, 
 cut their way through all opposition, met in the market- 
 place in the center of the town, there took their stand, 
 demanded ransom, enforced the demand by firing the 
 city, received finally 25,000 ducats, and then sailed away 
 to the Main. By a furious onslaught and after much 
 desperate fighting, they made themselves masters of Car- 
 tagena, and set about securing the ransom. What with one 
 day burning the houses and plundering the treasury, and 
 the next dining and wining Bishop and Governor — and 
 other grotesque medley of sacking, spoiling and conflagra- 
 tion, with divers courtesies and "all kindness and favor" — 
 six weeks passed away. Finally the 120,000 ducats de- 
 manded were laid down; and then the fleet was ready to 
 set out for the real destination of the enterprise. This 
 was the Spanish treasure houses at Nombre de Dios and 
 Panama, where the gold and silver were stored awaiting; 
 transportation to Spain. And thither they would now 
 have gone but for the raging of a ''verie burning and 
 
The English Sea-Kings. 55 
 
 pestilent ague," which had been contracted at St. lago, 
 and of which several hundred of the men had already- 
 died. "With the inconvenience of continuall mortalities," 
 writes the historian of the expedition, "we were forced to 
 give over our intended enterprise, to goe with Nombre 
 de Dios, and so overland to Panama, where we should 
 have strooken the stroke for the treasure, and full 
 recompence of our tedious travails." Accordingly, with 
 what plunder they had already secured, they turned their 
 faces homeward, and set sail for England. On the 20th 
 of May, being then off the Florida coast, they came in 
 sight of a watch tower, which was a token to them that 
 there were Spaniards here. Their hostility to the race 
 was sufficient inducement for them to approach the land 
 and fall upon the settlement; but when they found that it 
 was none other than San Augustin, a more particular mo- 
 tive urged them on to the attack. This San Augustin 
 was the town founded by Pedro Menendez d'Aviles, a 
 Spaniard with whom Admiral Francis Drake and all other 
 English sea-kings had a long-standing account to adjust. 
 Twenty years before this, certain Spanish ships of the 
 Indian fleet. Admiral Don Pedro Menendez d'Aviles in 
 command, had come upon five brigs flying the Cross of 
 St. George at the main. Menendez gave chase, overtook 
 the brigs, delivered his broadside into them and cried, 
 "Down with your flags, ye English dogs, ye thieves and 
 pirates !" And in due time, the Englishmen being inca- 
 pable of defense, the flags came down, and the crews 
 were handed over to the tortures of the Inquisition. 
 The memory of this Spanish outrage, as of all others like 
 it, had been cherished by English sailors; and many a 
 
56 Old St. AiigMsti7te. 
 
 captain had looked forward to the time when fate should 
 make him its chosen avenger. Upon Menendez himself 
 retaliation might not be wrought. Death had taken him 
 away unpunished; but here in Florida was the town 
 he had planted, and upon it and its people, by a sort of 
 poetic justice, the debt might now be discharged. 
 
 Drake's flagship, the Elizabeth Bonaventura, with the 
 Pri7?trose, the Tyger and the others of the fleet, came to 
 anchor off the harbor; and manning their pinnaces the 
 Englishmen set out for the shore. What then transpired 
 between Spanish soldiers and English sea-kings is related 
 by Lieutenant Thomas Gates, one of Drake's officers, 
 whose narrative, told after the manner of his time, is 
 more befitting than any we could devise, so we will let 
 him relate it: — 
 
 "After three dayes spent in watering our Ships, wee 
 departed now the second time from this Cape of S. An- 
 thony, the thirteenth of May, and proceeding about the 
 Cape of Florida, wee never touched anywhere; but coast- 
 ing alongst Florida and keeping the shore still in sight, 
 the 28 of May, early in the morning, wee descried on the 
 shore a place built like a Beacon, which was indeede a 
 scaffold upon foure long mastes raised on ende, for men 
 to discover to the seaward, being in the latitude of thirtie 
 degrees, or very neere thereunto. Our Pinnesses manned 
 and comming to the shore wee marched up alongst the 
 river side to see what place the enemie held there; for 
 none amongst us had any knowledge thereof at all. 
 
 "Here the Generall tooke occasion to march with the 
 companies himselfe in person, the Lieutenant generall 
 having the A^antguard; and going a mile up or somewhat 
 
The English Sea-Kings. 57 
 
 more by the river side, wee might discover on the other 
 side of the river over against us a Fort, which newly had 
 bene built by the Spaniards; and some mile or thereabout 
 above the Fort was a little Towne or Village without 
 walles, built of woodden houses, as the Plot doeth plainely 
 shew. Wee forthwith prepared to have ordinance for the 
 batterie; and one peece was a little before the enemie 
 planted, and the first shot being made by the Lieutenant 
 generall himselfe at their Ensigne, strake through the 
 Ensigne, as wee afterwards understood by a Frenchman, 
 which came unto us from them. One shot more was then 
 made, which strake the foote of the Fort wall, which was 
 all massive timber of great trees like Mastes. The Lieu- 
 tenant generall was determined to passe the river this 
 night with 4 companies, and there to lodge himselfe in- 
 trenched, as neare the Fort as that he might play with 
 his muskets and smallest shot upon any that should ap- 
 peare; and so afterwards to bring and plant the batterie 
 with him: but the helpe of Mariners for that sudden to 
 make trenches could not be had, which was the cause 
 that this determinat'on was remitted untill the next 
 night. In the night, the Lieutenant generall tooke a 
 little rowing skiffe and halfe a dozen well armed, as Cap- 
 taine Morgan and Captaine Sampson, with some others be- 
 sides the rowers, and went to view what guard the enemie 
 kept, as also to take knowledge of the ground. And 
 albeit he went as covertly as might be, yet the enemie 
 taking an Alarme, grew feareful that the whole force was 
 approching to the assault, and therefore with all speede 
 abandoned the place after the shooting of some of their 
 peeces. They thus gone and hee being returned unto us 
 
58 Old St. Augustme. 
 
 againe, but nothing knowing of their flight from their 
 Fort, forthwith came a Frenchman, being a Phipher (who 
 had been prisoner with them*), in a little boate, playing 
 on his Phiph the tune of the Prince of Orange his song; 
 and being called unto by the guard he tolde them, before 
 he put foote out of his boate, what he was himselfe, and 
 how the Spaniards were gone from the Fort; offering 
 either to remaine in hands there, or else to return to the 
 place with them that would goe. 
 
 ^'Upon this intelligence the Generall and the Lieuten- 
 ant generall, with some of the Captaines in one Skiffe, 
 and the Vice-Admirall with some others in his Skiife, and 
 two or three Pinnesses furnished of Souldiers with them, 
 put presently over towards the Fort, giving order for the 
 rest of the Pinnesses to follow. And in our approch 
 some of the enemie, bolder than the rest, having stayed 
 behinde their companie, shot off two peeces of ordinance 
 at us; but on shore wee went, and entered the place 
 without finding any man there. 
 
 ''When the day appeared wee found it built all of tim- 
 ber, the walles being none other but whole Mastes or 
 bodies of trees set up right and close together in manner 
 of a pale, without any ditch as yet made, but wholy in- 
 tended with some more time; for they had not as yet 
 finished al their worke, having begunne the same some 
 three or foure moneths before: so as to say the trueth, 
 they had no reason to keepe it, being subject both to fire 
 and easie assault. 
 
 "The platforme whereon the ordinance lay was whole 
 bodies of long pine trees, whereof there is great plentie, 
 
 * A marginal note tells us that this was Nicholas Burgoigne. 
 
The English Sea-Kings. 59 
 
 layd a crosse one on another and some little earth 
 amongst. There were in it thirteene or fourteene great 
 peaces of Brass ordinance and a chest unbroken up, 
 having in it the value of some two thousand pounds ster- 
 ling, by estimation, of the King's treasure, to pay the 
 souldiers of that place, who were a hundred and fiftie 
 men. 
 
 "The Fort thus wonne, which ihey called S. John's 
 Fort, and the day opened, wee assayed to goe to the 
 towne, but could not, by reason of some rivers and 
 broken ground which was betweene the two places: and 
 therefore being enforced to imbarke againe into our Pin- 
 nesses, wee went thither upon the great maine river, 
 which is called as also the Towne by the name of S. 
 Augustin. 
 
 "At our approching to land, there were some that 
 began to shew themselves, and to bestow some few shot 
 upon us, but presently withdrew themselves. And in 
 their running thus away, the Sergeant Major, finding one 
 of their horses ready sadled and brideled, tooke the 
 same to follow the chase; and so overgoing all his com- 
 panie was (by one layd behinde a bush) shotte through 
 the head; and falling downe therewith, was by the same 
 and two or three more stabbed in three or f oure places of 
 his body with swords and daggers, before any could 
 come neere to his rescue. His death was much la- 
 mented, being in very deede an honest wise Gentleman, 
 and a souldier of good experience and of as great cour- 
 age as any man might be. 
 
 "In this place called S. Augustin, wee understood the 
 King did keepe, as is before said, one hundred and fiftie 
 
6o Old St. Augtistine. 
 
 souldiers, and at another place, some dozen leagues 
 beyond to the Northwards, called S. Helena, he did there 
 likewise keepe an hundred and fiftie more, serving there 
 for no other purpose than to keepe all other nations from 
 inhabiting any part of all that coast; the government 
 whereof was committed to one Pedro Melendez Marquesse, 
 nephew to that olde Melendez the Admiral, who had 
 overthrowen Master John Hawkins, in the bay of Mexico, 
 some seventeene or eighteene yeeres agoe. This Gov- 
 ernor had charge of both places, but was at this time in 
 this place, and one of the first that left the same. 
 
 "Heere it was resolved in full assembly of Captaines to 
 undertake the enterprise of S. Helena, and from thence 
 to seeke out the inhabitation of our English countrymen 
 in Virginia, distant from thence some sixe degrees 
 Northward." 
 
 The Englishmen burned the town, demolished Fort 
 San Juan de Pinos, took on board the cannon and money, 
 and not forgetting the French fifer, sailed away from San 
 Augustin. They were deterred by the want of a pilot 
 from their intended enterprise of St. Helena, and went on 
 to Virginia. Directed, after the custom of those days, by 
 the smoke of a great conflagration kindled on the land, 
 they found Raleigh's people at Roanoke Island; and the 
 colony was in such sorry plight that they were all taken 
 aboard. Among the rest was Governor William Lane, 
 for whom is claimed the credit (disputed by him with 
 Raleigh and others) of having, on this voyage with Drake 
 home from San Augustin in the year 1586, first intro- 
 duced into England "that Indian weed they call tabacca 
 and nicotia, or tobacco." Laden with booty and ran- 
 
The English Sea-Kmgs. 6i 
 
 soms, and its admiral having "made himself a terrible 
 man to the King of Spain" (as the English Minister 
 wrote home from Madrid), the fleet entered Plymouth 
 harbor once more. In the following year Drake made 
 another expedition to Cadiz, to "singe the King of Spain's 
 beard;" and then, in 1588, Philip's Invincible Armada 
 at last sweeping down upon England, the Elizabeth Bona- 
 ventura went into the fight, and Drake and Frobisher 
 and all other loyal English sea-kings made their valiant, 
 victorious and forever memorable stand in that great 
 naval combat, whose like the world had never seen, and 
 on whose tremendous issue hung the life of Protestant 
 England and, in after years, the destinies of her colo- 
 nies in North America. 
 
 When the supply ships came from Spain to San 
 Augustin, with reinforcements for the garrison and ma- 
 terials for building anew Fort San Juan de Pinos, the 
 new comers related to those here the fate that had 
 overtaken the Armada called the Invincible. And as 
 they told the bitter story — how of its one hundred and 
 fifty floating castles ninety-six had gone down, shattered 
 by English cannon shot and consumed by fire-ships in 
 the Channel, and engulfed amid the fury of the elements 
 in the North Sea; and then, how of all its 30,000, sol- 
 diers, seamen, knights and galley-slaves, barely one-third 
 had looked upon the shores of Spain again — they men- 
 tioned, more than once, the English ship, The Revenge^ 
 and its captain, Francis Drake, at whose name the eager 
 listeners interrupted the tale, and heaped their bitterest 
 Spanish maledictions on the man who had ravaged their 
 town and demolished their fort. 
 
X. 
 
 THE FRANCISCANS. 
 
 O FLORIDA with the adventurer had come the 
 missionary; one to win treasure, the other to 
 win souls. The gold-seeker returned from his 
 quest chagrined; not so the Franciscan. He found 
 here a field vast beyond reckoning; and, waiting to be 
 gathered, a harvest more precious than had been pic- 
 tured in the fondest dream of his pious enthusiasm. 
 The military prestige of Florida soon faded away, but 
 year by year its religious importance increased; and 
 ever, with the expansion of his work, the Franciscan's 
 zeal grew more intense and his labors more devoted. 
 
 The country was in time erected into a religious prov- 
 ince, with a chapter house of the Order of San Francisco 
 at San Augustin; and thence the members went forth to 
 plant the standard of their faith in the remotest wilder- 
 ness. Far out on the border of savanna, in the depth of 
 forest, and on the banks of river and lake, by the side of 
 the Indian trails westward to the Gulf, north among 
 the villages of Alachua, and south to everglade fast- 
 nesses; here and there, and everywhere that lost souls 
 
The Franciscans. 63 ^ 
 
 -were worshipping strange gods, the Franciscan built his 
 chapel, intrenched it round about with earthwork and 
 palisade, and gathered the erring children of the forest 
 to hear the wondrous story of the Cross. 
 
 The missionaries came to Florida as messengers of 
 the Prince of Peace, but not even is this chapter of our 
 history free from its stain of tragedy. In the ancient 
 Spanish tome, parchment-bound and blurred with age, in 
 which are chronicled the passing of the years in this old 
 city by the sea, amid the records of wars and the exploits 
 of military personages, a page is now and then devoted 
 to the labors and sufferings of the Franciscan Fathers; 
 and among them is a relation of what befell, in the year 
 1597, at Tolomato and other Indian villages not far from 
 San Augustin: — 
 
 "For two years the friars of San Francisco employed 
 themselves in preaching to the Indians of Florida. In 
 the village of Tolemaro, or Tolomato, dwelt Brother 
 Pedro de Corpa, a renowned preacher and expounder of 
 the doctrine; against whom arose the eldest son and heir 
 of the cacique of the island of Guala, who, being dis- 
 pleased with the blame which Father Corpa had laid 
 upon him, for being a Christian and living worse than a 
 Gentile, left the village, because he could not endure 
 such treatment. He, however, returned to the village in 
 a few days, towards the last of September, bringing many 
 Indians prepared for war, with bows and arrows, and 
 adorned with large feathers on their heads; and, entering 
 silently into the town at night, they went to the house 
 where the father lived, broke down the frail gates, found 
 him on his knees, and killed him with a battle-axe. 
 
64 Old St. Augustine, 
 
 This unexpected atrocity became known in the village, 
 and although some showed signs of grief and sorrow, 
 the majority, who were less oppressed thereat, on the 
 appearance of the son of the cacique joined themselves to 
 him. On the following day he said to them: 'Now the friar 
 is dead. It w^ould not have been thus had he let us live 
 as before instead of becoming Christians. Now let us 
 return to our old customs, and prepare for our defence 
 against the punishment which the Governor of Florida 
 will undertake against us, which punishment, if carried 
 out, will be as severe for this friar alone as it would have 
 been had we killed them all; for, in just the same way 
 will we be persecuted for this one friar whom we have 
 killed, as for all of them.' 
 
 "That which was done was newly approved of by 
 those who followed him; and they said that there was 
 no doubt that vengeance would be taken the same for 
 one as for all. Then the barbarian continued: 'Since we 
 will suffer no more punishment for one than for all, let 
 us regain the liberty that these friars have taken from us 
 with promises of benefits that have not appeared, and in 
 the hope of which they have wished that we should 
 experience evils and torments — these people whom we 
 call Christians. They have persecuted our old people, 
 calling them witches. They have deprived us of our 
 women, leaving us only one, and she for all time, forbid- 
 ding us to exchange them. They have broken up our 
 dances, banquets, feasts, fires and wars, so that, not ac- 
 customed to them, we are losing the ancient valor and 
 dexterity of our ancestors. Yet our labor is of some 
 consequence to them; * * * * and although we are will- 
 
The Franciscans, 65 
 
 ing to do all that they say, yet they are not content. 
 Always they are scolding us, troubling us, oppressing us, 
 preaching to us, calling us bad Christians, and depriving 
 us of all the happiness that our ancestors enjoyed. With 
 the hope that they will give us Heaven, they are deceiv- 
 ing us by getting us under subjection, working us into 
 their ways. What have we to look for, if not to be 
 slaves ? If we put all to death, we throw off this heavy 
 yoke at once, and our valor will reach the Governor, who 
 may then treat us well.' The multitude agreed in what 
 he said; and as a sign of their victory they cut off the 
 head of Father Corpa, and placed it on a spear in the 
 door as a trophy of their conquest, and they hid the body 
 in a wood, where it could never be found. 
 
 "Passing to the village of Topiqui, where dwelt Brother 
 Bias Rodriguez, they entered suddenly, telling him they 
 had come to kill him. Brother Bias asked them to allow 
 him first to say a mass, and they suspended their ferocity 
 a short time for this; and as soon as he had finished say- 
 ing it they gave him so many blows that they finished 
 him, and cast his body out in the field that the birds and 
 beasts might devour it. But none would approach it 
 except a dog, who was attracted to it, and touching it, 
 fell dead. Afterward an old Indian, who was a Christian, 
 recognized it, and gave it burial in the wood. 
 
 "Thence they went to the village of Assopo, in the 
 island of Guala, where were Brother Miguel de Aufion 
 and Brother Antonio Badajoz. These knew in advance 
 their approach; and flight being impossible, Brother 
 Miguel began to say mass, and Brother Antonio adminis- 
 tered the Blessed Sacrament, and both engaged in prayer. 
 
66 Old St. Aitgustirie. 
 
 P-^'ir hours after, the Indians entered, and put Brother 
 Antonio to dea h at once with a macana,^ and afterwards 
 gave Brother Miguel two blows with it; and having left 
 the bodies in the same place, some Christian Indians 
 buried them at the foot of a very high cross, which this 
 same Brother Miguel had erected in the field. 
 
 "The Indians continued their cruelty, and went in 
 great haste to the village of Asao, where lived Brother 
 Francisco de Velascola a native of Castro-Urdiales, a 
 very poor and humble monk, but of such great strength 
 that he caused the Indians great fear. He was at that 
 time in the city of San Augustin. Great was the trouble 
 of the Indians, because it seemed that they had accom- 
 plished nothing if they left Brother Francisco alive. 
 They inquired in the village the day that he would return 
 to it, and they were at the place where he had to land, 
 hidden amongst a kind of rushes near the water's edge. 
 Brother Francisco came in a canoe; and dissimulating 
 their real purpose, they ran to him and caught him by 
 the shoulders, giving him many blows with the macanas 
 and axes, until his soul entered to God. 
 
 ''They passed on to the village of Aspo, where lived 
 Brother Francisco Davila, who, as soon as he heard the 
 tumult through the doorways, took advantage of the 
 night to escape in the field. The Indians followed hi.n, 
 and although he had concealed himself in a thicket, 
 they sent three arrows into his shoulder by the light of 
 the moon, and trying to follow to finish him, an Indian 
 interfered, to whom he was left for the poor clothing that 
 he had, to whom he was delivered naked, and well bound, 
 
 * A wooden weapon tipped with flint. 
 
The Franciscans. 67 
 
 and was carried to a village of infidel Indians to be held 
 in bondage there. 
 
 ''But the punishment of God did not fail these cruel 
 ones, for many of them who took part in these murders 
 were hanged with the cords of their own bows, and others 
 perished horribly; and throughout the province God sent 
 a great famine, of which many Indians died/' 
 
 Other massacres followed. But not thus was the 
 planting of the Faith in Florida to be arrested, nor thus 
 were the laborers to be deterred from gathering the har- 
 vest. Led into deadly ambush by pretended converts, 
 whose hearts had been seared by Spanish cruelty; smit- 
 ten down in sacerdotal robe at the very foot of the altar; 
 their chapels robbed and burned by savage, English sea- 
 man and Boucanier; their brothers, on the way from 
 Spain, swallowed up by the sea, in the sight of the con- 
 vent at San Augustin — through all this, and more, the 
 Franciscans' zeal endured, and their enthusiasm burned 
 w-th an ever brighter glow. Nor was the flame finally 
 quenched, until that after time, when the British — having 
 first plundered the chapels and led away the mission 
 flocks into captivity — came at length into possession of 
 the country; and the Franciscan departed with the Span- 
 iard out of Florida. 
 
 The accessible records of the Franciscans here are few 
 and meagre. How far their missions extended, how 
 numerous were the converts who bowed before their 
 persuasive eloquence, what they did and endured, their 
 sufferings and martyrdoms, toils, triumphs and achieve- 
 ments — these perchance are recorded in the monastic 
 archives of the order, and thence some time may the 
 
68 Old St. Aiigttstinc. 
 
 golden story be yet transcribed, v;hen, indeed, the pen 
 shall be found that is worthy to' write it. 
 
 Long years after the Franciscans had abandoned their 
 missions in Florida, and their chapels had fallen into 
 decay, the Quaker botanist William Bartram, camping at 
 night beneath the moss-hung oaks on the border of the 
 great Alachuan savanna, saw on the dark bosom o/ an In- 
 dian woman, suspended by a tiny chain from her wampum 
 collar and shining in the firelight, a silver crucifix. And 
 again, in the early years of the present century, a band of 
 American explorers in tie Everglades, penetrating to 
 Lake Okeechobee, found on one of its islands the ruins 
 of a structure of stone; and there, overgrown by tangled 
 verdure, its Ora pro nobis corroded by the elements, its 
 voice dead with the lapse of untold years, lay a mission 
 bell, in its silence still eloquent of the sunny days, long 
 ago, when the worshippers gathered at its call; and the 
 dusky hunter halted in the chase, and the women paused 
 in the maize fields, to kneel with uncovered head at the 
 ringing of the Angelus. 
 
XI. 
 THE BOUCANIERS. 
 
 ^A SIEMPRE FIEL CIUDAD— the ever-faithful 
 city — was planted here by the sea, to take what 
 fortune the fates might send. In 1665 they 
 sent the Boucaniers. 
 
 The domestic animals imported by Columbus and his 
 followers into the island of Hispaniola, and abandoned 
 there when the mines had been exhausted, reverted to a 
 wild state and increased and multiplied. Herds of 
 horses and cattle pastured on the savannas, droves of 
 hogs made their lair in the jungles; and packs of dogs, 
 sprung from those brought by the Spaniards to hunt the 
 Indians, ranged over the island, savage as wolves and 
 preying on the cattle and swine. A band of French sea- 
 rovers came to the northern coast of the island in 1630, 
 and finding the game there worthy of their prowess, 
 established a colony of hunters and butchers. Armed 
 with heavy muskets and attended by the dogs, which 
 they tamed and trained to assist them in the chase, these 
 men spent their lives in the pursuit of the huge prey, 
 upon whose flesh they depended for subsistence. The 
 
70 Old St. Atigustine, 
 
 meat was prepared after the Carib fashion, being smoked 
 or boucaned (from the Indian word boucan), whence the 
 hunters received their name of Boucaniers. Their life 
 was one of continuous hardship and hazard. Engaged 
 one day in terrible conflict with the wild bulls, and the 
 next in yet more desperate fray with the Spanish 
 lanceros, who were sent to drive them from Hispaniola, 
 they became inured to the most extreme physical priva- 
 tion, and grew in spirit as fierce as their savage prey. 
 The ranks of the first comers were subsequently recruited 
 by the arrival of other lawless French and Dutch, until, 
 having gained strength by these repeated accessions, the5r 
 intrenched themselves in impregnable island strongholds 
 and successfully repulsed the Spanish expeditions sent to 
 dislodge them. 
 
 At length, apprehensive of the growing power of these 
 voluntary exiles so strongly banded together, and having 
 utterly failed to overcome them by other expedients, 
 Spain landed her troops and waged a war of extermina- 
 tion upon the wild cattle of Hispaniola. The game thus 
 destroyed, and with its destruction their means of sub- 
 sistence gone, the Boucaniers exchanged one savage 
 occupation for another. From seeking food, they turned 
 to seek revenge; from the forests, they took to the sea;, 
 from hunting wild bulls, they went to hunting Spaniards. 
 The name Boucanier no longer signified the inoffensive 
 hunter, living on his boucan; taking on a new and 
 ominous import, it meant the sea-rover, whose whole soul 
 was intent upon revenge, and who lived only that he 
 might pursue his enemy. The first and true sea Bou- 
 caniers were not pirates, waging an indiscriminate war oa 
 
The Boucaniers. Ji 
 
 all mariners; they singled out Spanish ships. Their im- 
 pelling motive was not greed, but hate. Afterwards 
 these hunter-seamen from Hispaniola, the Boucaniers 
 proper, were joined by other freebooters. There was, 
 for instance, the gay Parisian, Ravenau de Susson, who, 
 being heavily in debt and desirous of extricating himself 
 from his pecuniary embarrassments in an honorable man- 
 ner, enlisted with the Boucaniers, that he might have 
 wherewithal to satisfy his creditors. Another French- 
 man, Montebaro, reading of the execrable cruelties of the 
 Spaniards in America, conceived so violent a hatred of 
 them that he speedily set out to the West Indies, 
 where he became a Boucanier chief and won and wore 
 right worthily his cognomen of "The Exterminator." 
 
 Absolved from the laws and customs of their native 
 land, the Boucaniers devised a code of their own for the 
 conduct of their enterprises and the division of booty. 
 When a prize had been taken, an indemnity was first 
 paid to such as had been wounded in the action, the 
 amount awarded each one being proportioned to the 
 nature of his injury; and if a comrade had been killed 
 in the fray his share was given to some hospital, and the 
 beneficiary was admonished to pray for the soul of the 
 dead. The wounded and killed having thus been 
 provided for, the rest of the plunder was divided equally, 
 share and share alike, each man taking an oath on his 
 gun that he had kept nothing back; and if any liar was 
 detected among them, him, taking to a desert island, they 
 left to starve; and his share of the prize went to purchase 
 masses for the souls of comrades slain in the fight. 
 
 No sooner had the Boucaniers been driven from their 
 
72 Old St. Augustine . 
 
 island retreat than they became the scourge of the Span- 
 ish Main. Boucanier sail hovered about the plate-fleets; 
 and woe to the galleon that lagged behind or was sepa- 
 rated from her convoys; the rovers fell to the attack, be 
 the odds what they might. It is related that Pierre-le- 
 Grand, one of these first of the hunter-avengers, put to 
 sea with twenty-eight men in a canoe, and at dusk bore 
 down on a huge treasure-laden galleon. Rowing along- 
 side in the darkness, the adventurers scuttled their 
 canoe, scrambled for very life over the rails of the ship, 
 and before the dumbfounded crew recovered from their 
 terror at what they cried out were veritable devils from 
 the deep, made themselves masters of the prize. Such 
 was their warfare. The sight of a Spanish sail was ever 
 a signal for pursuit. Were the chances desperate, so was 
 the onslaught terrific; the crew knelt on the deck for 
 prayer, then went into the fight with the fury of demons. 
 Not content with devastating the seas, the Boucaniers 
 sacked the ports, and marching overland, plundered the 
 rich cities of the interior. The appearance of their ships 
 on the coast was everywhere greeted with alarm; before 
 their coming the citizens retired into the citadels, or fled 
 in consternation to the wilderness. 
 
 From such a band of hostile sea-rovers preying, upon 
 the Spanish possessions in America, San Augustin could 
 not hope for immunity. The attack came in 1665, and 
 in this wise. 
 
 A certain Dutch Boucanier, John Davis, having 
 cruised long without taking a prize, resolved upon 
 the sacking of Granada, a town of New Spain, forty 
 leagues inland, and defended by a garrison of 800 troops. 
 
The Boucaniers. 73 
 
 Coming upon the coast in the night, Davis concealed his 
 ship among the mangroves of the lagoon, and with sixty 
 men in three canoes set out on his perilous enterprise. 
 They rowed up the stream by night, and during the day 
 lay concealed in the thick foliage of the banks. The 
 third midnight they reached the gate of the city. To 
 the sentinel's challenge the first comers replied that they 
 were fishermen. He admitted them. They stabbed him. 
 Then they separated; and going in different directions 
 through the silent streets, knocked at the houses. The 
 doors were opened as to friends. In rushed the Bou- 
 caniers, and rummaged for plunder. From the dwellings 
 they hurried to ransack the churches, pillaged the plate 
 and stripped the ornaments from the altars. Roused out of 
 its midnight slumber by these invaders — none knew whom 
 nor whence — the city straightway was in an uproar. Tre- 
 mendous was the hurly-burly. On every side were heard 
 cries and lamentations of those who had been robbed. 
 Recovering their wits, the citizens rallied, rang the alarm- 
 bells, beat the drum, and rushed to arms. Suddenly as 
 they had come, the Boucaniers were off again. Well 
 laden with plunder, and carrying along some prisoners, 
 they made all haste to the lagoon, where their ships were 
 awaiting them; exchanged their captives for a ransom of 
 beef; up with their sails; and drew out from shore just in 
 time to escape a volley of bullets, sent after them by 500 
 Spanish infantry, who came dashing on the double-quick 
 down to the water's edge. With their booty of above 
 4,000 pieces-of-eight* in ready money, besides great 
 quantities of plate uncoined and many jewels, all of 
 
 * A Spanish coin of the value of one dollar. 
 
74 Old St. Augtistine. 
 
 which was computed to be worth the sum of 50,00a 
 pieces-of-eight or more, they sailed away to Jamaica. 
 "But as this sort of people," says an old writer who was 
 himself a Boucanier, ''are never masters of their money 
 but a very little while, so were they soon constrained ta 
 seek more by the same means they had used before." 
 
 His exploit at Granada having caused Captain John 
 Davis to be esteemed an able commander of such enter- 
 prises, presently after his return to Jamaica he was chosen 
 admiral of a fleet of seven or eight Boucanier ships; and 
 sailed away to the north of Cuba, where he lay in wait 
 to intercept the plate-fleets on their way to Spain. Days^ 
 weeks and months went by, but no treasure ships came;, 
 and his patience at length being exhausted, the redoubt- 
 able admiral bethought him of some other luckless Span- 
 ish town upon which to make proof of his valor. And 
 so it came to pass that, one fine morning in the year 1665, 
 the sentinel in the watch-tower opposite San Augus- 
 tin, having descried to the south a Boucanier sail,, 
 fired the alarm-gun and hoisted the signal flag. Hearing, 
 and seeing which, the distracted inhabitants took to their 
 heels — the garrison after them; and all together fled into 
 the interior. There, the Boucaniers behind and the 
 savages in front, with what fortitude they could muster 
 they lay in concealment; until the invaders, having found 
 neither victims nor booty, demolished the houses, and 
 put to sea again. lis ny firent pas grand butin, car les 
 Habitajis de ce lieu son fort pauvres^ says the record — "they 
 did not find much booty, for the people of this town are 
 ve^y poor." 
 
XII. 
 BRITISH CANNON BALLS. 
 
 HE two fortified strongholds of Penpacola on the 
 Gulf and San Augustin on the Atlantic; here 
 a fort and there a watch-tower; and scattered 
 through the province a score or two of intrenched mis- 
 sion posts — this was Florida, a century and a half after 
 Menendez had come to establish his Western empire. Of 
 the Spanish possessions north of Mexico, San Augustin 
 was still the most important, and the completion of its 
 elaborate defenses was the task of the King's agents 
 here. From Old Spain and the Havannah the cartel- 
 ships brought fresh bands of convicts, to join the cap- 
 tive Indians in their toil at the fortifications; year after year 
 the chain-gangs hewed the blocks of coquina shell-stone 
 from the quarries on St. Anastatia Island; the galley-slaves 
 ferried their burdens over the Matanzas; and tier upon tier 
 rose the curtains and bastions, and above them the ramparts 
 and battlements, of Fort San Marco. The expenditure of 
 treasure, toil and life, through all these years, was not to be 
 in vain; the castle was destined yet to withstand the shock 
 of war, that else would drive the Spmiard from Florida. 
 
76 Old St. Augtistine. 
 
 New foes menaced San Augustin. English planters 
 had come to establish the colony of Carolina. This was 
 a trespass upon Spanish territory, and was promptly 
 resented. Emulating the zeal of Menendez, the Governor 
 of San Augustin dispatched his galleys to exterminate 
 the intruders; but his well-laid plans miscarried; and the 
 fruitless expedition came back in disgrace.* Years of 
 contention followed. The pirates, who preyed on Spanish 
 commerce, found ready protection in Charles Town, and 
 sold their booty there; the Carolina tribes captured 
 Spanish Indians, and took them to the English merchants, 
 who traded them off for rum and sugar in the West 
 Indies. The Spanish Governor, in turn, promised the 
 indentured white servants of the British colonists protec- 
 tion and liberty in Florida, proclaimed freedom for run- 
 away slaves from Carolina plantations, and welcomed all 
 fugitives from justice. For the outrages suffered at the 
 hands of the other, each race sought retaliation. Fleets 
 of galleys went out to plunder and burn the Carolina 
 
 * The spirit of the time is shown by the following incidents, set forth in the 
 report of a committee of the Commons House of Assembly of the Province of 
 South Carolina, 1740:— '•'• In 1686 * * * * Lord Cardross ***-■! having 
 just come over and settled at Beaufort on Port-Royal with a number of North- 
 Britons, the Spaniards coming in Three Galleys from Augustine landed upon them, 
 killed and whipped a great many, after taken, in a most cruel and barbarous 
 manner ; plundered them all and broke up that Settlement. The same Galleys 
 * * * * run up next to Bear Bluff on North Edisto River, where these Spaniards 
 again landed, burnt the Houses, plundered the Settlers, and took Landgrave Mor- 
 ton's Brother Prisoner. Their further Progress was happily prevented by a 
 Hurricane, which drove two of the Galleys up so high on the Land that not being 
 able to get one of them oflf again and the Country being by that time sufficiently 
 Alarmed, they thought proper to make a Retreat, but first set Fire to that Galley 
 on board of which Mr Morton was actually then in Chains and most inhumanly 
 burnt in her," Hewit (History of South Carolina) tell us that Sullivan's Island 
 received its name from one Florence O' Sullivan, to whom the settlers gave a great 
 gun, "which he placed on an island situate at the mouth of the harbor, to alarm 
 the town in cases of invasion from the Spaniards." 
 
British Cannon Balls. yy 
 
 settlements; and the English invaded Florida and ad- 
 vanced upon San Augustin. 
 
 In 1702, with an army of regulars, militia and Indians, 
 came Governor Moore, of Carolina, to chastise the Span- 
 iard, sack the town, demolish the castle and lead home a 
 retinue of Indian slaves. At his approach, garrison and 
 townspeople withdrew into Fort San Marco, shut them- 
 selves in with supplies for four months, raised the draw- 
 bridge and laughed defiance at the British forces. 
 Moore invested the castle and entered upon a regular 
 siege. There were sorties, feints and strategies. The 
 siege was maintained for three months; and then, tired of 
 the fruitless bombardment, Moore dispatched one of his 
 officers to Jamaica for heavier artillery. Hardly had the 
 ship disappeared to the southward, when two vessels, fly- 
 ing the Spanish ensign, hove in sight oif the bar. Presto ! 
 the siege was raised; ships, stores and ammunition aban- 
 doned; and the Englishmen incontinently vanished. 
 Back, three hundred miles overland to Charles Town, 
 went Moore; and out from behind the coquina bastions 
 came the released Spaniards, and set about the task of 
 building anew their burned dwellings. 
 
 Four years later an armament set sail from San Augus- 
 tin bent on the destruction of the British. When they 
 arrived off the coast, the columns of smoke on Sullivan's 
 Island signaled their coming; thunder of alarm-gun, roll 
 of drum and clatter of mounted couriers spread the 
 tidings; and obedient to the call, the planters rallied to 
 Charles Town, repulsed the Spaniards, took 300 prison- 
 ers, and drove the rest back to the shelter of San 
 Augustin. 
 
^8 Old St. Atigustine. 
 
 Mock warfare this. But where Spanish prowess availed 
 naught, Spanish craft might yet triumph; where pike and 
 bullet failed, the scalping-knife might yet do its work. 
 The Indian received his commission, and terrible was its 
 execution. Persuaded that the English were heretics, 
 who must go to perdition, whither the savage too must 
 follow, unless he drove them from the land — Yemassee, 
 Creek and Cherokee fell upon the Carolina settlers in 
 midnight surprise, massacred men, women and children; 
 and frenzied with their success, brought the scalps in 
 triumph to San Augustin, where ringing of bells and 
 firing of guns welcomed them, and gave token of the 
 general rejoicing here. 
 
 Meanwhile the English colony of Georgia was founded, 
 with outposts planted on the very peninsula of Florida; 
 and now more bitter than ever grew the warfare. English 
 scout-boats patrolled the inland waters, and cut off the 
 escape of runaway Carolina slaves, on their way to join 
 the regiment of negro fugitives at San Augustin. Spanish 
 costa-guardas cruised off the Georgia and Carolina har- 
 bors, intercepted English merchant ships, and brought 
 the crews to join the chain-gangs in the Anastatia quar- 
 ries. Once, indeed, there came a lull, when Governor 
 Don Francisco del Moral assented to a proposal for the 
 adjustment of the boundary dispute. But for such a 
 lack of spirit, unbecoming a Spaniard and unworthy the 
 Governor of Florida, Don Moral was speedily summoned 
 home to Madrid, where by royal decree his head was 
 severed from his shoulders, and bis estate sequestered 
 for the defenses of San Augustin; and under new rule, 
 the town resumed once more its martial air, and made 
 
British Cannon Balls. 79 
 
 ready, as well indeed it might, to withstand yet again 
 the attack of its foes. 
 
 In June, 1740, Governor Oglethorpe, of Georgia, set 
 out with an army by land and a fleet by sea to destroy 
 San Augustin and drive the Spaniard out of Florida. 
 *'If it shall please God to give you success," ran the 
 royal instructions from the English King, George II., 
 *'you are either to demolish the fort and bastions, or put 
 a garrison in it, to prevent the Spaniards from endeavour- 
 ing to retake and settle the said place again at any 
 time hereafter." But neither King of England nor 
 Governor of Georgia knew the strength of the coquina 
 walls it was thus proposed to overthrow. 
 
 The British mustered all their forces: the Grena- 
 diers from Gibraltar; kilted Highlanders armed with 
 Claymores and marching to the bagpipes; Saltzburger 
 religious refugees, who had heard the story of the 
 Huguenots' fate in Florida; Carolina militia, intent on 
 avenging the savage massacres of their friends; and a 
 troop of Carolina Indians, eager to wreak their hatred on 
 the Spaniards. The hosts came on as to victory. Fort 
 San Mateo capitulated at their approach. They drove in 
 the Horse Guards from the San Juan, carried Fort San 
 Francisco de Poppa by assault, routed the garrison from 
 Fort Picolata, captured the fortified plantation of San 
 Diego; and advancing within two miles of the town 
 itself, stormed Fort Moosa, which was occupied by a 
 regiment of runaway Carolina slaves, and drove its 
 garrison into San Augustin. 
 
 Now the time was come to prove the strength of 
 coquina-built San Marco. Within its walls a strange 
 
8o Old St. Augustine, 
 
 assemblage was gathered. The inhabitants of the town, 
 old and young, had flocked to its protection; and with 
 them were the garrison of regulars, the host of friendly 
 Indians, the negro troops, and the convicts, now given 
 their liberty and supplied with arms. Altogether, shut 
 up in the fort, were 3,000 souls. 
 
 The British fleet, with Oglethorpe in command, arrived 
 off the bar; the troops disembarked; the cannon were 
 landed; and batteries were planted on St. Anastatia 
 Island, opposite the fort, and at Point San Mateo on the 
 north shore of the harbor. Mortar and coehorn opened 
 fire on San Marco; and the Governor of Georgia de- 
 manded of the Governor of Florida to surrender. To the 
 summons, Manuel de Montiano sent back an answer 
 worthy the gallant Spanish Don he was, swearing "by 
 the Holy Cross that he would defend the castle to the 
 last drop of his blood; and he hoped soon to kiss his 
 Excellency's hand within its walls." A trial of 
 strength ensued; but it was not of coquina battlements 
 against the crashing of cannon balls. For twenty suc- 
 cessive days the batteries on Anastatia discharged their 
 missiles, and the walls of San Marco did not tremble. 
 The struggle was fiercer than cne of arms. Spanish 
 fortitude was pitted against the pangs of starvation; 
 EngHsh constitutions were matched against the fierce 
 summer heat and the maddening insect hordes of Anas- 
 tatia Island. Week after week went by. The beleag- 
 ured Spaniards grew gaunt with famine. The British, 
 wilting beneath the sun,were prostrated by fevers. On 
 both sides the struggle was most desperate; but in the 
 end the Spaniard triumphed. Montiano's piteous 
 
British Cannon Balls, 8i 
 
 appeals were borne down the coast by Indian runners, 
 and taken over by messengers in canoes to the Gov- 
 ernor of Cuba; and at last succor came. The rescuers 
 eluded the vigilance of Oglethorpe, smuggled in the pro- 
 visions past the English scout-boats, and by night came 
 to the salvation of the 3,000 famishing wretches in the 
 fort; whereupon— since a full stomach makes a brave 
 heart— the Spaniards took courage again. But to the 
 British, time brought no alleviation of their woes. With 
 the approach of July the summer's heat grew more piti- 
 less; the sandflies, the gnats and mosquitoes, in ever 
 multiplying hosts, rallied yet more furiously to their gall- 
 ing onslaught. Then came a new peril, a force against 
 whose overwhelming might resolution and valor counted 
 as nothing. It was that agency which two hundred yeirs 
 before had risen to drive the foes of San Augustin to ruin. 
 The tempests began to blow; and fearing lest the fate of 
 Ribault's fleet should be their own, the British captains 
 slipped their cables; and putting to sea, sailed for home. 
 Oglethorpe followed. Abandoning artillery, boats and 
 stores (at which last the Spaniards were filled with won- 
 der and gratitude), the English general crossed over to 
 the mainland north of the fort, and with drums beating 
 and colors flying, marched away to the San Juan's, and 
 thence in periaguas made his retreat back to Georgia. 
 
 There, in good time, Montiano followed, at the head of 
 fifty-three ships and 5,000 troops, to exterminate the 
 colonies of Georgia and Carolina, as we.l as all to the 
 north of them; and so, once for all, to drive the British 
 out from North America. At St. Simon's Island Ogle- 
 thorpe met him. For fifteen days, with an army of 625 
 
 6 
 
82 Old St, Augustine. 
 
 the vaKant Englishman held the Spaniard's 5,000 at bay; 
 by bold stratagem repulsed and drove them back; and 
 following close upon their heels, chased them to the very 
 bars of San Augustin and Matanzas; and so made good 
 that memorable deliverance of Georgia, "which," George 
 Whitefield wrote, "was such as cannot be paralleled but 
 by some instances out of the Old Testament." 
 
 So the farcical and fruitless warfare went on twenty 
 years longer, as it might have continued to this day, had 
 not the mother countries put an end to the contentions of 
 their colonial children. By the treaty of 1763, England, 
 having previously by force of arms gained possession of 
 Cuba, restored that island to Spain; and Spain in return 
 made over to England her possessions in Florida. By 
 this exchange the San Augustin of the Spaniards became 
 the Saint Augustine of the English; and over the battle- 
 ments of San Marco, which had so long and so bravely 
 held out against the shock of British cannon balls, floated 
 the Cross of St. George. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE MINORCANS. 
 
 N the Mediterranean, seventy miles from the 
 coast of Spain, lies Minorca. The white cliffs 
 rise abrupt from a crystal sea. Olive-embos- 
 omed villages nestle on the slopes; and beyond, purple in 
 the distance, towers the mountain peak of El Toro, the 
 convent of Our Lady of the Bull glistening like a star 
 on the summit. The people are simple-hearted, honest, 
 industrious. Travelers tell us that robbery and begging 
 are unknown in Minorca. 
 
 The island has been known in history; here and there, 
 amid its orange groves and palms and vineyards, are mon- 
 uments of fallen races. Druidical monoliths stand 
 mysterious, as they have endured for centuries; 
 picturesque remains of Moorish watchtowers crown the 
 summits near the sea; mediaeval fortifications crumble on 
 the crests of inland hills, scanty patches of wheat are 
 grown in the moats of ancient castles; the ilex and the 
 cactus clothe the ruins of long deserted monasteries. 
 
 Minorca (named by its Roman conquerors, the Less) 
 and Majorca (the Greater) belong to the group of 
 
84 Old St. Atcgtcstzne. 
 
 Balearic Islands. The name Balearic, derived from a 
 Greek vrord meaning to throw, was given to them because 
 the islanders were famous for their skill with the sling, 
 as are the Minorcan shepherds to this day. In ancient 
 times, when the Carthagenians wanted strong-armed sling- 
 ers to fight their battles, they found them in tlie Balearic 
 Islands; in the Fifteenth century, when Spain needed 
 timber for her treasure ships, she built whole fleets from 
 the forests of Majorca; in the early part of the Seven- 
 teenth century, when the Indian tribes of the Pacific 
 coast of North America were waiting for the message of 
 the Cross, Majorca sent them Father Junipero, to found 
 the Franciscan Missions of California; in the middle of 
 the Eighteenth century, when certain English planters 
 required stout-he: rted colonists to till their indigo planta- 
 tions in the new British province of Florida, they sought 
 them in Minorca; and a hundred years later, when 
 America, in the desperate throes of civil war, called 
 for a hero to take her fleet through the smoke and flame 
 of New Orleans and past the rebel forts in Mobile Bay, 
 she found that hero in the son of a Minorcan father. 
 
 In the year 1767, a company of London capitalists, 
 represented by one Dr. Andrew Turnbull, brought out to 
 their grant in Florida fifteen hundred colonists. They 
 were chiefly Minorcans, with a few Greeks and Italians. 
 The site of the plantation, fifty miles below St. Augustine, 
 on Musquito Inlet, was named by Turnbull, after his 
 Greek wife's birth place. New Smyrna. It was a fertile 
 ridge of land, where the magnolia bloomed and the 
 orange grew wild with the jasmine. Here the Minorcans 
 built their palmetto huts; set out about the doorways the 
 
The Minorcans, 85 
 
 cuttings of vine and fig from their Mediterranean island 
 home; and incited by the bright promises of reward, 
 entered bravey and with hopeful hearts upon the task 
 of preparing the wilderness for the crops of sugar and 
 
 indigo. 
 
 The illusion, like many another here in Florida before 
 and since, was all too soon dispelled. It was the 
 rehearsal of a story old as the days of the Israelites in 
 Egypt: on one hand, violated pledges, treachery, exacting 
 tyranny and cruelty born of cupidity; on the other, un- 
 requited toil, patient suffering, and at the last a broken 
 spirit. 
 
 After two weary years had passed, driven to despera- 
 tion by the inhuman rule of their taskmasters and in par- 
 ticular (since the names of petty tyrants do not always 
 perish with their bodies) of one Cutter, the unhappy 
 colonists resolved upon flight. To this end, having 
 seized some small craft in the harbor, they fitted them 
 out from the abundant stores hoarded in the warehouses; 
 and were embarking for the Havannah, when a detach- 
 ment of English infantry appeared upon the scene, by 
 forced march from St. Augustine, arriving just in time to 
 intercept the fugitives. The leaders were arrested. The 
 grand jury convened. The forms of law were observed; 
 and the court sat to do justice between the great planter 
 and his New Smyrna colonists. The plaintiff, Turnbull, 
 was an influential personage in the province, a man whose 
 favor every one was eager to curry. The accused were 
 friendless, indentured hirelings— regarded as little better 
 than slaves. Of such a trial there could be but one 
 ending. Five of the accused were condemned to death; 
 
86 Old St, Attgtistine. 
 
 one as the ringleader, another for shooting a cow (a 
 capital offence in the English code of the time), a third 
 for having lopped off an ear and two fingers of the task- 
 master Cutter, and the others for their raid on the store- 
 houses. Two of the condemned were pardoned; which 
 two we are not told, but it is a pleasure to fancy that one 
 may have been the ear-smiter. To perform the judicial 
 murder of the rest was a task that none of the officials 
 coveted; and one of the condemned was given his life 
 upon condition that he would act as the executioner of the 
 two others. "On this occasion," writes the English sur- 
 veyor Bernard Romans, one of the jurors who convicted 
 them, *T saw one of the most moving scenes I ever experi- 
 enced. Long and obstinate was the struggle of this 
 man's mind, who repeatedly called out that he chose to 
 die rather than be the executioner of his friends in dis- 
 tress. This not a little perplexed Mr. Woolridge, the 
 sheriff, till at length the entreaties of the victims them- 
 selves put an end to the conflict in his heart by encourag- 
 ing him to act. Now we beheld a man, thus compelled 
 to mount the ladder, take leave of his friends in the most 
 moving manner, kissing them the moment before he 
 committed them to an ignominious death." 
 
 So the revolt at New Smyrna was put down; and the 
 colonists went back to their taskmasters and indigo fields. 
 The crop-eared Cutter, we may be sure, had his revenge; 
 but, as in due time every rascal must get his deserts, 
 shortly thereafter he died a lingering death, '^having 
 experienced," says the chronicle, "besides his wounds, 
 the terrors of a coward in power overtaken by venge- 
 ance." 
 
The Minor cans, 87 
 
 The wrongs of the Minorcans in Florida were the talk 
 of the Southern colonies; but no one interfered in their 
 behalf, for no one had courage to incur the enmity of 
 Turnbull. Worn out by toil, famishing for food, 
 pining for their island home beyond the sea, the unhappy 
 exiles wasted away. The death rate was terrible. In 
 nine years from their coming, the 1500 had shrunk to 
 600. The condition of the survivors was little better 
 than slavery; indeed, did they attempt to escape, negroes 
 on the neighboring plantations carried them back and 
 received from the tyrant a reward. 
 
 The weary years went by. Seven summers the Minor- 
 cans tilled the indigo fields; seven harvest times they 
 crushed the sugar cane. At length came the end. 
 
 In Florida, two hundred years before, the religious 
 intolerance of Europe had been reflected in the conflict 
 of Spaniard and Frenchman at Fort Caroline; and the 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been foreshadowed in 
 the slaughter of the Huguenots at Matanzas. So now, 
 here at New Smyrna was to be enacted on mimic scale 
 a movement engaging the attention of the world. It 
 was 1776— a momentous year for British misrule in 
 America. Revolt was in the air. The oppressed colony 
 at New Smyrna caught the spirit of the times. 
 
 It was a trivial circumstance that brought about the 
 uprising of the Minorcans. A party of gentlemen had 
 gone down from St. Augustine to New Smyrna, to 
 inspect the great canal?, the stone piers and the 
 magnificent new mansion cf the proprietor; to learn the 
 methods of indigo culture, and to test the virtues of 
 the famous rum made from Dr. Turnbull's sugar 
 
88 Old St. Augtistine. 
 
 cane. As they were admiring the thrifty condition of 
 the plantation and smacking their lips over the rum, 
 cne of them, noticing the squalor and misery of the 
 laborers, observed to a companion that the Governor 
 at St. Augustine ought to interfere to protect them. This 
 remark of one of Turnbull's guests led to a revolution. 
 A Minorcan boy heard it. He repeated it to his mother; 
 she to trusted friends. A whispered conference, a secret 
 meeting, a mdnight consultation — and the plan was 
 devised to reach the ear of the Governor. Three of the 
 men, having performed their allotted tasks before the 
 time appointed by the overseer, asked and were granted 
 permission to go down the coast to hunt for turtles. 
 They set out and went with all speed, not south for 
 turtles, but north for liberty. Following the beach, 
 skulking through the woods, swimming the inlet at 
 Matanzas, they hurried on to St. Augustine. Here they 
 were given audience, assured of protection, and then 
 sent back to lead their people out of bondage. Oher 
 secret meetings were held, and preparations for flight 
 soon made. They had no househod gods to trans- 
 port. No one lingered this time for cuttings of vine and 
 fig tree. Pellicier, head carpenter, was chosen to the 
 command. He formed them in a hollow square. In the 
 center were the aged, the infirm a d the mothers with 
 babes in arms; in the outer ranks the men and 
 boys, equipped with club , wooden spears and su:h rude 
 weapons as could be improvised in the emergency. 
 Bidding farewell to their palmetto huts, the strange band 
 of fugitives set out for the city of refuge. They went 
 this time not skulking along the coast, but marching 
 
The Mtnorcans. 89 
 
 boldly along the open King's Road. The overseers pur- 
 sued. Little they cared for overseers now. TurnbuU 
 himself, returning home to find his plantation deserted, 
 in hot haste followed after. What feared they from 
 TurnbuU now ? He might ride back to New Smyrna, or 
 on to St. Augustine, as he likad; it mattered not to them. 
 At night they camped beneath the pines. The next day 
 they marched on again. Before sunset of the third day, 
 the motley band came straggling into St. Augustine. 
 
 Again the jury was impanelled; and the court con- 
 vened to do justice between the English planter and his 
 Minorcan laborers. This time, no provisions had been 
 stolen, no cow shot, no taskmaster's ear curtailed; nor 
 could TurnbuU invent any other pretext why the ring- 
 leaders of this new revolt should be hung. The pinched 
 faces and hungry eyes of his victims pleaded too well 
 the pathetic story of their wrongs. This time, again, 
 the trial could have but one ending. The planter was 
 rebuked; the fugitives were declared to be free. Thus, 
 in 1776, for the Minorcans in Florida, after nine years 
 servitude, was made good their declaration of independ- 
 ence. 
 
 The refugees from New Smyrna had come to St. 
 Augustine in the midst of stirring events. They saw 
 the leaders of the great Revolution in the North burned 
 in effigy on the public square; and with the loyal citizens 
 of the town many of the Minorcans enlisted in the Florida 
 Rangers, and went out to fight the traitors of the neigh- 
 boring colonies. Led by the notorious Colonel Browne, 
 the recruits in the service of the King saw hard fighting, 
 and before the war was over had abundant opportunity 
 
90 Old St, Augustine, 
 
 to learn of what stuff patriots are made. It is a notable 
 circumstance that in this same year, 1776, when the 
 Minorcans from New Smyrna were enlisting to help put 
 down the revolt of the colonists, one of their countrymen 
 — a certain George Farragut — emigrated from Minorca 
 to America and joined the Colonial army, to do distin- 
 guished service in the War of the Revolution, afterwards 
 in the American-Spanish turmoils in West Florida, and 
 again in the War of 181 2; and destined finally, when his 
 own honorable record should have been forgotten, to 
 have his name and fame perpetuated because linked with 
 those of his illustrious son, David Glascoe Farragut, first 
 Admiral of the United States Navy. 
 
 The indigo fields at New Smyrna ran to waste; the 
 sugar mills fell into decay; and the iron works sank 
 into the ground. Over them clambered the yellow jas- 
 mine and the passion flower; above them the magnolia 
 bloomed once more; and years afterwards, a party of 
 explorers found the wild orange growing out from the 
 rusted boilers. So kindly nature drew over the ruins her 
 mantle of green, and blotted out with flowers each vestige 
 of the unhappy site. 
 

 < 
 
 V 2 
 
 
XIV. 
 
 RANGERS AND LIBERTY BOYS. 
 
 N 1775 came the American Revolution. Of the 
 fourteen British colonies Florida alone re- 
 mained loyal. The thunders of Lexington 
 and Bunker Hill woke no responsive echoes in St. Au- 
 gustine. For two hundred years "the ever faithful city" 
 had maintained her allegiance to the Kings of Spain, 
 now in like manner she would prove her faith to the 
 King of England. No Sons of Liberty held secret con- 
 clave in her halls; nor liberty pole rose in desecration 
 of her public square. Loyally as ever, on the 5th of 
 June, 1776, the citizens joined in the celebration of the 
 King's Birthday; and when, three months later, the 
 tidings came from Philadelphia of the Declaration of 
 Independence, they assembled on the square in the center 
 of the city to express their abhorrence of the document 
 and its signers by burning in ignominious effigy the two 
 arch-rebels, John Hancock and Samuel Adams. 
 
 To St. Augustine was given early proof of the daring 
 spirit that animated the Liberty Boys. In April, 1775, the 
 British brig Betsey arrived with arms and ammunition 
 for the Creeks and Cherokees, who had been enlisted in 
 the cause against the colonies. The vessel lay at anchor 
 
92 Old St. Augustine, 
 
 off the bar, in plain view of the Governor's lookout tower 
 and of Fort St. Mark's, and almost within gunshot of the 
 war-ships in the harbor, when a privateersman, sent out 
 by the South Carolina Council of Safety and manned by 
 twelve Liberty Boys, stole alongside, surprised the crew, 
 overpowered the grenadiers on board, transferred a large 
 quantity of the powder to their own craft, spiked the 
 Betsey's guns; and eluding pursuit, actually made off 
 with their booty to Charleston, whence some of the 
 powder was sent to the patriots of Massachusetts and 
 burned against the British in the battle of Bunker Hill. 
 
 The town was a haven of refuge for the King's ser- 
 vants and the Tories, who fled from the revolted colonies. 
 She opened her gates; and an oddly-assorted throng 
 came flocking in. From Georgia appeared the Tory 
 colonel, Thomas Browne — the tar and feathers given 
 him by the Liberty Boys still sticking to his skin;* 
 and not long after, followed Daniel McGirth — once as 
 
 * This day a respectable body of the Sons of Liberty marched from this place 
 to New Richmond in S. C. in order to pay a visit to Thomas Browne and William 
 Thompson, Esqs., two young gentlemen lately from England, for their having 
 publicly and otherwise expressed themselves enemies to the measures now adopted 
 for the support of American liberty, and signing an association to that effect; 
 besides their using their utmost endeavours to influence the minds of the people 
 and to persuade them to associate and be of their opinion. But upon their arrival 
 they found the said Thompson, like a traitor, had run away ; and the said Thomas 
 Browne being requested in civil terms to come to Augusta, to try to clear himself 
 of such accusations, daringly repeated that he was not nor would be answerable 
 to them or any other of them for his conduct, whereupen they politely escorted 
 him into Augusta, where they presented him with a ;jenteel and fashionable suit 
 of tar and feathers, and afterwards had him exhibited in a cart from the head of 
 Augusta to Mr. Weatherford's, where out of humanity they had him taken proper 
 care of for that night ; and on the next morning, he, the said Thomas Browne, 
 having publicly declared upon his honour and consented voluntarily to swear that 
 he repented for his past conduct, and that he would for the future, at the hazard 
 of his life and fortune, protect and support the rights and interests of America, 
 and saying that the said Thompson had misled him, and that therefore he 
 would use his utmost endeavours to have his name taken from the association he 
 
Rangers and Liberty Boys. 93 
 
 stout-hearted Liberty Boy as any in the South, then 
 victim of official wrong, and now deserter to the King's 
 cause. f Still another accession was the valcrou3 Scotch- 
 had signed as aforesaid ; and further, that he would do all in his power to dis- 
 countenance the proceedings of a set of men in the 96th District in South 
 Carolina called Fletchall's Party ; upon which the said Browne was then dis- 
 charged, and complimented with a horse and chair to ride home. But the said 
 Thomas Browne, that time having publicly forfeited his honour and violated the 
 oath voluntarily taken as aforesaid, is therefore not to be considered for the future 
 in the light of a gentleman, and they, the said Thomas Browne and Wm. Thomp- 
 son, are hereby published as persons inimical to the rights and liberties of Amer- 
 ica ; and it is hoped all good men will treat them accordingly. N. B. — The said 
 Thomas Browne is now a little remarkable ; he wears his hair very short, and a 
 handkerchief tied around his head in order that his intellects this cold weather 
 may not be affected. — (Signed) By order of Committee, John Willson, Secretary. 
 Augusta, 4th August, 1775. — Georgia Gazette^ i775- 
 
 + During the Revolutionary War, the section of the Stiite now known as Bulloch 
 Countj' was a favourite resort of Colonel Daniel McGirth. He was a native of 
 Kershaw District, South Carolina. From his early attachments and associates, 
 he joined cordially in opposition to the claims of the British Government. Being 
 a practised hunter, and an excellent rider, he was well acquainted with the woods 
 in that extensive range of count^J^ He was highly valuable to the Americans 
 for the facility with w hich he acquired information of the enemy, and for the accu- 
 racy and minuteness with which he communicated what he had obtained. He 
 had brought with him into the service a favourite mare, his own property, an 
 elegant animal, on which he felt safe from pursuit when engaged in the duties of a 
 scout. He called the mare the Gray Goose. This animal was coveted by one of 
 the American officers at St. Ilia, in Georgia, who adopted means to obtain pos- 
 session of her, all of which were opposed by McGirth, chiefly on the ground that 
 she was essentially necessary to the American interest in the duties performed by 
 him, and without htr he could no longer engage in them. The officer con- 
 tinuing urgent, McGirih said or did something to get rid of him, which 
 he might have only intended as a personal rebuff, but probably was much 
 more. He was arrested, tried by a court-martial, found guilty of violating 
 the articles of war and sentenced to be whipped. He suffered this punishment, 
 and was again placed in prison, waiting to receive another whipping, according to 
 his sentence. Whilst thus situated, he saw his favourite mare, observed where she 
 was picketed, and immediately began to concert measures for his escape and the 
 re-possession of his mare. He succeeded in both, and when seated on her back, 
 he turned deliberately round, notwithstanding the alarm at his escape, and 
 denounced vengeance against all the Americans for his ill treatment. He executed 
 his threats most fully, most fearfully, most vindictively. Indulging this savage, 
 vindictive temper, was indeed productive of great injury to the American cause, 
 and of much public and private suffering, but it was also the cause of his own ruin 
 and misery. — yohnson' s Traditions ar.d Reminiscences 0/ the American RevO' 
 lution in South Carolina. 
 
94 Old St. Augusltne, 
 
 man, Rory Mcintosh, captain in His Majesty's High- 
 landers, who, attended always by his pipers, paraded 
 the narrow streets, breathing out threatenings and 
 slaughter against the rebels. A British slaveship from 
 Senegal, forbidden by the patriots to land her cargo at 
 Savannah, sailed in all haste to the friendly harbor of St. 
 Augustine, to save from starvation the two hundred 
 miserable wretches in her hold. The Scopholites (so 
 called from their leader, one Scophol), a turbulent and 
 lawless band, 600 strong, marched down from the back- 
 country of North Carolina, plundering, burning and 
 laying waste all in their path through Georgia. 
 
 With such an element St. Augustine was not long con- 
 tented with passive loyalty. When Governor Tonyn called 
 for volunteers to aid in suppressing the rebellion, the 
 response was heartily and promptly given. Captain Rory 
 Mcintosh fitted out the privateersman Toreyn, of twenty 
 guns, and sailed away to blockade the rebel ports. Citi- 
 zens, Tory refugees, Scopholites, Minorcans and Indians 
 banded together in the troops of the Florida Rangers. In 
 command was Colonel Thomas Browne, brave and skill- 
 ful, as heartless as vindictive, and eager to gratify his 
 animosity against the Georgians. McGirth, also, thirst- 
 ing for retaliation, mustered a band of desperate outlaws, 
 provided them with stolen horses, and conducted a 
 guerilla campaign, cutting off lonely travelers, rifling 
 dwellings, and everywhere marking his path with pillage, 
 rapine and murder. It was the old story of warfare 
 between Florida and Georgia; but more bitter than had 
 been the conflicts of Spaniards and British were now the 
 contentions of Ranger and Liberty Boy, more desperate 
 
Rangers and Liberty Boys, 95 
 
 than ever the war of races, was this rancorous civil strife, 
 where brother contended with brother and father fought 
 against son. 
 
 As the center of military operations against the South- 
 ern colonies and as the depot whence arms were furnished 
 to the savage allies of Great Britain, St. Augustine soon 
 attracted the attention of the Patriot leaders; and re- 
 peated campaigns were planned to compass its overthrow. 
 The first of these, undertaken by General Charles Lee, 
 fell through, because of mismanagement and delay. Then 
 rumors were brought to St. Augustine of another for- 
 midable force advancing to overwhelm the town. Con- 
 sternation reigned supreme; slaves were impressed to 
 strengthen the fortifications; the citizens ran hither and 
 thither in confusion, placed their valuables on board the 
 ships in the harbor, and prepared for flight. The alarm 
 was groundless. Never yet had the city yielded to a 
 siege. The fortress that had defied the grenadiers of 
 Oglethorpe had no cause to tremble at the coming of the 
 Liberty Boys. The invaders advanced only to the St. 
 John's. There they halted. Then, menaced by fever, 
 and glad enough to escape the perils of a midsummer 
 encampment, they turned about and retired. 
 
 The Florida Rangers were active, aggressive and 
 successful in their campaigns. The Minorcans and 
 Scopholites from St. Augustine joined the Hessians from 
 New York at the siege of Savannah, and afterwards took 
 part in the reduction of Charleston. When that city 
 surrendered, in 1780, a number of her citizens were 
 paroled. Soon after, in direct violation of the parole, 
 many of them were torn from their families and confined 
 
96 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 in the loathsom:^ prison-ships or banished to other 
 colonies. The cartel-ship Fidelity brought a number of 
 the Charleston Patriots to St. Augustine; and here they 
 were offered another parole. Most of them accepted it; 
 but the venerable Christopher Gadsden, the Lieutenant 
 Governor of South Carolina, indignantly resented the 
 overture. "With men who have once deceived me," he 
 exclaimed, "I can enter into no new contract." Then, 
 for eleven months, they shut him up in one of the dark 
 dungeons of the fort. From out the gloom of that damp 
 chamber came one day a declaration that gave to the 
 Loyalists of Florida new proof of the spirit that sustained 
 the Patriots in their most desperate straits. Andre, the 
 spy taken by the cowboys at Tarrytown, had been 
 tried and condemned to death. Pending the execution 
 of the sentence, the British authorities sent to General 
 Washington a threat that, if Andre died, some prominent 
 Patriot would be hung in retaliation; and to the white- 
 haired prisoner Gadsden, in his dungeon of the British 
 fort in St. AugULtine, it was told that he was the victim 
 selected. To the threat, hear his reply: "To die for my 
 country," said he, "I am always prepared; and I would 
 rather ascend the scaffold than purchase with my life her 
 dishonor." Brave words these, and of all ever spoken in 
 the fort of St. Augustine most worthy to be remembered. 
 The other Patriots, from South Carolina and New 
 Jersey, fared less harshly. Dr. Andrew TurnbuU loaned 
 them his English newspapers — little consolation for 
 American rebels there — and Jesse Fish sent oranges and 
 lemons from his world-famous grove on St. Anastatia 
 Island. On the Fourth of July (1780), by special per- 
 
Rangers and Liberty Boys, 97 
 
 mission they messed in common; and one feature of the 
 bill of fare was an English plum-pudding of gigantic 
 dimensions, and on its top a tiny flag with thirteen stars 
 and stripes. Inspired by the occasion, Captain Thomas 
 Heyward had that morning been busy with h's pen; and 
 at this Fourth of July Patriot dinner in British St. Augus- 
 tine was heard for the first time the hymn afterwards 
 sung from Georgia to New Hampshire — 
 
 "God save the thirteen states, 
 Thirteen united States, 
 God save them all." 
 
 The verses were set to the familiar tune of "God Save 
 ths King;" and the British guard.', peeping in at the 
 windows and deceived by the accustomed air, wondered 
 greatly at what they took to be the Yankees' sudden return 
 of loyalty to King George. 
 
 While contending with her American Colonies, England 
 had become involved in hostilities with Spain; and now it 
 came about by the whirligig of time that the town, which 
 as a Spanish stronghold had sent out many an armed 
 force against the British, now as a British possession dis- 
 patched a forlorn hope against the Spaniards. Among 
 the Tory officers, who had found their way to St. Augus- 
 tine, was Colonel Andrew De Veaux of the Provincial 
 Dragoons. De Veaux, who was noted through all the 
 Southern colonies for his audacity and foolhardiness and 
 his strong penchant for practical joking, resolved on 
 attempting to capture the Spanish town of Nassau, on 
 the island of New Providence. In the conception and 
 execution of his exploit, humor and valor were blended 
 in very nearly equal proportions. He fitted out two 
 
98 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 small brigs in the harbor, collected a force of Rangers, 
 Minorcans, Seminoles and ragamuffins; and at the island 
 ■of Eleuthra took on a contingent of negroes. The 
 Tidiculous fleet arrived off Nassau in the night. De 
 Yeaux landed his forces, surprised the sleeping citadel, 
 roused up its garrison and put them in irons; occupied 
 the heights commanding the town; disposed his forces to 
 the best advantage, and where there were not enough 
 men to go round set up dummies of straw; at dawn made a 
 mock show of strength, demanded of the Governor to 
 surrender, and to insure a speedy compliance opened 
 fire on him from the captured fort; whereupon the 
 Spaniard submitted, and yielded himself and his town and 
 his troops to the doughty British Colonel, the negroes, 
 the ragamuffins and the men of straw. 
 
 This happened in 1783, It was the last exploit of loyal 
 St. Augustine in the cause of her British sovereign. The 
 rebellious colonies had been victorious. The war was 
 over. Rangers and Liberty Boys laid down their arms; 
 and the Florida planters returned to their fields. With 
 them were numerous accessions of Loyalists from the 
 other colonies, who had refused allegiance to the banner 
 of the thirteen stars and were now come to Floiidato live 
 again under British colors. Peace resumed her gentle 
 sway; and St. Augustine became once more the busy me- 
 tropolis of a thriving English province. Across the bay on 
 St. Anastatia Island, north beyond the gates, west from 
 the batteries on the San Sebastian, and south beyond the 
 stockades — in every direction, smiled the fields of indigo, 
 the sugar plantations and the orange groves. The traders 
 rebuilt their booths along the Indian trails; the distillers 
 
Rangers and Liberty Boys. 99 
 
 of tar and turpentine kindled once more their fires among 
 the pines; the shingle-cutters felled the cypress logs; the 
 live-oakers returned again to hew out the famous Florida 
 timber for building English ships. In over the King's 
 Road, coming north from the Indian River and south 
 from the St. Mary's, crawled the slow wagon trains, creak- 
 ing beneath their burdens of naval stores and the harvests 
 of the plantations. The harbor was white with the wings of 
 commerce. Prosperity reigned on every hand. The town, 
 "beautiful amid her orange bowers, bustled with enterprise 
 and was gay with social delights. Her citizens rejoiced 
 in the present; and their hearts were filled with 
 bright anticipations for the future — that future, which 
 should bring its full recompense for their seven years of 
 war and its fitting reward for their steadfast allegiance to 
 their King. 
 
 It vanished in a twinkling. Into the harbor, one day, 
 came a ship of the Royal Navy with message of startling 
 import. The Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, George 
 the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, and 
 the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, Charles the 
 Third, by the Grace of God, King of Spain and of the 
 Indies, had been playing together a royal game of chess; 
 and each had surrendered to the other a castle. To Eng- 
 land Spain yielded Jamaica; and to Spain England in 
 exchange gave Florida. The treaty moreover provided 
 that the British should immediately evacuate the province. 
 
 This was the reward granted to the citizens of St. 
 Augustine for their staunch fidelity through the seven 
 years' war. The message fell as falls the frost that blights 
 the orange. Joy was changed into sorrow, anticipation to 
 
lOO Old St. Augustine, 
 
 dismay, security to despair. The fate of the Acadians 
 was theirs; the heart-breaking scenes of Grand Pre were 
 rehearsed in St. Augustine. Plantations abandoned, 
 homes deserted, friendships severed — in the transports 
 sent to convey them, the Br.tish sailed away from St. 
 Augustine. Some went south to Jamaica, some north to 
 Nova Scotia, others back over the sea to England again; 
 but wherever scattered — going never so far, separated 
 never so widely — they bore alway with them fond memo- 
 ries of the sunny homes they had left behind, in the old 
 town on the Florida bay. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW. 
 
 NCE more the troops of the King of Spain occu- 
 pied Castle San Marco; a Spanish sentinel 
 scanned the sea from the watch-tower at Ma- 
 tanzas, and a Spanish keeper trimmed the light on 
 Anastatia. Spain had come into possession of her own 
 again. With the return of the Spaniard, a change came 
 over Florida. There was no more planting nor harvest- 
 ing; the Indian stalked through deserted indigo fields 
 and found shelter in abandoned sugar mills; the manu- 
 facture of naval stores ceased; industry was at an end; 
 the crowding sails of merchant ships no longer bright- 
 ened the harbor. In 1783, Florida relapsed into her 
 ancient lethargy; and over our seaport town stole the 
 haze of dreamy indolence and the calm of quiet content. 
 No feverish vision of commercial enterprise marred the 
 serenity of her repose; no vaulting ambition overleapt 
 the circumvallations that shut her in from the busy outer 
 world. Enough for her that through the long siesta of 
 perpetual afternoon she might doze in peace and undis 
 turbed. 
 
102 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 The Minorcans, who still remained on the lands given 
 them by the British, fished and hunted; but the town's 
 chief dependence was upon the supply ships that came 
 from Spain, and the game and beeves brought in by the 
 Indians. The Seminole, scantily clad in gaudy blanket, 
 his hair and limbs shining with bear's grease, and pend- 
 ants of brass and silver hanging from nose and ears, was 
 a familiar figure in the streets. Over the well-worn trails, 
 from the country beyond the San Juan's, he brought 
 horses and cattle, bear meat, venison and wild turkeys; 
 and gave them in exchange for powder and fineries and 
 the much-prized Cuban rum. The policy of the Span- 
 iards was to treat the Indian always with consideration; 
 and once in three months came the Queen's schooner La 
 Barbarita, laden with presents for her dusky subjects in 
 Florida. 
 
 The town was a great military station; and beyond 
 this, nothing. In one way or another, the people were all 
 engaged in the service of the King. They kept the 
 King's accounts, labored at the King's fort, wrought in the 
 King's forge, manned the King's pilot-boats, bought their 
 bread at the King's bakery and their meat at the King's 
 market. The barracks were filled to overflowing with a 
 garrison, for which it taxed the Governor's ingenuity to 
 find employment. A guard of soldiers kept ward over the 
 great treasure chest in the fort; a guard watched at the 
 powder-house on the plain south of the barracks; a guard 
 noted the marking of high noon on the sun-dial, and by 
 the flowing of the sands in the hour-glass on the plaza, 
 all day and all night, recorded the passing time by strokes 
 en a bell; a guard attended the chain-gang of Cuban 
 
The Old World in the N'ew. 103 
 
 convicts in their toil at the fortifications; a guard was 
 stationed :t the Governor's residence; a guard watched 
 at the city gates; a guard patrolled the streets and a 
 guard passed the word on the outskirts by night. 
 
 On every land side the city was well defended by 
 earthworks and coquina batteries. North of the town, 
 from the fort to the San Sebastian River, extended a 
 rampart with redoubts and a fosse through which the tide 
 ebbed and flowed. Entrance to the city was by a draw- 
 bridge over th* fosse and through the gate. When the 
 sunset gun was fired this bridge was raised, the gate was 
 barred, and the guards took their station. Through the 
 hours of the night — from fort to gate, from gate west along 
 the parapet to redoubt Tolomato, from Tolomato to re- 
 doubt Centre, and from Centro to redoubt Cubo on the 
 San Sebastian; thence south along the river to the farthest 
 battery, and east to the extreme point of the peninsula; 
 then north, past powder-house and barracks, on to the 
 plaza, and so back to the watch-towers of the fort again 
 — went the challenge, Centinela alerta ! and came the 
 answer, Alerta estd I When once the gate was closed, the 
 belated wayfarer, be he citizen or stranger, must make the 
 best of it without the town until morning. Only on 
 extraordinary occasions were the bolts thrown back at 
 night, as when some messenger might come with urgent 
 dispatches for the Governor; then the creaking draw- 
 bridge would be slowly lowered; the officer of the guard 
 took the name and errand of the applicant to the Governor; 
 and that dignitary so willing it, the gate was finally 
 opened and the late comer admitted and escorted by a 
 file of soldiers into the Governor's presence. 
 
I04 Old St. Augtistme. 
 
 An important personage was this Governor, In him 
 was vested the authority of the King. His good pleasure 
 was the royal will. In the petty kingdom, where his 
 power was supreme and Lis word law, he held autocratic 
 sway. And high-handed was his rule. Did an obstinate 
 debtor put off a creditor with emp y promises instead of 
 the current coin of the realm — straightway the Governor 
 granted a bill of sale and the delinquent's slaves were 
 bidden off at public auction on the plaza. AVas his Ex- 
 cellency's own siesta interrupted by th? bawling of a 
 drunken disturber of the peace — in a trice the audacious 
 guzzler of agua ardie?ite was haled away to the guard- 
 house; and there he might bless his stars, if only his legs 
 were clapped into the stocks, and net his back bared to 
 the lashes of the pillory hard by. 
 
 The stocks and pillory sufficed for the punishment of 
 ordinary offenses. When slaves were found abroad in 
 the night, without the required passes from their owners, 
 they were arrested, locked up in the guard-house; and 
 the next n:orning, unless their masters paid the fine, 
 were given the prescribed number of lashes. The case- 
 mates of the fort served for the incarceration of criminals; 
 but the usual course with incorrigible offenders was to 
 drum them out of town. Attired in ridiculous garb and 
 with pate fantastically shaven, the culprit was marched at 
 the head of a jeering procession, to the music of fife and 
 drum, out into the scrub, and there formally banished, to 
 be thenceforth an outcast and exile. For felons to whom 
 was decreed the law's extremest penalty, out on redoubt 
 Cubo, gloomily overlooking the marshes of the San 
 Sebastian, swung the creaking gil:bet- and hither on cer- 
 
The Old World in the New, 105 
 
 tain occasion % making public holiday, the entire popu- 
 lace wended its way; and the thoughtful father brought 
 his son, that by dreadful example the child might learn 
 to what sad end a wicked man at last must come. 
 
 The amusements and social customs were those of Old 
 Spain and Minorca. Gambling ran high among soldiers 
 and townspeople. Countless wagers were decided by 
 hard-fought battles between game-cocks of choicest 
 Spanish strain; and there were dog-fights, too, and bull- 
 baitings, and now and then an ambitious attempt to repro- 
 duce the exciting combats of the matadors. Dancing was 
 a favorite amusement, and balls were frequent. The 
 Florida moonlight night invited to much thrumming of 
 guitars beneath lattice windows; and when occasion 
 offered, the midnight was made hideous with din of the 
 charivari, a noisy, boisterous, discordant and unwelcome 
 serenade of the second-married. Funeral processions 
 through the streets were led by ihe padre in his robes, 
 and by acolytes in surplices, bearing crucifix, candles and 
 aspersorium. Feast days and festivals were scrupu- 
 lously observed. The Massacre of Madrid was com- 
 memorated by the solemn celebration of high mass, and 
 the flags throughout the city displaced in mourning. 
 With Carnival came mirth and merrymaking; harlequins, 
 dominos and punchinellos held high revel; and gay 
 companies of maskers went about the streets. Among 
 them, taking the part of St. Peter, went one clad in the 
 ragged dress of a fisherman, and equipped with a mullet 
 cast-net, which he dexterously threw over the heads of 
 the not unwilling children, by such rude travesty setting 
 forth the Apostolic fishing for men. 
 
io6 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 In the afternoon of Palm Sunday, priest and people 
 marched in procession from the church, south to the con- 
 vent, where on its platform in the open air stood an altar, 
 decked with flowers and boughs; and here, while the 
 congregation kneeled on the ground, a mass was said; 
 and the nuns, taking from the little children their baskets. 
 of rose petals, strewed them before the altar and the image 
 of the Virgin. Then all repaired in procession to the glacis 
 of Fort San Marco, where at a second altar the rites 
 were repeated. On Easter Eve, the waits went about the 
 streets, singing beneath the windows, to the accompani- 
 ment of vioHn and guitar, their Minorcan hymn of joy and 
 praise to the Virgin — 
 
 Ended the days of sadness, 
 
 Grief gives place to singing ; 
 We come with joy and gladness, 
 
 Our gifts to Mary bringing — * 
 
 and received from lattice and opened shutter presents of 
 sweetmeats and pastry. 
 
 A strange bit of the Old World was this; and most 
 grotesquely out of place in the New. It could not 
 long endure. The United States regarded with appre- 
 hension the presence of a foreign power on its southern 
 boundary. American pioneers were impatient to enter 
 the Florida wilderness, which had lain so long fallow, 
 waiting to yield its abundant harvest to enterprise and 
 industry. Twice had bands of armed invaders from the 
 
 * Disciarem lu dol, 
 
 Cantarem anb' alagria, 
 Y n'arem a da 
 
 Las pascuas a Maria. 
 O Maria ! 
 
The Old World m the New, 107 
 
 North crossed the border and advanced to the very shadow 
 of the coquina fortress. There, as savage, British and 
 Patriot had halted before them, they turned about and 
 retired. And well, in truth, they might. Intrenched in 
 such a stronghold, the Governor could have held an 
 army at bay. The battlements of Castle San Marco stood 
 staunch; not against them might the assault of arms 
 prevail. But there were other forces, with which, fortify 
 himself how he would, the Spaniard was powerless to 
 cope. The indolent Don must no longer stand in the 
 way of Florida's development. It was manifest destiny; 
 and he yielded to it. 
 
 In the year 1821, Spain having ceded Florida to the 
 United States, relinquished forever her claim to the town 
 her knights had founded two and a half centuries before; 
 and here where the stag of Seloy had greeted the Fleur- 
 de-Lis of France, and the yellow standard of Spain had 
 given brief place to the Red Cross of England, here, 
 over the walls of the old city gray with time— waved at 
 last the banner, whose bars and stars symbolized the 
 strength and the aspiration of the youngest born among 
 the nations of the earth. 
 
XVI. 
 THE SEMINOLE. 
 
 N January, 1836, the stoutest hearts in St. Augus- 
 tine were thrown into trepidation by portentous 
 signals in the sky. By day, above the pines in 
 the west were seen great columns of smoke, rolling up 
 from fired plantations; and at midnight the heavens were 
 lurid with the glare cf blazing homes. Terror-stricken 
 refugees came flocking in from the country; and their 
 stories added to the general alarm. One day, the fugitive 
 was a father whose wife and children had been shot down 
 at their noonday meal; the next, a mother whose babe had 
 been slain at her breast; and again, a little child, sole 
 chance survivor from the massacre of a household. The 
 town itself was menaced by the savage foe; children at 
 their play glanced furtively toward the west; and the 
 citizens — old men and invalids as well — rallied to the 
 protection of their homes. 
 
 It was the final furious bursting of a storm which had 
 long been gathering. The Seminole war had begun. 
 
 So long as the Spaniards ruled Florida, the Seminoles 
 enjoyed undisputed possession of its fairest lands. Their 
 
The Seminole, 109 
 
 palmetto villages and maize fields lined the fertile banks 
 of the Withlacoochee and the Apalachicola; their herds 
 of cattle pastured on the Alachuan prairies; and in 
 pursuit of game their hunters roamed at will over the 
 entire country. With the Indians dwelt many negroes, as 
 slaves or free allies, whose ancestors had fled from 
 colonial masters, or who were themselves fugitives from 
 the plantations of the Southern States. Seminole and 
 negro dwelt together in contentment and security; and 
 they were prosperous and happy. But when the United 
 States took possession of the territory, the Indian's peace- 
 ful life was rudely interrupted. The new-comers looked 
 with a longing eye upon the rich lands occupied by the 
 Seminole, and coveted the negroes— his slaves and friends. 
 Land speculators and man kidnappers rushed in. The 
 Florida frontier was infested with outcasts, fugitives from 
 justice and unprincipled knaves, who were eager to dupe 
 the Indian, defraud him of his lands, steal his cattle and 
 make merchandise of his negro slaves and his free allies. 
 Bitter conflicts ensued. The settlers demanded the 
 removal of the Indians to the West; but the Seminoles 
 refused to exchange their sunny native land for a strange 
 country of which they could learn no good report. The 
 border outrages increased, and became more aggravated. 
 At length, provoked beyond endurance, and by the 
 sense of his wrongs rankling :n his breast goaded to 
 final desperation — the savage took the warpath; and with 
 rifle, scalping knife and the midnight torch sought 
 revenge. Then the United States Government, with a 
 treasury and an army at its command, set about the 
 trifling task of driving out from Florida this paltry rem- 
 
no Old St, A ugustine. 
 
 nant of a savage race. In due time the task was accom- 
 plished; but not until after seven years of most extraordi- 
 nary warfare, the employment of twenty thousand volun- 
 teers, the expenditure of forty millions of dollars and 
 the sacrifice of two thousand lives. 
 
 Among the Indian leaders, who had been most influen- 
 tial in resisting the encroachments of the whites and the 
 most determined in opposition to all schemes of emigra- 
 tion, were Osceola and Coacoochee.* In a council of the 
 chiefs with the agent, when Osceola was asked to sign 
 his mark to a treaty of removal, springing up in anger he 
 cried, "The only mark I will make is with this," and 
 drove his knife through the parchment into the table. 
 Later, when the old Chief Nea-Mathla consented to leave 
 Florida, and having sold his cattle to the whites was 
 gathering his people to emigrate to Arkansas, Osceola at 
 the head of a war party killed him, and flung away the 
 gold that had been received for the cattle, declaring that 
 it was the price of the Sem'nole's blood. Osceola and 
 Coacoochee were tl:e first to take up arms against the 
 whites; and under their inspiration early examples were 
 given of the terrible savage expedients, by which the 
 Seminole campaigns were to be made memorable in 
 the annals of Indian warfare. 
 
 In August, 1835, Major Dade and a command of troops, 
 
 ♦The spelling " Osceola " is that most common, though it is possible that 
 some of the nine or ten other forms may be correct. The name signifies " The 
 Black Drink." The chief, a full-blooded Indian, has sometimes erroneously 
 been called Powell, the name of the Scotchman who married Osceola's mother 
 after the death of her Indian husband, Osceola's father. The name Coacoochee 
 means " Wild Cat." The Seminoles (" Runaways," or "Men who live apart") 
 were originally members of the Creek tribe of Georgia, who, about the year 1750, 
 seceded from the tribe and came down to live in Spanish Florida. 
 
The Seminole. 1 1 1 
 
 2IO all told, were on their way from Fort Brooke to Fort 
 Xing. At half past nine o'clock, Tuesday morning, 
 August 28, they were marching through an open pine 
 barren, four miles from the Great Wahoo Swamp. The 
 bright sun was shining; flowers bloomed along the path; 
 gay butterflies flitted about them; the silence was 
 broken only by the ^olian melody of the pines. The 
 men were marching carelessly, with no suspicion of 
 danger, where surely no foe could lurk. Suddenly, with- 
 out an instant's warning — from pine, from palmetto scrub, 
 from the very grass at their feet — burst upon them the 
 shrill war-whoop, the flashing and crackling of rifles, and 
 the whistling, deadly rain of bullets. Sixty of the troops 
 fell mortally wounded. The rest rallied; trained the 
 cannon, and attempted to form breastworks of logs; but 
 in vain. In quick succession, one after another, they fell. 
 Had the earth yawned to swallow them like the army of 
 Korah, the obliteration could have been little more com- 
 plete. Of the 210, three, miserably wounded, dragged 
 themselves away, two soon after to die of their wounds. 
 
 This was the character of the Florida war. It was a 
 conflict waged against a mysterious, unseen foe. Nature 
 had provided for the protection of her children. On the 
 islands of the Great Wahoo and the Big Cypress, in the 
 impenetrable fastnesses of the Ocklawaha, and in the dis- 
 tant everglades of Okeechobee, the Seminole established 
 his powder magazines, cultivated his fields, and found a 
 secure retreat for wives and little ones. Thence, in bands 
 of ten and twenty, the warriors sallied out for ambush, 
 surprise and midnight conflagration. The Indian came, 
 none knew whence. A yell, a bullet's deadly whizz, the 
 
112 Old St, Augustine, 
 
 flash of the scalping knife — and he was gone, none knew 
 whither. To follow was useless; pursuit could not over- 
 take him. The interior of Florida was a trackless wilder- 
 ness. In its mazes the savage was at home; he knew 
 every foot of ground. But where the Seminole went the 
 white man could not follow. 
 
 The full story of what the troops endured in the 
 Seminole war will never be written. They marched day 
 after day amid dreary wastes of pines; and with 
 lacerated feet pressed on through cruel palmetto scrub. 
 They hewed a painful way through hamaks where 
 tangled vine and creeper and swinging llianas im- 
 peded every step, serpents disputed their passage, and 
 progress was gained by inches. They woke the sleep of 
 slimy reptiles in the ooze of quaking bogs; the owl blinked 
 at them in the hushed twilight of sepulchral swamps; 
 they penetrated to the yet more awful desolation where 
 no living thing was found. They swam the tawny floods 
 of unnamed rivers; breasted the scum of stagnant pools; 
 and threw themselves down in bivouac amid treacherous 
 sloughs. The scouts, separated from their commands and 
 lost in the ghostly shades of moss-hung labyrinths, went 
 mad and wandered aimlessly to and fro, until death ended 
 their misery. In the darkness of midnight the troops 
 crawled on hands and knees to surprise the Indian village; 
 and at dawn, rushed upon deserted huts. On every hand 
 Osceola and his men lay in wait to cut them oif ; Coacoo- 
 chee mocked them floundering in the morasses. The 
 scorching sun beat down upon them; protracted storms 
 drenched them; fever and pestilence were leagued against 
 them; amid deadly vapors they sank and died. For 
 
The Seminole. 1 1 3 
 
 every soldier killed by the savage (so the official records 
 show) five perished of disease. 
 
 The Florida climate precluded summer campaigns. 
 When from seamed trunk and gnarled limb the resurrec- 
 tion-fern burst forth in living green, the yellow hibiscus 
 glowed on margin of swamp and pond, and the splendor 
 of the magnolia grandiflora paled before the advancing 
 glories of the blazing-star; when on the ground and all 
 about and in the loftiest growth of the forest, were flung 
 out the floral signals of lurking peril — the troops fled for 
 very life from the miasma, and withdrew to the summer 
 stations on the coast; and then, in his swampy fastnesses 
 secure from molestation, the Indian tended his crops, 
 celebrated his green corn dance, and gathered new 
 strength for the winter warfare. 
 
 The Seminole made a desperate stand for his Florida 
 home. He was exacting from the whites a terrible price 
 for the acres they coveted. And even more desperately 
 than the Indian, fought the negro fugitive. Defeat for 
 him was not the loss of land, but of liberty; to yield 
 meant not exile, but bondage. But hopeless was the 
 struggle. As time went on, the strength of Indian and 
 ally surely waned; year by year their numbers grew less. 
 Some were killed, some taken in battle. More were cap- 
 tured by ruse and treachery and violations of flags of 
 truce. The Indian was a savage — not entitled to the 
 consideration accorded a civilized foe. He refused to be 
 vanquished in fair fight; the war, then, must be brought 
 to an end by other means. 
 
 Special efforts were made to capture the chiefs, Osce- 
 ola and Coacoochee. When these two influential leaders 
 
114 Old St, Augustine. 
 
 should be removed, it was rightly conjectured, the Sem- 
 inole's strength would be gone. The opportunity to take 
 them finally came. In September, 1838, General Her- 
 nandez surprised two camps of Indians and negroes, 
 eighteen miles below St. Augustine. The prisoners were 
 "brought to town and lodged in the fort. Among them 
 was the aged chief, Emathla, Coacoochee's father. In 
 response to a message from the old chief, Coacoochee 
 came in to St. Augustine for a conference with the com- 
 manding officer; and was sent back to bring in other 
 chiefs for a talk. He returned with Osceola and seventy 
 of his followers. They came with a flag of truce, rely- 
 ing upon its sanctity for their protection. It was mis- 
 taken confidence. The pretended conference was only a 
 ruse of the commanding general. The flag was disre- 
 garded; the truce was violated; and the Indians were 
 clapped into prison. With Osceola shut in behind the 
 ponderous locks of one casemate, and Coacoochee se- 
 curely confined in another — reasoned the general, well 
 pleased with his stratagem — the other chiefs would aban- 
 don the hopeless struggle, lay down their arms and come 
 in to be transported to Arkansas. And so indeed they 
 would; and the Seminole war might have ended then 
 and there. But one Indian prevented it; and he, one of 
 the very captives who had been taken by treachery and 
 so securely locked in behind the bolts and bars of Fort 
 Marion. High up in Coacoochee's cell was a narrow 
 embrasure. Through this aperture — his body attenuated 
 by secret medicine and fasting — the chief squeezed, one 
 night, tumbled to the moat below, and set out to rejoin 
 his tribe. When they heard the story he had to tell, the 
 
The Seminole. ^ 115 
 
 chiefs, who were preparing to yield, took up their arms 
 again and waged a war fiercer than ever. 
 
 The other prisoners were removed from Fort Marion 
 to Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor. There Osceola, 
 brooding over the fate of his people, fell ill and sank 
 into a decline. Obeying to the last the injunctions of 
 the sullen Indian prophet who attended him, he stub- 
 b)ornly refused the medicines proffered him by the phy- 
 sicians. One night, while the prophet muttered in a 
 corner, and his two wives sat watching the play of the 
 fire-light upon the naked limbs of the dying warrior, 
 Osceola smeared the death-paint on his face, drew his 
 Icnife from its sheath, brandished it about his head, vainly 
 essayed a war shout — and fell back dead. 
 
 The war went on. Congress voted additional millions; 
 new troops were enlisted to take the place of those who 
 had fallen from the ranks; and man-hunting bloodhounds 
 were brought from Cuba to track the Indian to his 
 retreats. But money, troops and bloodhounds failed to 
 drive out the Seminole. It was reserved for Coacoochee, 
 who had protracted the war, finally to end it. 
 
 In May, 1841, the chief left his stronghold in the Big 
 Cypress Swamp, and came in for a talk with General 
 Worth. Not long before this his band had massacred a 
 company of actors, coming from Picolata (on the St. 
 John's) to St. Augustine; and had arrayed themselves in 
 the plundered costumes. Clad in the garb of Hamlet, 
 the Florida savage spoke — 
 
 ''The whites dealt unjustly by me. I came to them; 
 they deceived me. The land I was upon I loved. My 
 body is made of its sands. The Great Spirit gave me 
 
Ti6 Old St. Attgustine. 
 
 legs to walk over it, hands to aid myself, eyes to see its 
 ponds and rivers and forests and game, and a head with 
 which I think. The sun which is warm and bright, 
 shines to warm us and bring forth our crops; and the 
 moon brings back the spirits of our warriors, our wives 
 and children. The white man comes; he grows pale and 
 sick. Why cannot we live here in peace ? I havelsaid I 
 am the enemy to the v/hite man. I could live in peace 
 with him; but they first steal our cattle and horses, cheat 
 us and take our lands. The white men are as thick as 
 the leaves in the hamak. They come upon us thicker 
 every year. They may shoot us, and drive our women 
 and children night and day, they may chain our hands 
 and feet— but the red man's heart will be always free." 
 
 The conference ended, another was arranged. True 
 to his word, the chief came to the appointed meeting, 
 bearing a flag of truce. The old ruse was repeated. 
 The truce was violated. Coacoochee was seized, thrown 
 into irons, and placed on board a prison-ship in Tampa 
 Bay. At noon of the Fourth of July — while the flag 
 of the free was flying from the masthead above him 
 and the cannon were booming in glad celebration of the 
 liberties of the American people — the manacled chief 
 was given a final hard and bitter choice. Within forty 
 days — he was told — the people of his tribe must come in 
 and surrender themselves for transportation from Florida^ 
 or, on the fortieth day, he and his fellow-prisoners should 
 be hung at the yard-arm. This time there was no 
 escape. The Seminole yielded. 
 
 Within the forty days his people surrendered. Other 
 chiefs with their tribes followed. Men, women and 
 
The Seminole. 117 
 
 children embarked on the ships, which were to bear 
 them away forever from the land they loved so well and 
 for which they had fought so long. As the exiles left 
 the shore, they knelt and kissed its sands. When the 
 transports moved away, the men sat in sullen silence 
 about the decks; the women and children broke into 
 weeping; Coacoochee stood in the sternsheets, gazing 
 fixedly upon the receding shore; "I am looking," he 
 said, "at the last pine tree on my land." 
 
XVII. 
 LATER YEARS. 
 
 N uneventful period followed the close of the 
 Seminole war in 1842. The Minorcans fished 
 from their dug-outs and hunted with their 
 smooth-bore "Indian traders;" the Cracker carts brought 
 in game and scanty produce; the orange growers 
 shipped their golden harvests in wind-bound schooners; 
 and now and then a tourist from the North found his way 
 by uncertain steamer up the St. John's and by more 
 uncertain stage across from Picolata, to explore the nar- 
 row streets and the dismantled fortress in the quaint old 
 Florida town. 
 
 For twenty years, as under a magician's spell, the 
 drowsy city slumbered. In 1861, startled by the rever- 
 berations from Charleston harbor, it woke to hear again 
 the clash of arms. For a brief moment, the flag of 
 Florida's rebellion fluttered from its staff on the plaza; 
 but St. Augustine was far removed from the active 
 theatre of war, and in the fratricidal strife took no con- 
 spicuous part. For the town, nevertheless, the war was 
 fraught vv'ith important consequences; its close marked 
 
Later Years. 119 
 
 a new stage in the life of the city. In 1865 set in the 
 tide of immigration from the North, which has gathered 
 strength with each succeeding year, and has completely 
 altered the character of the town. Wonderful has been 
 the transformation. At the change let them carp who 
 will; and sigh for the olden times as they may. The 
 spirit of Old St. Augustine is in abeyance; the enterprise 
 of the new rules the hour. Old and new, each has its 
 place. New England granite caps the Florida coquina 
 of the sea-wall; and both together withstand the surges 
 of the Atlantic. 
 
 The metamorphosis in the material aspect of the town 
 is one of many like transformations wrought here. To 
 tear down and demolish has been the rule with foe and 
 friend alike. Indian, Sea-King, Boucanier, British 
 invader— each in turn has scourged the town; and after 
 the passing of each, it has risen again. If we may credit 
 the testimony of visitors here, over St. Augustine has 
 always hung an air of desolation and decay. After the 
 successive changes of rulers, the new has always been 
 built from the old. To use the coquina blocks from a 
 dilapidated structure was less laborious than to hew out 
 new material from the Anastatia quarries. In this man- 
 ner were destroyed the coquina batteries, that in old 
 times defended the southern line of the town. The 
 stone from one of them was employed in building the 
 Franciscan convent, and thence it went into the founda- 
 tions of the barracks, which rose on the convent site. 
 Another lot of coquina passed through a like cycle of 
 usefulness, from outskirt battery into parish church, and 
 from parish church to the repair of the city gate. So 
 
I20 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 universal, indeed, has been this process of tearing down 
 the old to construct the new, that there are few edifices 
 here to-day, concerning whose antiquity we have satis- 
 factory evidence. Boston worships in churches more 
 ancient than the cathedral; New Orleans markets are 
 older than the disused one on the plaza; Salem wharves 
 antedate the sea-wall; on the banks of the Connecticut, the 
 Hudson and the Potomac stand dwellings more venerable 
 than any here on the Matanzas*. The destructive waves 
 of improvement have swept over St. Augustine, resistless 
 as the advancing waters of the sea, which now dash over 
 the ruins of the Spanish lighthouse they long since under- 
 mined; and as persistent as the elements, which have 
 leveled to the ground useless ramparts and redoubts. 
 
 Everywhere may be seen evidences of the change. 
 The walls of the old powder-house, with its sentry-boxes, 
 have been demolished; its site can be distinguished only 
 by the sunken foundation-stones. Nothing whatever is 
 left to suggest the famous Governor's-house, north of the 
 plaza, which stood in the midst of its wonderful botanic 
 garden, high-walled all about, and with a lofty lookout, 
 whence, like Vathek from his genii-builded tower, the 
 Spaniard might gaze abroad over the surrounding country 
 and far out to sea. The open square in the center of 
 the city — the plaza of the Spaniards and the parade 
 ground of the English, where Spanish and British soldiery 
 
 * The cathedral was completed in 1791. The present sea-wall was built in 1835- 
 43, The "oldest house in St. Augustine," like ''the old slave-pen" and "the old 
 Huguenot burying-ground," is an invention of the sensational guide-book manu- 
 facturers It is not known which house in the town is the oldest. The so-called 
 slave-pen was built (1840) for a market, and so used. There is no Huguenot 
 cemeterj'. 
 
"•"^ ^ 
 
Later Years. 121 
 
 have mustered, and after them Seminole war volunteers, 
 Confederates and Federals — has been transformed into 
 a pleasure park, now more beautiful, we may well believe, 
 than even in the palmy days when famous for its 
 orange trees of marvelous size and bearing. Though 
 the shaft of masonry erected here in 181 2 still remains, it 
 is itself a grim monument of mutability, for its inscription 
 with fine irony proclaims the eterna memoria — the eternal 
 remembrance — of a political constitution, which passed 
 almost immediately away and left no impress on indi- 
 viduals nor governments.* The Spanish market-and- 
 pilot-house, with the pilot-boats drawn up on the 
 shore — for there was no walled basin in those times 
 — was long ago succeeded by another market, and 
 that in turn by the structure now used for a music 
 stand. Northeast of the plaza, where once stood the 
 Spanish guard-house, with stocks and pillory, now rises a 
 
 Charles IV. having been compelled to abdicate the Spanish throne in favor of 
 Ferdinand VII., Napoleon Bonaparte was called upon to arbitrate between them. 
 He extorted from both a resignation of their claims, and placed his own brother, 
 Joseph Napoleon, on the throne (1808). An insurrection of the Spanish people 
 followed. The French troops were employed to support Napoleon, and England, 
 recognizing the claims of Ferdinand VII., aided the cause of the insurgents. In 
 3812, the Spanish Cortes (the legislative body representing the insurgents) com- 
 pleted the formation of a new and liberal constitution. In commemoration of this, 
 jnonuments were erected in Spain and the Spanish provinces. Among others was 
 ihis one in the province of Florida, the square then taking the name Plaza de la 
 Constitucion. Finally, in 1814, the war for independence was brought to a suc- 
 cessful termination; and Ferdinand VII., having pledged himself to support the 
 new constitution, was recalled to the thrune. Once in power, almost his first act 
 was to repudiate the new constitution and declare it null and void. Throughout 
 Spain and her American dependencies it was commanded that the monuments 
 erected two years previouslj' in commemoration of the constitution, should be 
 destroyed. Notwithstanding the royal decree, this one in Florida was not torn 
 down. The tablets were removed, but four years later (1818) were restored to 
 iheir places, where they have remained ever since. 
 
122 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 modern hotel. At the head of the same square, where 
 the lattice gate led through the high wall to the convent 
 beyond, a glass door now opens into a shop, where Yan- 
 kee notions are on sale. Further down St. George 
 street, the smart picket fence of a hotel yard has sup- 
 planted the pilastered wall of that famous mansion, which 
 the Spanish treasurer began to build on so magnificent a. 
 scale that the Spanish occupation did not suffice to com- 
 plete it.* Even the pillars of the city gate, which next 
 to the fort are the chief memorials of Old St. Augus- 
 tine, have barely escaped demolition at the hand of the 
 vandal; for once upon a time, a contractor was assigned 
 the work of building a stone causeway from the gate, ia 
 the place of the old draw-bridge, which formerly crossed 
 the ditch at that point; and being in need of coquina, this 
 unworthy workman, laying violent hands upon what 
 was nearest, began to tear away the gateway pillars.. 
 Compelled to restore the plundered stone to its place, he 
 botched the work, and in the clumsy restoration has left 
 an enduring monument of his lazy shiftlessness. In the 
 march of improvement, other venerable relics of the 
 town's ancient defenses have fared less fortunately. One 
 of the picturesque coquina batteries, with its quaint and 
 foreign air, a monument which had bravely survived the 
 assaults of armed foes, the changes of empire and the 
 corroding tooth of time, and which should have been 
 always zealously protected by an intelligent public senti- 
 ment, was demolished at last, that, forsooth, the upper 
 
 * This was on the corner of St. George street and the lane called Treasury- 
 street— a corruption of the Spanish name, which signified "the stieet where the 
 Treasurer lives." 
 
Later Years, 123 
 
 windows of a boarding-house might command a more. 
 extended view. 
 
 Such is the spirit of the age. Down with the old Unes. 
 Let them no longer cumber the earth. Time has leveled 
 the ramparts, and filled the ditch with the blowing sands. 
 It is a good work — this of time; and we will do our own 
 share, too, by carting off the earth from the old redoubts 
 and with it filling in building lots for new houses. Why 
 not? The defenses fulfilled their mission long ago, in 
 those days when the jealous Spaniard built them to repel 
 intruders from his domain; but in these later years we 
 have no wish to keep strangers out; whoever will, may 
 come. So reasons new St. Augustine, carpenter's saw in 
 one hand, paint pot in the other. You may hear it in the 
 rumble of the railroad train from the North, whizzing in 
 through the lines, where once the sentinel's sharp chal- 
 lenge halted the stranger at the stockaded defenses; ia 
 the shriek of the locomotive beyond the San Sebas- 
 tian, where once the mellow notes of the bugle told the 
 coming of the mail; and in the clatter of omnibus and 
 hack over the bridge, where once the toiling rope-ferry 
 crawled from shore to shore. You may listen to its tell- 
 ing all day long in the discordant din of a steam saw- 
 mill, on the site where once the sentinel's alerta passed 
 along the line and angry artillery thundered; and you 
 may hear it again at night, in the evening melodies of 
 the great hotel, by whose ambitious turrets the frowning 
 battlements of Fort Marion — once so impressive from 
 the harbor — have been dwarfed and belittled. 
 
 So the old has passed away; and by shortsighted van- 
 dalism the ancient landmarks have been leveled with the 
 
124 Old St. Augtistiiie. 
 
 ground; but with the destruction of these moss-grown 
 monuments the town's three centuries have not been 
 blotted out, nor is their story taken away; and as here 
 and there the remnants of some venerable wall yet endure, 
 so the romance of the Old St. Augustine of yesterday 
 remains, to add its charm to those of the fountains and 
 the gardens, the waving palms and the perfumed groves 
 of the new St. Augustine of to-day. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 FORT MARION. 
 
 HEN the Spaniards came to the River of Dol- 
 phins, in 1565, they converted the Indian coun- 
 cil house of Seloy into a temporary defense. 
 This was succeeded by a fort of logs, the Fort San Juan 
 de Pinos taken by Drake; and this in turn gave way to 
 the foundations of the substantial structure of stone 
 which is still standing. After a century of toil by an 
 army of troops, bands of Indian captives, slaves, con- 
 victs and exiles, Fort San Marco was finally completed 
 in 1756. So great was the expenditure involved, that the 
 Spanish monarch — into whose coffers the rich streams 
 from the Indies had long since ceased to flow — exclaimed, 
 when told of its cost, that the curtains and bastions must 
 have been built of solid silver dollars. 
 
 The fortification is a regular polygon, of four equal 
 curtains and four equal bastions. It is surrounded by a 
 moat, and is defended on the east by a water battery, and 
 on the other three sides by a glacis. The sally-port, on 
 the south, is further protected by a barbacan or demilune. 
 The sally-port was reached by a stationary bridge extend- 
 
126 
 
 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 ing partially across the moat, and then by a draw-bridge.* 
 The material of which the fort is constructed is a soft 
 shell concretion, called coquina. It was quarried on the 
 
 * From the crest of the artificial hill of earth (the glacis) a bridge (i), formerly 
 •draw-bridge, leads across moat to barbacan On the barbacan at the stairway (2) 
 are the arms of Spain. A bridge (3), formerly a draw-bridge, leads to sally-port 
 <4), where was a heavy door (portcullis). The escutcheon above bears arms of 
 Spain ; the Spanish legend, now partially obliterated, set forth that "Don Fer- 
 dinand the VI., being King of Spain, and the Field Marshal Don Alonzo Fernando 
 Hereda, being Governor and Captain General of this place, San Augustin of 
 Florida, and its province, this Fort was finished in the year 1756. The works were 
 -directed by the Captain Engineer, Don Pedro de Brozas y Garay." Within, on 
 right of entrance (5), are bake-room (6) and two dark chambers (7, 8) ; on left is the 
 
Fort Marion. 127 
 
 island opposite the town; and being of a spongy, elastic 
 composition, was well adapted to withstand a bombard- 
 ment from such artillery as was used a hundred years ago. 
 
 guard-room (7) and officers' room (7). Around the court are casemates (10) some 
 formerly having upper rooms. The windows (embrasures) are high up near the 
 arched ceilings. From first east casemate a door leads into dark chamber (9). 
 From casemate 11 entrance is had to a dark chamber (12), thence by narrow 
 passage through wall 5 feet thick into a space 5 feet wide ; and by a low aperture 
 2 feet square through another wall 5 feet thick, into an innermost chamber (14), 
 19^x13% feet and 8 feet high, with arched roof of solid masonry. This was 
 perhaps a powder-magazine or bomb-proof. It is probable that : when the 
 water percolated down, this chamber became damp and unwholesome, fell 
 into disuse, became a receptacle for rubbish, bred fevers, and was finally, as 
 a sanitary measure, walled up. The entrance from the chamber (12) was closed 
 by the Spaniards shortly before Florida was ceded to the United States. [This is 
 on authority of Mr. Cristobal Bravo, who then, a boj'^, was employed in the 
 fort.] In the chapel (15) the altar and niches still remain. Outside, over entrance 
 is a memorial tablet set in wall by the French astronomers who here observed 
 the transit of Venus. 16 is a dark room. Casemate loa was used as the treasury. 
 In IOC Coacoochee was confined. The court is 103x109 feet. Cannon were rolled 
 up the inclined plane (now worn into resemblance of a stairway) to platform (terre- 
 plein) of ramparts. At outer angle of each bastion (B) was a sentry-box (W), 
 That on northeast was also a watch-tower (25 feet high). The one on northwest is 
 fallen. Distance from watch-tower to watch-tower, 317 feet. The curtains (walls 
 extending from bastion to bastion) and the bastion walls are 9 feet thick at base, 
 4,y2 at top, and 25 feet high above present moat level. The moat, 40 feet wide, 
 formerly deeper than now, with concrete floor, was kept scrupulously clean, and 
 flooded at high tide from the river. The narrower level space beyond the moat is 
 the covered way; and the wider levels are the places-of-arms. The troops, who 
 gathered here to repel assault, were defended by the outer wall (parapet), from 
 which the great embankment of earth (the glacis) slopes. The stone water- 
 battery on the east was rebuilt in 1842. The hot shot furnace, in front of east 
 curtain, was built in 1844. The last use of the cannon, mounted at the water- 
 battery, was for quarantine. When a vessel arrived, a blank charge was fired as a 
 signal for it to anchor, that the health officer of the port might go out to inspect it. 
 The last historic shot from Fort Marion was from one of these guns. It was in 
 1867. A little schooner, built in St. Augustine and launched from the sea-wall, had 
 been named in honor of the commandant of the post. Colonel John T. Sprague. 
 From the initial trip the schooner arrived off the bar one Sunday morning. The 
 people on their way to church heard the quarantine gun ; and soon after the town 
 was thrown into excitement by the screech of a cannon ball. It subsequently tran- 
 spired that the captain, unmindful of quarantine regulations, had taken the first 
 shot for a salute to his be-Coloneled schooner ; and with all his bunting flung 
 to the breeze, he sailed grandly on. But of the shot across his bows there could 
 be no mistaking the intent. The captain of the Colonel John T. Sprague 
 promptly lowered sail and let go the anchor, but struck his colors never. 
 
128 Old St, Atcgustine. 
 
 How conspicuous was the part taken by the fort in 
 deciding the fortunes of Florida and of North America, 
 has been already told; but still more romantic than the 
 record of sieges and political mutations, would be the 
 story of those who from time to time and on one pretext 
 or another have been confined within its walls. Here 
 and there, in the chronicles of the fitful years of conflict 
 between Spanish Florida and the British colonies, we may 
 catch glimpses of such prisoners — now an English mother- 
 brought here by savage Yemassee ;* again, English 
 seamen taken by Spanish galleys; and then, the High- 
 landers surprised in Fort Moosa by nocturnal sortie. f 
 
 * While the colony was thus harassed with fears and troubles and rigorous 
 landlords to enhance their misery, their savage neighbors were also now and then 
 making incursions into their settlements, and spreading havoc among the scattered 
 families. At this time a scalping party penetrated as far as the Euhah lands, 
 where, having surprised John Levit and two of his neighbors, they knocked out 
 their brains with their tomahawks. They then seized Mrs. Barrows and one of 
 her children and carried them oflf with them. The child by the way finding him- 
 self in barbarous hands, began to cry, upon which they put him to death. The 
 distressed mother being unable to refrain from tears, while her child was murdered 
 before her eyes, was given to understand that she must not weep, if she desi.ed 
 not to share the same fate. Upon her arrival at Augustine, she would have been 
 immediately sent to prison, but one of the Yamassee kings declared that he knew 
 her from her infancy to be a good woman, interceded for her liberty and begged 
 she might be sent home to her husband. This favor, however, the Spanish Gov- 
 ernor refused to grant ; and the garrison seemed to triumph with the Indians in 
 the number of their scalps. When Mr. Barrows went to Augustine to procure the 
 release of his wife, he also was shut up in prison along with her, where he soon 
 after died, but she survived all the hardships of hunger, sickness, and confine- 
 ment to give a relation of her barbarous treatment. After her return to Carolina 
 she reported to Governor Johnson that the Huspah king who had taken her 
 prisoner and carried her off informed her he had orders from the Spanish Gov- 
 ernor to spare no white man, but to bring every negro alive to Augustine, and 
 that rewards were given to Indians for th«;ir prisoners to encourage them to engage 
 in such rapacious and murderous enterprises.— //^i«?V'j South Carolina. 
 
 t During the siege by Oglethorpe, in a night attack by the Spaniards on Fort 
 Moosa, twenty Highlanders were taken and brought into the fort, where they were 
 kept in close confinement three months. 
 
Foi^t Marion. 
 
 129 
 
 In Revolutionary times the fort was used for the impris- 
 onment of Patriots from Charleston,* of crews of ships 
 taken by privateers from St. Augustine, and of Georgians 
 who had fallen into the hands of McGirth's men. In 
 subsequent years, when the Spaniards had come again, 
 McGirth himself heard the clank of the prison bars 
 behind him, and through five slow years of darkness 
 lingered in the cell known long afterward as "McGirth's 
 dungeon. "f Then came, victim of Spanish rancor, Gen- 
 eral Mcintosh, for whose release a sightless wife made 
 unavailing plea, in letters of such pathetic eloquence that, 
 though they did not melt the obdurate heart of the Span- 
 
 * At one of the Sabbath services held by the paroled Patriots in St. Augustine, 
 the minister, Rev. John Lewis, preached a discourse which so enraged Governor 
 Tonyn that he shut up the Charleston clerg^^man in the fort. After that, if the 
 Patriots wished to attend service, they were compelled to go to the Parish Church 
 and hear prayers offered for George the Fourth. {Garden s A necdotes 0/ A tnerican 
 Revolution). They were permitted to write home, upon condition that they 
 should communicate nothing about the state of affairs in St. Augustine. One of 
 them, detected in a violation of this rule, was arrested and confined in the fort. 
 In one of the long, dreary hours of solitary confinement, he wrote on his prison 
 walls the following reflection on the vain glories of the world — 
 " Life is a vapour, man needs repose. 
 He glories but a moment, down he goes." 
 A British officer, to show his wit, wrote under it — 
 
 " is a bubble, as his scribbling shows. 
 
 He cuts a caper, and then up he goes ," 
 with a finger pointing at a man suspended on a gallows. {Johnson's Reminiscences 
 0/ the American Revolution.) General Christopher Gadsden was confined in a 
 dark dungeon, and for a long time was denied a light, i inally he was permitted to 
 have a candle ; and then, to while away the time, engaged in the study of 
 Hebrew. How he was threatened with death has been told in a previous chapter. 
 
 t When Florida was reconveyed to the Spaniards by the treaty of peace, he 
 [McGirth] became subject to their laws, and on account of suspicious conduct was 
 arrested and confined by them five years in one of their damp dungeons in 
 the Castle of St. Augustine, where his health was totally destroyed. When dis- 
 charged from St. Augustine, he, with much difficulty, returned to his wife in 
 Sumter District, S. C, where he ended his Wi^.— Johnson' s Reminiscences o/the 
 American Revolution. 
 9 
 
130 ' Old St, Augustine. 
 
 ish Governor, one may not to-day read them unmoved.* 
 Finally, the fort, which in its first rude form had barely 
 sufficed for a defense against the Indian, and which in 
 its prime had served for the incarceration of the refrac- 
 tory savage leaders, became in its decay a prison-house 
 for the betrayed chiefs of that waning race. To-day, 
 they show you the casemate called "Coacoochee's cell," 
 and point to the narrow embrasure high in the wall 
 through which the Seminole made his way to liberty, f 
 Then, to the tale of the Indian warrior's captivity and 
 escape, will be added the story how, forty years after- 
 wards, the court and casemates and ramparts of the fort 
 
 * Ten years after the close of the Revolution General John Mcintosh settled on 
 the St. John's, and was making improvements on the south bank of that beautiful 
 river, when, on going to St. Augustine, as usual, he was roused from his bed, at 
 midnight, by a band of Spanish troops, accompanied by the Governor in disguise, 
 Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada, with whom he had been on friendly terms, and by 
 him was imprisoned in the fortress of St. Augustine. * * * * While he remained 
 in prison all intercourse with his distressed family and friends was interdicted, and 
 by the first opportunity he was shipped under a strong guard, as a prisoner of 
 State, to the Captain-General of Cuba, and by him incarcerated in the Moro 
 Castle of Havana. After nearly a year's imprisonment he was released, no 
 charge having been presented against Mvxa..— White s Historical Collections. 
 
 + Following is Coacoochee's account of his escape with his companion, Talmus 
 Hadjo : -" We had been growing sickly from day to day, and so resolved to make 
 our escape, or die in the attempt. We were in a room, eighteen or twenty feet 
 square. All the light adniitted was through a hole [embrasure], about eighteen 
 feet from the floor. Through this we must effect our escape, or remain and die 
 Avith sickness. A sentinel was constantly posted at the door. As we looked at it 
 from our beds, we thought it small, but believed that, could we get our heads 
 through, we should have no further nor serious difficulty. To reach the hole was 
 the first object. In order to effect this, we from time to time cut up the forage- 
 bags allowed us to sleep on, and made them into ropes. The hole I could not 
 reach when upon the shoulder of my companion; but while standing upon his 
 shoulder, I worked a knife into a crevice of the stone work, as far up as I could 
 reach, and upon this I raised myself to the aperture, when I found that, with some 
 reduction of person, I could get through. In order to reduce ourselves as much 
 zs. possible, we took medicine five days. Under the pretext of being very sick, we 
 were permitted to obtain the roots we required. For some weeks we watched the 
 
Fort Marion. 131 
 
 bustled with the throngs of the Comanches, Kiowas and 
 Cheyennes, gathered here from the West to learn in St. 
 Augustine the arts of civilization and the ways of peace. 
 
 moon, in order that the night of our attempt it should be as dark as possible. At 
 the proper time we commenced the medicine, calculatir.g upon the entifc disap- 
 pearance of the moon. The keeper of this prison, on the night determined upon 
 to make the effort, annoyed us by frequently coming into the room, and talking 
 and singing. At first we thought of tying him and putting his head in a bag ; so 
 that, should he call for assistance, he could not be heard. We first, however, tried 
 the experiment of pretending to be asleep, and when he returned to pay no regard 
 to him. This accomplished our object. He came in, and went immediately out; 
 and we could hear him snore in the immediate vicinity of the door. I then took 
 the rope, which we had secreted under our bed, and mounting upon the shoulder 
 of my comrade, raised myself upon the knife worked into the crevices of the 
 stone, and succeeded in reaching the embrasure. Here I made fast the rope, that 
 my friend might follow me. I then passed through the hole a sufficient length of 
 it to reach the ground upon the outside (about 25 feet) in the ditch. I had cal- 
 culated the distance when going for roots. With much difficulty I succeeded in 
 j;etting my head through; for the sharp stones took the skin off my breast and 
 back. Putting my head through first, I was obliged to go down head-foremost, 
 until my feet were through, fearing every moment the rope would break. At last, 
 safely on the ground, I awaited with anxiety the arrival of my comrade. I had 
 passed another rope through the hole, which, in the event of discovery, Talmus 
 Hadjo was to pull, as a signal to me upon the outside, that he was discovered, and 
 -could not come. As soon as I struck the ground I took hold of the signal, for intell- 
 igence from my friend. The night was verj' dark. Two men passed near me, 
 talking earnestly, and I could see them distinctly. Soon I heard the struggle of 
 my companion far above me. He had succeeded in getting his head through, but 
 "his body would come no farther. In the lowest tone of voice, I urged him to 
 throw cut his breath, and then try ; soon after, he came tumbling down the whole 
 distance. For a few moments I thought him dead. I dragged him to some water 
 close by, which restored him ; but his leg was so lame he was unable to walk. I 
 took him upon my shoulder to a scrub, near the town. Daylight was just break- 
 ing ; it was evident we must move rapidly. I caught a mule in the adjoining 
 field, and making a bridle out of my sash, mounted my companion, and started for 
 the St. John's River. The mule we used one day, but fearing the whites would 
 track us, we felt more secure on foot in the hammock, though moving very slow. 
 Thus we continued our journey five days, subsisting upon roots and berries, when 
 I joined my band, then assembled on the headwaters of the Tomoka River, near 
 the Atlantic coast. I gave my warriors the history of my capture and escape, 
 and assured them that they should be satisfied that my capture was no trick of my 
 own, and that I would not deceive them. When I came in to St. Augustine, to 
 see my father, I took the word of friends ; they said I should return, but they 
 cheated me. When I was taken prisoner, my band was inclined to leave the 
 country, but upon my return they said, let us all die in Florida." — Coacoockeis 
 Narration^ in Spraguis Florida War. 
 
132 Old St. Augustine, 
 
 The fort, called by the Spaniards San Juan de Pinos, 
 San Augustin, and San Marco, and by the English St. 
 Mark's, having come into the possession of the United 
 States, was named (in 1825) Fort Marion, after General 
 Francis Marion, of Revolutionary fame. Writing from 
 St. Augustine, in 1842, William Cullen Bryant criticised 
 this as "a foolish change of name." But why foolish ? 
 If Moultrie is thus honored, and Sumter the "Game 
 Cock," why not Marion the "Swamp Fox ?" Is it not 
 the veriest romance of history that the Spanish fortress 
 planted here by Menendez, the hunter of French Hugue- 
 nots, should at last yield up its saintly name, for that of 
 a hero in whose veins flowed the blood of other Huguenot 
 exiles? And is it not the final justice of time that the 
 British stronghold, within whose dungeons rebellious 
 Patriots were immured, should receive, from the nation 
 which those prisoners helped to establish, the honored 
 name of one, who endured with them the perils and 
 privations of its cause, and won with them the final 
 glorious triumph ? 
 
 Some years after the fort came into the possession of 
 the United States, a portion of the northeast terreplein 
 fell in, and disclosed a series of walled up chambers. 
 Tradition has it that in these chambers certain remains 
 were found, which w^ere supposed, by the more imagina- 
 tive, to be relics of cruel imprisonment and of the reign 
 of the Spanish Inquisition. This tale of the bones in the 
 dungeon was formerly received with the eager credence 
 that the early explorers gave to the rumors of gold mines 
 in Florida; but in later years, although the makers of 
 sensational guide books cling tenaciously to the dungeon 
 
Fort Marion, 133 
 
 relics, skeptics have arisen, who deny the truth of the 
 story. They probably are right. It is of no moment. 
 The fault lies net in the story of St. Augustine's three 
 centuries, but in its telling, if the chapters of this 
 book have not shown that the romance investing Fort 
 Marion does not center about the alleged discovery of 
 human bones in its walled-up chambers, and needs not 
 to be groped for with a torch in subterranean passages. 
 The incident even if true might well be spared. Who 
 thinks otherwise, has strangely misread the history of 
 the changing fortunes which transformed the Indian 
 council house into the fort of logs, and have converted 
 Spain's proudly equipped fortress into this massive pile 
 of crumbling masonry. 
 
 Recall the days when San Juan de Pinos was the de- 
 fense of the half -starved Spanish garrison; and when of 
 those huddled within its stockades, one and other braver 
 than the rest, ventured out beyond the lines for fish or 
 game, and falling before the blow of the lurking savage, 
 came never again. Remember those long years of misery, 
 when Indian slave, English prisoner and Spanish convict 
 labored beneath the lash of the driver, and with burden- 
 some toil and suffering unspeakable builded their very 
 lives into these coquina bastions. Replace the heavy iron 
 gratings of casemate and cell; send home the clanging 
 bolt and bar; listen to the piteous pleading of husband 
 for imprisoned wife and of wife for imprisoned husband, 
 and hear the shutting to of doors upon manacled wretches, 
 who from the gloom of that inner darkness shall never 
 emerge to look upon the sun. Light again in the dim 
 chapel the ever-burning lamp before the tabernacle; restore 
 
134 ^^^ ^i' Augustine. 
 
 to the niches their images, its cloth to the altar, the water 
 to the font; and bring back the pageantry of cere- 
 monial rites, chant of mass and murmur of confessional. 
 Remember those momentous days, when Castle San 
 Marco — standing here for the very maintenance of Spain 
 in North America — bore the brunt of well concerted 
 assault. Build anew the shattered defenses; flood the 
 moat; raise the draw-bridge let fall the portcullis; mount 
 the guard; fling bravely out from the rampart the banner 
 of Castile; and let the artillery belch angry defiance 
 of the hosts under the Red Cross. Hear the sharp wcrd 
 of command, the tread of battalions, the rattle of volley" 
 and the screech of cannon ball. Look out, with the 
 famishing women and children, over the bay and beyond 
 the camps of the besiegers on Anastatia, and scan the 
 sea in vain for the coming of a friendly fleet; after the 
 weeks of famine, hear at last, in the night, the shouts of 
 rescuers; and then, the lessening drum beat of the de- 
 parting British. Or, since you are an American, recall 
 again those later years, when the soldiers of George the 
 Fourth guarded Fort St. Marks and imprisoned Patriots 
 languished in its cells; and keeping weary vigil with 
 the white-haired Gadsden, let your patriotism kindle and 
 in the damp-walled dungeon take on a brighter glow. 
 So review all the stirring chronicle — 
 
 Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, 
 
 Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets; 
 
 Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin. 
 
 Of prisoners ransom'd, and of soldiers slain, 
 
 And all the 'currents of a heady fight — 
 
 and then iray be known some.hing of that s:ory — which. 
 
Fort Marion, 135 
 
 in truth is worthy to be known — of Fort Marion in St. 
 Augustine. 
 
 A record more eloquent still have these gray walls for 
 him who will listen to the telling — the wonderful story of 
 the changes that have taken place since the fort was 
 established here on the coast of North America, for 
 Spain's menace to the world. Its age must be reckoned 
 not by decades but by revolutions; not by centuries but 
 by changes on the map of the world, the going out of 
 ancient empires, and the blazing forth of new. It is a long 
 span from 1565 to 1885, but a longer one still from the 
 Sixteenth century to the Nineteenth — from the Massacre 
 of Jean Ribault to the tercentenary of Martin Luther — 
 from Spain, whose knights led the way in the con- 
 quest of a world, to Spain fallen behind in the onward 
 march of the nations — from the wilderness of unexplored 
 Terra Florida to the populous North America of to-day. 
 The Spanish fortress has seen one band of intruders after 
 another set foot upon the shores of the continent it was 
 appointed to defend; and powerless to withstand their 
 swelling hosts, it has seen these colonies gather strength, 
 unite for revolution, achieve independence, expand into 
 a nation of thirty-eight stites, and fifty millions strong 
 stretch out over mountain and prairie, across the conti- 
 nent, to the very shore of the Great Unknown Sea. The 
 band of twenty African slaves brought to Seloy it has 
 seen grow to 4,000,000 of bondsmen; it has seen, for their 
 emancipation, a nation p'unged into civil war; and has 
 looked on — as a world looked on — to see that nation from 
 the strife come forth again unbroken, with its bands of 
 union welded in the furnace more firmly together. 
 
136 Old St. Augustine. 
 
 Amid its garish surroundings the old fort stands to-day. 
 Its outlines are softened by the elements; its moat is 
 choked with the drifting sands; its turrets are crumb- 
 ling; its walls seamed with the ravages of decay. The 
 fig tree springs out from the rents in its curtains; tiny 
 flowers peep up from the rampart; and summer grasses 
 C-Othe the escarpment with their luxuriant growth — Time's 
 banner of peace on the outer wall. Draw-bridge and 
 portcullis long ago disappeared from the sally-port; the 
 legend on the escutcheon we may no longer read; nor 
 ascend the inclined plane to the ramparts. Gratings 
 have given place to window panes; ponderous doors 
 have been demoHshed; sunlight has been let into the 
 dungeons. Stalactites depend from the casemate ceilings; 
 parti-colored moss and mould bedeck the damp w lis; 
 owls nest in the crannies. 
 
 Crossing the wooden bridge which spans the moat and 
 stretches over the centuries, you may leave behind the St. 
 Augustine of to-day, and in court, casemate and dungeon, 
 summon once more the shadowy forms of mailed warrior, 
 manacled captive and dark-robed priest. As, lost in 
 revery, you muse on the ramparts, the pleasure fleet 
 vanishes from the bay and a phantom sail looms up in 
 the offing; and as you look, the strains of the distant 
 band on the plaza die away amid Spanish cries of alarm; 
 and you catch the melody, now faint and indistinct, then 
 shrill and clear, cf the Frenchman in his little boat, 
 "playing on his Phyph the tune of he Prince of Orange 
 his song." 
 
IN BRIEF. 
 
 1512. Spanish Expedition, Ponce de Leon. 
 
 1528. Disastrous Spanish Expedition, Pamphilo de Narvaez. 
 
 1539. Disastrous Spanish Expedition, Ferdinand de Soto. 
 
 1562. French Protestants, under Ribault, come to Florida. From 
 
 River of May sail north. Establish Charles-Fort at Port 
 Royal Inlet. 
 
 1563. Charles-Fort abandoned. 
 
 1564. Second company of French Protestants, under Laudonniere,. 
 
 come to Seloy. Establish Fort Caroline on the River of May. 
 
 1565. Ribault arrives with reinforcements for Fort Caroline. Men- 
 
 endez founds San Augustin. Fort Caroline taken. The 
 
 shipwrecked Frenchmen massacred. 
 1568. De Gourgues destroys the Spanish forts. 
 1586. Drake sacks San Augustin. 
 1597. Massacre of Franciscans. 
 1665. Davis sacks San Augustin. 
 1702. Siege by Moore, of Carolina. 
 1740. Siege by Oglethorpe, of Georgia. 
 1742. Expedition against Georgia. 
 1763. Florida ceded to Great Britain. 
 1769. Minorcans arrive at New Smyrna. 
 1775. Minorcans come to St. Augustine. 
 1783. Florida retroceded to Spain. 
 1 821. Florida ceded to United States. 
 1835. Seminole War begun. 
 1842. Seminole War ended. 
 1845. Florida admitted to the Union. 
 
 St. Augustine is the oldest town on the continent, north of Mexico, 
 The date of its establishment (1565) was 17 years earlier than the 
 Spaniards settled Santa Fe in New Mexico (15S2). 20 years earlier 
 than Raleigh's unsuccessful settlement at Roanoke Island (1585). 40 
 years earlier than the French in Nova Scotia (1605), 42 earlier than 
 the London Company at Jamestown (1607), 43 years earlier than 
 Champlain at Quebec (1608), 49 years earlier than the Dutch at 
 New Amsterdam (1614), and 55 years earlier than the Puritans at 
 Plymouth Rock (1620). 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adam?, Samuel, burned in effigy, 91. 
 Amusements in Spanish times, 105. 
 Andre, 96. 
 Apalatcy, 22. 
 
 Balearic Islands, 84. 
 
 Barracks, 119. 
 
 Bartram, William, 63. 
 
 Betsey, the brig. 91-92. 
 
 Black drink, 16, 44. 
 
 Boucaniers, 69; the name, 70; attack on San Augustin, 74. 
 
 Browne, Colonel Thomas, 89, 92, 94. 
 
 Bunker Hill, powder from St. Augustine used in battle of, 91. 
 
 Burgoigne, Nicolas, 41, 58. 
 
 Barrows, Mrs.. 128. 
 
 Carnival celebration, 105. 
 
 Carolina settled, 76. 
 
 Cathedral, 120. 
 
 Chain gangs, 75, 103. 
 
 Challeux, 31, 32-33. 
 
 Charivari, 105. 
 
 Cherokees enlist against the British, 78; against the Colonies, 91. 
 
 Chigoula, 22. 
 
 City.gate, 103, 119, 122. 
 
 Civil war, 118. 
 
 Coacoochee, takes up arms against the whites, no; meaning of 
 name, no; confined in Fort Marion and escapes„ii4; talk with 
 General Worth, 115; imprisoned, 116; his tribe to surrender, 116; 
 transported from Florida, 117; narrative of escape. 130. 
 
 Colonel John T. Sprague, the schooner, 127. 
 
 Convent lattice gate, 122. 
 
 Coquina, 126. 
 
 Cortez, 22. 
 
140 Index. 
 
 Council house of Seloy, 16; used by Spaniards for fortification, 25. 
 Creeks enlist against the British, 78; against the Colonies, 9I. 
 Cutter, 85-86. 
 Cuzco, 22. 
 
 Dade's command massacred, iio-iii. 
 
 Davis takes Granada, 73; and San Augustin, 74. 
 
 Declaration of Independence, 91. 
 
 De Gourgues, organizes expedition against the Spaniards in Florida, 
 43; takes the small forts and Fort San Mateo, 45-46; hangs 
 the Spaniards. 47; returns to France, 48; death, 50. 
 
 De Veaux, expedition against Nassau, 97-98. 
 
 Drake, takes San Domingo and Cartagena, 54; sacks San Augustin, 
 56-60; takes part in fight against Armada, 61. 
 
 Dramming out, 104. 
 
 Dungeon relics, 127, 132 
 
 Easter Eve, 106. 
 Elizabeth Bonaventura , 56, 61. 
 Emathla, captured 114. 
 English colonists, 76-82. 
 English seamen, 51. 
 
 Farragut, Admiral, 90. 
 
 Farragul, George, 90. 
 
 Fish, his grove on St Anastatia Island, 9O. 
 
 Fleur-de-Lis, 14. 107. 
 
 Florida, early Spanish expeditions in, ii; Menendez receives a com- 
 mission to subdue, 12; invaded by heretics, 13; French expedition 
 to, 14; the name embraced all of North America. 21; supposed 
 wealth of, 22; Menendez takes possession of^ 26; proves an un- 
 profitable possession, 49; Franciscans in, 62-68; condition of pro- 
 vince in Eighteenth century, 75; invasions by British, 77, 79; 
 ceded to England, 82; remains loyal at outbreak of the Revolu- 
 tion, 91; prosperous condition of at close of Revolutionary war, 
 98-99; retroceded to Spain, 99; invaded by Americans, 106; 
 ceded to the United States, 107; Indians removed from, 109-117. 
 
 Florida Rangers, 89, 94, 95. 
 
 Fort Caroline, building of, 17; name, i3; taken by Menendez, 30-33; 
 name changed, 33; (as San Mateo; taken by De Gourgues, 46. 
 
Index, 141 
 
 Fort Marion, 125-136; completed in 1756, 125; plan of, 126; legend 
 on escutcheon, 126; prisoners in, 128-129; alleged dungeon relics, 
 133; romance of its history, 133. 
 
 Fort Picola, 79. 
 
 Fort Poppa, 79. 
 
 Fort San Juan de Pinos, 60, 124. 
 
 Fort San Marco, 75, 79-80, 125. 
 
 Fort San Mateo, named, 33; taken by De Gourgues, 46; destroyed, 
 47; (rf '^'lilt and) taken by Oglethorpe, 79. 
 
 Fosse, north of the town, 103. 
 
 Fountain of Youth, 23. 
 
 Fourth of July dinner, 97. 
 
 Franciscans, missions, 62; massacre, 63-67; abandon Florida, 67. 
 
 French under Laudonniere arrive at Seloy, 14; establish Fort Caro- 
 line, 17; reinforcements under Ribault, 19; sail under Ribault 
 against Spaniards, 29; those in Fort Caroline routed or killed, 
 32: those under Ribault shipwrecked and massacred, 36-41; third 
 expedition under De Gourgues takes the Spanish forts, 43-48. 
 
 Frobisher, 53, 61. 
 
 Funerals, 105. 
 
 Gadsden, Christopher, 96. 
 
 Georgia settled, 78; wars with, see Oglethorpe. 
 
 Gibbet, 104. 
 
 Glacis, 126. 
 
 Governor's-house, 120. 
 
 Governor, the Spanish, 104. 
 
 Guard-house, 104. 
 
 Hancock, John, burned in effigy, 9I. 
 Hawkins, John, relieves the French. 18. 
 Highlanders confined in fort, 128. 
 Hispaniola, 69. 
 
 " Huguenot burying-ground," 120. 
 Huguenots, see French. 
 
 Junipero, Father, 84. 
 
 King's Road, 89, 99. 
 
 Zjx Barbarita, 102. 
 La Matanza, 49. 
 
142 Index, 
 
 X-audonniere, in command of French expedition, 14; left in Fort 
 
 Caroline, 31; escapes and makes his way to France, 32. 
 Lee, General Charles, expedition against St. Augustine, 95. 
 Le Moyne, 17, 31, 32-33- 
 Liberty Boys, 90-100, 
 Light-house, Spanish, 120. 
 Lutherans, see French. 
 
 McGirth, 92-93, 94. 
 
 Mcintosh, Rory, 94. 
 
 Mcintosh, John, 129. 
 
 Market-and-pilot-house, Spanish, I2i. 
 
 Market, 120. 
 
 Massacre of Madrid, 105. 
 
 Matanzas inlet, the name, 49. 
 
 Menendez, receives his commission, 12; voyage, 20-21; arrives at 
 River of May, 23; comes to River of Dolphins, 24; founds 
 San Augustin, 25-28; takes Fort Caroline, 30-33; massacres 
 the shipwrecked French, 34-42; death, 50. 
 
 Mendoza, the chaplain, 20, 21, 26, 29, 30, 33. 
 
 Minorca, 83-84. 
 
 Minorcan colony at New Smyrna, 84; attempted flight, 85-86; revolt 
 and removal to St. Augustine, 87-89; enlist with British forces, 
 89; remain after cession of Florida to England, 102; and after 
 cession of Florida to United States, Il8. 
 
 Montiano, defends San Marco, 80; expedition against Georgia, 81. 
 
 Monument, Spanish, 121. 
 
 Moore, expedition of, 77- 
 
 Moral, 78. 
 
 Nassau taken, 97-98. 
 
 Nea-Mathla, killed by Osceola, no. 
 
 Negroes, first brought to North America, 21, 25, 26; fugitives from 
 Carolina given liberty at San Augustin, 76; formed into a regi- 
 ment, 78; Fort Moosa garrisoned by them, 79; shipload of 
 brought to St. Augustine, 94; join the expedition against Nassau, 
 98; rules governing in second Spanish supremacy, 104; fugitives 
 among the Seminoles, 109, T13; abolition of slavery, 135. 
 
 I^ew Smyrna, 84-90. 
 
 Nunez de Balboa, 22. 
 
Index, 143 
 
 Oglethorpe, expedition of, 79-81; repulses Montiano. 82. 
 
 Okeechobee, mission bell, 63; Indian retreats, iii. 
 
 Osceola, his influence, refuses to sign treaty, and takes up arms, lio; 
 
 name, no; confinement in Fort Marion, 114; death, 115 
 Palm Sunday, 106. 
 Patriots in St. Augustine, 95-97- 
 Pel.icier, 88. 
 PiPar of stone, 17. 
 Pillory, 104. 
 Pizarro, 22. 
 Plaza, 102, 120-121. 
 Powder-house, 102, 120. 
 
 Raleigh's colony in Virginia, 60. 
 
 Rangers, 89, 94, 95. 
 
 Redoubts, 103. 
 
 Revolution, the American, 91-98. 
 
 Ribault, first voyage, 15, 17; arrives at River of May, 18; comes to 
 
 attack San Augustin. 29; shipwrecked, 36; arrives at inlet, 39; 
 
 surrenders, 40; death, 41. 
 River of Dolphins, named by Laudonniere, 15; Spaniards come to, 24; 
 
 name changed to San Augustin, 34. 
 River of May, named, 16; name changed to San Mateo, 33. 
 Romans, Bernard, 86. 
 
 Saint Anastatia Islands, (alluded to not by name, 34, 49, 56, 74), 
 75, 80, 96, 98, loi, 119. 120, 127. 
 
 Saint Augustine. San Augustin founded by Menendez on site of 
 Seloy, 25-28; the name, 27; a military post, 49; sacked by Drake, 
 56-60; taken by the Boucaniers, 74; refuge for runaways from 
 Carolina, 76; besieged by Moore, 77; besieged by Oglethorpe, 
 79-81; passes into possession of England, and name changed to 
 Saint Augustine, 82; Minorcans come to, 89; refuge for Tories, 
 91; center of military operations against Colonies, 95; threatened 
 by Colonial troops, 95; Patriots in, 95-97; sends expedition 
 against Nassau, 97; evacuated .by the British, 99-100; condition 
 under second Spanish rule, 102-106; threatened by American 
 invaders, ro6; comes into possessioaof the United States, 107; 
 .alarm of citizens at outbreak of Seminole war, 108; change since 
 ihe civil Avar, II9-124. 
 
1 44 Index, 
 
 St. Bartholomew's Day, 87. 
 
 St. Simon's Island, 81. 
 
 San Diego, 79. 
 
 San Falayo, 21, 23-24, 27; sails for Spain, 29, 
 
 Satourioua, 16, 17. 44-46, 50. 
 
 Scopholites, 94. 
 
 Sea-Kings, hatred of Spaniards, 51-52; attack on San Augustin, s6» 
 
 Sea-wall, 119, 120. 
 
 Seloy, 14; description of, 16; site of San Augustin, 25. 
 
 Seminoles, Spanish treatment of, 102, 109; conflicts with Americaa 
 settlers, 109; beginning of the war with, 109; meaning of name, 
 no; methods of warfare, III; their hopeless struggle, 113; sur- 
 render and removal, 116-117. 
 
 "Slave-pen," the so-called, 120. 
 
 Slavery introduced into North America, 25. 
 
 Soils, his account of Ribault's death, 41. 
 
 Spain, lays claim to North America, ii; fails to conquer Florida, 11- 
 12; power of in Sixteenth century, 26, 52; jealousy of other 
 nations, 49; treatment of intruders, 51; strengthens the fortifica- 
 tions in Florida, 76; cedes Florida to England, 82; acquires pos- 
 session again, 102; cedes Florida to the United States, 107. 
 
 Spanish Armada, 52, 61. 
 
 Stag of Seloy, 16, 25, 26. 
 
 Stocks, 104. 
 
 Sullivan's Island, the name, 76. 
 
 Sun-dial, 102. 
 
 Tar and feathers, 92. 
 
 Terra Florida, see Florida. 
 
 Tolomato, massacre of Franciscans at, 63, 
 
 Tories, fly to St. Augustine, 92. 
 
 Tonyn, Governor, 94. 
 
 Toreyn, 94. 
 
 Treasure chest in the fort, 102. 
 
 Treasurer's house, Spanish, 122. 
 
 Treasury str<^et, the name, 122. « 
 
 Trinity 23-24; appears off San Augustin, 29. 
 
 Turnbull, 84, 87. 96. 
 
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