America Volume II Part 3

c.u.mBERLAND SOUND.

The memory of the Duke of c.u.mberland, son of King George II., the victor of the battle of Culloden, in Scotland, where he defeated the Pretender in 1746, is preserved in America in the name of c.u.mberland Sound, the finest harbor on the Southern Atlantic Coast. St. Mary's River, coming out of Okifenokee swamp to make the northern boundary of Florida, flows an erratic course, boxing the compa.s.s in every direction until it finally heads eastward and debouches in c.u.mberland Sound, among a group of islands forming a large landlocked harbor.

This river and sound, the boundary between Georgia and Florida, were, prior to the Revolution, a disputed frontier between the English and the Spaniards. To the northward of the entrance from the sea is c.u.mberland Island in Georgia, then comes Jekyll Island, with its magnificent club-house and elaborate cottages, and then St. Simon's Bay, having as its chief port the busy lumber-s.h.i.+pping town of Brunswick. To the southward of the c.u.mberland entrance is Amelia Island in Florida. The sound behind Amelia and c.u.mberland Islands is a magnificent roadstead, capable of floating at safe anchorage an enormous fleet. Amelia Island is a long, narrow sand bank with much foliage upon it, stretching about fourteen miles down the Florida coast to Na.s.sau Sound. On the sea front of this island is one of the finest sand beaches on the Atlantic. Behind it is the arm of the sea known as Amelia River, and the port of Fernandina, thirty-six miles northeast of Jacksonville, having at the point of the island, guarding the entrance to its harbor, old Fort Clinch, a superannuated brick-work battery, formerly of great importance, but now of little use, though it was somewhat strengthened to meet the exigencies of the recent Spanish War.

The French Huguenots first came along here and settled, as they did at the St. John's River entrance, and they called the island Garde. They found here a powerful Indian tribe, whose chief, the "Cacique of Garde," their historian described as "handsome and n.o.ble," and his queen as "beautiful and modest," and the same authority says they had "five handsome daughters." The French were engaged in desultory quarrels with the Spaniards south of them at St. Augustine, and the young gallants of the colony, in the intervals of the warfare, alternately courted and jilted the Indian maidens, the result being a savage attack and ma.s.sacre; and finally, between Indian and Spanish enmity, the settlement disappeared. But the English, made of sterner stuff, ultimately came along, settling Georgia, and giving British names to the islands, the rivers and the Sound, which they still retain. For a long time this was disputed territory between the English and the Spaniards, the latter claiming everything northward to Carolina. General Oglethorpe marched through here to attack St.

Augustine, and in 1763 the British held Amelia Island, extending the little fort to almost its present proportions, and laying out a town behind it, while to the southward the Countess of Egmont established an indigo plantation, which flourished for a brief period. Spain ultimately got the island, and it came into American possession with Florida in 1821. A little town with sandy streets, a pretty park, much foliage, delicious air bringing the balsam of the pines and the tonic of the sea, and hotels accommodating the influx of winter visitors, make up the Fernandina of to-day. Its beach on the ocean front, more than a mile away, is one of the finest in existence, hard as a floor, level and broad, stretching as far as eye can see, and having a grand surf booming upon it.

On c.u.mberland Island is the estate of Dungeness. General Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island, one of Was.h.i.+ngton's most trusted officers, was the commander of the Revolutionary armies in the South in 1780-81 which drove the British out of that section, gained the victory of Cowpens in South Carolina, and compelled the withdrawal of Cornwallis to Yorktown, which ended in his surrender. After the close of the war, in grat.i.tude for his great services, the people of Georgia presented him with this estate of about ten thousand acres. He made it his home for a time, but it afterwards pa.s.sed away from his family, and being neglected, the old coquina stone mansion was burnt. The house has since been reconstructed, and a picturesque avenue of moss-hung live oaks a mile long stretches over the island near it to the sea. In a little cemetery on the estate are the graves of General Greene's widow and daughter. Here is also the grave of "Light Horse Harry" of the Revolution (the father of General Robert E. Lee), who died abroad in 1818. He had visited and loved Dungeness, and requested to be buried there. Oaks and palmettos embower these modest graves, which are carefully preserved.

ANCIENT ST. AUGUSTINE.

St. Augustine, thirty-six miles southeast of Jacksonville, on the seacoast, is the oldest city in the United States, founded by Menendez in 1565, and existing to this day with the characteristics of a Spanish town of the sixteenth century, which have been also reproduced in the architecture of most of the newer buildings. A small inlet from the ocean, about fifteen miles south of the mouth of St. John's River, stretches its arms north and south, the latter arm, called Matanzas River, seeking the sea again about eighteen miles below. It thus forms Anastasia Island, sheltering the harbor like a breakwater, and behind it the city is built, being protected by a sea-wall nearly a mile long, built of coquina or sh.e.l.l-stone. Another arm of the sea, called San Sebastian River, is a short distance inland, so that the town site is really upon a peninsula. About five thousand people reside permanently in St. Augustine, a few of Spanish descent, and more of them the offspring of a colony of Minorcans who came in 1769, but in winter the Northern visitors to the palatial hotels swell the population to over ten thousand. The town is built on a level sandy plain, and the older streets are narrow, being only a few feet wide and without sidewalks. The projecting balconies of some of the ancient houses almost touch those opposite. The old streets are paved with coquina and the old houses are built of it, this curious sh.e.l.l-limestone, quarried on Anastasia Island, hardening upon exposure to the air. A few streets running north and south, crossed by others at right angles, and a broader front street bordered by the sea-wall which makes a fine promenade, compose the town. This sea-wall of coquina is capped with granite, and was built after the American occupation of the city. At its northern end is Fort Marion and at the southern end St. Francis Barracks, the United States military post, so named because it occupies the site of the old Convent of St.

Francis, having some of its coquina walls incorporated in the present structure. The harbor in front, which in past centuries sheltered so many Spanish fleets and those of Spanish enemies as well, is now chiefly devoted to yachting.

When Menendez and his Spaniards first landed they built a wooden fort commanding the harbor entrance, surrounded by pine trees, which they named San Juan de Pinos. This was afterwards replaced by Fort San Marco, constructed of coquina, which was nearly a hundred years building, and was finished in 1756. Upon the transfer of Florida to the United States this became Fort Marion. It is a well-preserved specimen of the military architecture of the eighteenth century, built on Vauban's system, covering about four acres, with bastions at the corners, each protected by a watch-tower, and is surrounded by a moat, the walls being twenty-one feet high. The fort is in reasonably good preservation, and is said to have been constructed mainly by the labor of Indians. It took so long to build and cost so much under the wasteful Spanish system that one sovereign wrote that it had almost cost its weight in gold; yet it was regarded then as supremely important to be finished, being the key to the Spanish possession of Florida. Over the sally-port at the drawbridge are carved the Spanish arms and an inscription recording the completion of the fort in 1756, when Ferdinand VI. was King of Spain and Don Hereda Governor of Florida. It mounted one hundred of the small guns of those days, and the interior is a square parade ground, surrounded by large casemates.

Upon each side of the casemate opposite the sally-port is a niche for holy water, and at the farther end the Chapel. Dungeons and subterranean pa.s.sages abound, of which ghostly tales are told. This fort is the most interesting relic of the ancient city, a picturesque place, with charms even in its dilapidation.

There are other quaint structures in this curious old town. A gray gateway about ten feet wide, flanked by tall square towers, marks the northern entrance to the city, the ditch from the fort pa.s.sing in front of it. In one of the streets is the palace of the Spanish Governors, since changed into a post-office. The official centre of the city is a public square, the Plaza de la Const.i.tucion, having a monument commemorating the Spanish Liberal Const.i.tution of 1812, and also a Confederate Soldiers' Monument. This square fronts on the sea-wall, and alongside it and stretching westward is the Alameda, known as King Street, leading to the group of grand hotels recently constructed in Spanish and Moorish style, which have made modern St.

Augustine so famous. These are the Ponce de Leon, the Alcazar and the Cordova, with the Casino, adjoined by s.p.a.cious and beautiful gardens.

These buildings reproduce all types of the Hispano-Moorish architecture, with many suggestions from the Alhambra. The Ponce de Leon, the largest, is three hundred and eighty by five hundred and twenty feet, enclosing an open court, and its towers rise above the red-tiled roofs to a height of one hundred and sixty-five feet, the adornments in colors being very effective. To the southward of the town, adjoining the barracks, is the military cemetery, where a monument and three white pyramids tell the horrid story of the Dade ma.s.sacre during the Seminole War. Major Dade, a gallant officer, and one hundred and seven men, were ambushed and ma.s.sacred by eight hundred Indians in December, 1835, and their remains afterwards brought here and interred under the pyramids. Opposite the barracks is what is claimed to be the oldest house in the United States, occupied by Franciscan monks from 1565 to 1580, and afterwards a dwelling. It has been restored, and contains a collection of historical relics.

St. Augustine has had a chequered history. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth's naval hero, Sir Francis Drake, sailing all over the world to fight Spaniards, attacked and plundered the town and burnt the greater part of it. Then for nearly a century the Indians, pirates, French, English and neighboring Georgians and Carolinians made matters lively for the harried inhabitants. In 1763 the British came into possession, but they ceded it back to Spain twenty years later, the town then containing about three hundred householders and nine hundred negroes.

It became American in 1821, and was an important military post during the subsequent Seminole War, which continued several years. It was early captured by the Union forces during the Civil War, and was a valuable stronghold for them. This curious old town has many traditions that tell of war and ma.s.sacre and the horrible cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, the remains of cages in which prisoners were starved to death being shown in the fort. Its best modern story, however, is told of the escape of Coa-coo-chee, the Seminole chief, whose adventurous spirit and savage nature gained him the name of the "Wild Cat." The ending of the Seminole War was the signing of a treaty by the older chiefs agreeing to remove west of the Mississippi.

Coa-coo-chee, with other younger chiefs, opposed this and renewed the conflict. He was ultimately captured and taken to Fort Marion.

Feigning sickness, he was removed into a casemate giving him air, there being an aperture two feet high by nine inches wide in the wall about thirteen feet above the floor, and under it a platform five feet high. Here, while still feigning illness, he became attenuated by voluntary abstinence from food, and finally one night squeezed himself through the aperture and dropped to the bottom of the moat, which was dry. Eluding all the guards, he escaped and rejoined his people. The flight caused a great sensation, and there was hot pursuit. After some time he was recaptured, and being taken before General Worth, was used to compel the remnant of the tribe to remove to the West. Worth told him if his people were not at Tampa in twenty days he would be killed, and he was ordered to notify them by Indian runners. He hesitated, but afterwards yielded, and the runners were given twenty twigs, one to be broken each day, so they might know when the last one was broken his life would pay the penalty. In seventeen days the task was accomplished. The tribe came to Tampa, and the captive was released, accompanying his warriors to the far West. This ended most of the Indian troubles in Florida, but some descendants of the Seminoles still exist in the remote fastnesses of the everglades.

THE FLORIDA EAST COAST.

All along the Atlantic sh.o.r.e of Florida south of St. Augustine are popular winter resorts, their broad and attractive beaches, fine climate and prolific tropical vegetation being among the charms that bring visitors. Ormond is between the ocean front and the pleasant Halifax River, its picturesque tributary, the Tomoka, being a favorite resort for picnic parties. A few miles south on the Halifax River is Daytona, known as the "Fountain City," and having its suburb, "the City Beautiful," on the opposite bank. New Smyrna, settled by Minorcan indigo planters in the eighteenth century, is on the northern arm of Indian River. Here are found some of the ancient Indian sh.e.l.l mounds that are frequent in Florida, and also the orange groves that make this region famous. Inland about thirty miles are a group of pretty lakes, and in the pines at Lake Helen is located the "Southern Ca.s.sadaga," or Spiritualists' a.s.sembly. For more than a hundred and fifty miles the noted Indian River stretches down the coast of Florida. It is a long and narrow lagoon, parallel with the ocean, and is part of the series of lagoons found on the eastern coast almost continuously for more than three hundred miles from St. Augustine south to Biscayne Bay, and varying in width from about fifty yards to six or more miles. They are shallow waters, rarely over twelve feet deep, and are entered by very shallow inlets from the sea. The Indian River sh.o.r.es, stretching down to Jupiter Inlet, are lined with luxuriant vegetation, and the water is at times highly phosph.o.r.escent.

Upon the western sh.o.r.e are most of the celebrated Indian River orange groves whose product is so highly prized. At t.i.tusville, the head of navigation, where there are about a thousand people, the river is about, at its widest part, six miles. Twenty miles below, at Rockledge, it narrows to about a mile in width, was.h.i.+ng against the perpendicular sides of a continuous enclosing ledge of coquina rock, with pleasant overhanging trees. Here comes in, around an island, its eastern arm, the Banana River, and to the many orange groves are added plantations of the luscious pineapple. Various limpid streams flow out from the everglade region at the westward, and Fort Pierce is the trading station for that district, to which the remnant of the Seminoles come to exchange alligator hides, bird plumage and snake skins for various supplies, not forgetting "fire-water." Below this is the wide estuary of St. Lucie River and the Jupiter River, with the lighthouse on the ocean's edge at Jupiter Inlet, the mouth of Indian River.

Seventeen miles below this Inlet is Palm Beach, a noted resort, situated upon the narrow strip of land between the long and narrow lagoon of Lake Worth and the Atlantic Ocean. Here are the vast Hotel Royal Poinciana and the Palm Beach Inn, with their cocoanut groves, which also fringe for miles the pleasant sh.o.r.es of Lake Worth.

Prolific vegetation and every charm that can add to this American Riviera bring a crowded winter population. The Poinciana is a tree bearing gorgeous flowers, and the two magnificent hotels, surrounded by an extensive tropical paradise, are connected by a wide avenue of palms a half-mile long, one house facing the lake and the other the ocean. There is not a horse in the settlement, and only one mule, whose duty is to haul a light summer car between the houses. The vehicles of Palm Beach are said to be confined to "bicycles, wheel-chairs and jinrickshas." Off to the westward the distant horizon is bounded by the mysterious region of the everglades. Far down the coast the railway terminates at Miami, the southernmost railway station in the United States, a little town on Miami River, where it enters the broad expanse of Biscayne Bay, which is separated from the Atlantic by the first of the long chain of Florida keys. Here are many fruit and vegetable plantations, and the town, which is a railway terminal and steams.h.i.+p port for lines to Na.s.sau, Key West and Havana, is growing. Na.s.sau is but one hundred and seventy-five miles distant in the Bahamas, off the Southern Florida coast, and has become a favorite American winter tourist resort.

ASCENDING ST. JOHN'S RIVER.

The St. John's is the great river of Florida, rising in the region of lakes, swamps and savannahs in the lower peninsula, and flowing northward four hundred miles to Jacksonville, then turning eastward to the ocean. It comes through a low and level region, with mostly a sluggish current; is bordered by dense foliage, and in its northern portion is a series of lagoons varying in width from one to six miles.

The river is navigable fully two hundred miles above Jacksonville. The earlier portion of the journey is monotonous, the sh.o.r.es being distant and the landings made at long piers jutting out over the shallows from the villages and plantations. At Mandarin is the orange grove which was formerly the winter home of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Magnolia amid the pines is a resort for consumptives; and nearby is Green Cove Springs, having a large sulphur spring of medicinal virtue. In all directions stretch the pine forests; and the river water, while clear and sparkling in the sunlight, is colored a dark amber from the swamps whence it comes. The original Indian name of this river was We-la-ka, or a "chain of lakes," the literal meaning, in the figurative idea of the savage, being "the water has its own way." It broadens into various bays, and at one of these, about seventy-five miles south of Jacksonville, is the chief town of the upper river, Palatka, having about thirty-five hundred inhabitants and a much greater winter population. It is largely a Yankee town, s.h.i.+pping oranges and early vegetables to the North; and across the river, just above, is one of the leading orange plantations of Florida--Colonel Hart's, a Vermonter who came here dying of consumption, but lived to become, in his time, the leading fruit-grower of the State. Above Palatka the river is narrower, excepting where it may broaden into a lake; the foliage is greener, the sh.o.r.es more swampy, the wild-fowl more frequent, and the cypress tree more general. The young "cypress knees" can be seen starting up along the swampy edge of the sh.o.r.e, looking like so many champagne bottles set to cool in the water. The river also becomes quite crooked, and here is an ancient Spanish and Indian settlement, well named Welaka, opposite which flows in the weird Ocklawaha River, the haunt of the alligator and renowned as the crookedest stream on the continent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _On the Ocklawaha_]

GOING DOWN THE OCKLAWAHA.

The Ocklawaha, the "dark, crooked water," comes from the south, by tortuous windings, through various lakes and swamps, and then turns east and southeast to flow into St. John's River, after a course of over three hundred miles. It rises in Lake Apopka, down the Peninsula, elevated about a hundred feet above the sea, the second largest of the Florida Lakes, and covering one hundred and fifty square miles. This lake has wooded highlands to the westward, dignified by the t.i.tle of Apopka Mountains, which rise probably one hundred and twenty feet above its surface. To the northward is a group of lakes--Griffin, Yale, Eustis, Dora, Harris and others--having clear amber waters and low sh.o.r.es, which are all united by the Ocklawaha, the stream finally flowing northward out of Lake Griffin. This is a region of extensive settlement, mainly by Northern people. The mouth of the Ocklawaha is sixty-five miles from Lake Eustis in a straight line, but the river goes two hundred and thirty miles to get there. To the northward of this lake district is the thriving town of Ocala, with five thousand people, in a region of good agriculture and having large phosphate beds, the settlement having been originally started as a military post during the Seminole War. About five miles east of Ocala is the famous Silver Spring, which is believed to have been the "fountain of perpetual youth," for which Juan Ponce de Leon vainly searched. It is the largest and most beautiful of the many Florida springs, having wonderfully clear waters, and covers about three acres. The waters can be plainly seen pouring upwards through fissures in the rocky bottom, like an inverted Niagara, eighty feet beneath the surface. It has an enormous outflow, and a swift brook runs from it, a hundred feet wide, for some eight miles to the Ocklawaha.

This strange stream is hardly a river in the ordinary sense, having fixed banks and a well-defined channel, but is rather a tortuous but navigable pa.s.sage through a succession of lagoons and cypress swamps.

Above the Silver Spring outlet, only the smallest boats of light draft can get through the crooked channel. This outlet is thirty miles in a direct line from the mouth of the river at the St. John's, but the Ocklawaha goes one hundred and nine miles thither. The swampy border of the stream is rarely more than a mile broad, and beyond it are the higher pine lands. Through this curious channel, amid the thick cypress forests and dense jungle of undergrowth, the wayward and crooked river meanders. The swampy bottom in which it has its course is so low-lying as to be undrainable and cannot be improved, so that it will probably always remain as now, a refuge for the sub-tropical animals, birds, reptiles and insects of Florida, which abound in its inmost recesses. Here flourishes the alligator, coming out to sun himself at mid-day on the logs and warm gra.s.sy lagoons at the edge of the stream, in just the kinds of places one would expect to find him.

Yet the alligator is said to be a coward, rarely attacking, unless his retreat to water in which to hide himself is cut off. He thus becomes more a curiosity than a foe. These reptiles are hatched from eggs which the female deposits during the spring, in large numbers, in muddy places, where she digs out a s.p.a.cious cavity, fills it with several hundred eggs, and covering them thickly with mud, leaves nature to do the rest. After a long incubation the little fellows come out and make a bee-line for the nearest water. The big alligators of the neighborhood have many breakfasts on the newly-born little ones, but some manage to grow up, after several years, to maturity, and exhibit themselves along this remarkable river.

It is almost impossible to conceive of the concentrated crookedness of the Ocklawaha and the difficulties of pa.s.sage. It is navigated by stout and narrow flat-bottomed boats of light draft, constructed so as to quickly turn sharp corners, b.u.mp the sh.o.r.es and run on logs without injury. The river turns constantly at short intervals and doubles upon itself in almost every mile, while the huge cypress trees often compress the water way so that a wider boat could not get through.

There are many beautiful views in its course displaying the n.o.ble ranks of cypress trees rising as the stream bends along its bordering edge of swamps. Occasionally a comparatively straight river reach opens like the aisle of a grand building with the moss-hung cypress columns in long and sombre rows on either hand. At rare intervals fast land comes down to the stream bank, where there is some cultivation attempted for oranges and vegetables. Terrapin, turtles and water-fowl abound. When the pa.s.senger boat, after b.u.mping and swinging around the corners, much like a ponderous teetotum, halts for a moment at a landing in this swampy fastness, half-clad negroes usually appear, offering for sale partly-grown baby alligators, which are the prolific crop of the district. Various "Turkey bends," "h.e.l.l's half-acres,"

"Log Jams," "Bone Yards" and "Double S Bends" are pa.s.sed, and at one place is the "Cypress Gate," where three large trees are in the way, and by chopping off parts of their roots, a pa.s.sage about twenty feet wide had been secured to let the boats through. There are said to be two thousand bends in one hundred miles of this stream, and many of them are like corrugated circles, by which the narrow water way, in a mile or two of its course, manages to twist back to within a few feet of where it started. At night, to aid the navigation, the lurid glare of huge pine-knot torches, fitfully blazing, gives the scene a weird and unnatural aspect. The monotonous sameness of cypress trunks, sombre moss and twisting stream for many hours finally becomes very tiresome, but it is nevertheless a most remarkable journey of the strangest character possible in this country to sail down the Ocklawaha.

LOWER FLORIDA AND THE SEMINOLES.

South of the mouth of the Ocklawaha the St. John's River broadens into Lake George, the largest of its many lakes, a pretty sheet of water six to nine miles wide and twelve miles long. Volusia, the site of an ancient Spanish mission, is at the head of this lake, and the discharge from the swift but narrow stream above has made sand bars, so that jetties are constructed to deepen the channel. For a long distance the upper river is narrow and tortuous, with numerous islands and swamps, the dark coffee-colored water disclosing its origin; but the Blue Spring in one place is unique, sending out an ample and rich blue current to mix with the amber. Then Lake Monroe is reached, ten miles long and five miles wide, the head of navigation, by the regular lines of steamers, one hundred and seventy miles above Jacksonville.

Here are two flouris.h.i.+ng towns, Enterprise on the northern sh.o.r.e and Sanford on the southern, both popular winter resorts, and the latter having two thousand people. The St. John's extends above Lake Monroe, a crooked, narrow, shallow stream, two hundred and fourteen miles farther southeastward to its source. The region through which it there pa.s.ses is mostly a prairie with herds of cattle and much game, and is only spa.r.s.ely settled. The upper river approaches the seacoast, being in one place but three miles from the lagoons bordering the Atlantic.

To the southward of Lake Monroe are the winter resorts of Winter Park and Orlando, the latter a town of three thousand population. There are numerous lakes in this district, and then leaving the St. John's valley and crossing the watershed southward through the pine forests, the Okeechobee waters are reached, which flow down to that lake. This region was the home of a part of the Seminole Indians, and Tohopekaliga was their chief, whom they revered so highly that they named their largest lake in his honor. The Kissimmee River flows southward through this lake, and then traverses a succession of lakes and swamps to Lake Okeechobee, about two hundred miles southward by the water-line. Kissimmee City is on Lake Tohopekaliga, and extensive drainage operations have been conducted here and to the southward, reclaiming a large extent of valuable lands, and lowering the water-level in all these lakes and attendant swamps.

From Lake Tohopekaliga through the tortuous water route to Lake Okeechobee, and thence by the Caloosahatchie westward to the Gulf of Mexico, is a winding channel of four hundred and sixty miles, though in a direct line the distance is but one hundred and fifty miles.

Okeechobee, the word meaning the "large water," covers about twelve hundred and fifty square miles, and almost all about it are the everglades or "gra.s.s water," the sh.o.r.es being generally a swampy jungle. This district for many miles is a ma.s.s of waving sedge gra.s.s eight to ten feet high above the water, and inaccessible excepting through narrow, winding and generally hidden channels. In one locality a few tall lone pines stand like sentinels upon Arpeika Island, formerly the home of the bravest and most dreaded of the Seminoles, and still occupied by some of their descendants. The name of the Seminole means the "separatist" or "runaway" Indians, they having centuries ago separated from the Creeks in Georgia and gone southward into Florida. From the days of De Soto to the time of their deportation in the nineteenth century the Spanish, British, French and Americans made war with these Seminole Indians. Gradually they were pressed southward through Florida. Their final refuge was the green islands and hummocks of the everglades, and they then clung to their last homes with the tenacity of despair. The greater part of this region is an unexplored mystery; the deep silence that can be actually felt, everywhere pervades; and once lost within the labyrinth, the adventurer is doomed unless rescued. Only the Indians knew its concealed and devious paths. On Arpeika Island the Cacique of the Caribs is said to have ruled centuries ago, until forced south out of Florida by the Seminoles. It was at times a refuge for the buccaneer with his plunder and a shrine for the missionary martyr who planted the Cross and was murdered beside it. This island was the last retreat of the Seminoles in the desultory war from 1835 to 1843, when they defied the Government, which, during eight years, spent $50,000,000 upon expeditions sent against them. Then the attempt to remove all of them was abandoned, and the remnant have since rested in peace, living by hunting and a little trading with the coast settlements. The names of the noted chiefs of this great race--Osceola, Tallaha.s.see, Tohopekaliga, Coa-coo-chee and others--are preserved in the lakes, streams and towns of Florida. Most of the deported tribe were sent to the Indian Territory. There may be three or four hundred of them still in the everglades, peaceful, it is true, yet haughty and suspicious, and st.u.r.dily rejecting all efforts to educate or civilize them. They celebrate their great feast, the "Green Corn Dance," in late June; and they have unwavering faith in the belief that the time will yet come when all their prized everglade land will be theirs again, and the glory of the past redeemed, if not in this world, then in the next one, beyond the "Big Sleep."

WESTERN FLORIDA.

Westward from Jacksonville, a railway runs through the pine forests until it reaches the rus.h.i.+ng Suwanee River, draining the Okifenokee swamp out to the Gulf, just north of Cedar Key. This stream is best known from the minstrel song, long so popular, of the _Old Folks at Home_. Beyond it the land rises into the rolling country of Middle Florida, the undulating surface sometimes reaching four hundred feet elevation, and presenting fertile soil and pleasant scenery, with a less tropical vegetation than the Peninsula of Florida. Here is Tallaha.s.see, the capital of the State, one hundred and sixty-five miles from Jacksonville, a beautiful town of four thousand population, almost embedded in flowering plants, shrubbery and evergreens, and familiarly known from these beauties as the "Floral City," the gardens being especially attractive in the season of roses. The Capitol and Court-house and West Florida Seminary, set on a hill, are the chief public buildings. In the suburbs, at Monticello, lived Prince Achille Murat, a son of the King of Naples, who died in 1847, and his grave is in the Episcopal Cemetery. There are several lakes near the town, one of them the curious Lake Miccosukie, which contracts into a creek, finally disappearing underground. The noted Wakulla Spring, an immense limestone basin of great depth and volume of water, with wonderful transparency, is fifteen miles southward.

Some distance to the westward the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers join to form the Appalachicola River, flowing down to the Gulf at Appalachicola, a somewhat decadent port from loss of trade, its exports being princ.i.p.ally lumber and cotton. The shallowness of most of these Gulf harbors, which readily silt up, destroys their usefulness as ports for deep-draft s.h.i.+pping. The route farther westward skirts the Gulf Coast, crosses Escambia Bay and reaches Pensacola, on its s.p.a.cious harbor, ten miles within the Gulf. This is the chief Western Florida port, with fifteen thousand people, having a Navy Yard and much trade in lumber, cotton, coal and grain, a large elevator for the latter being erected in 1898. The Spaniards made this a frontier post in 1696, and the remains of their forts, San Miguel and San Bernardo, can be seen behind the town, while near the outer edge of the harbor is the old-time Spanish defensive battery, Fort San Carlos de Barrancos. The harbor entrance is now defended by Fort Pickens and Fort McRae. Pensacola Bay was the scene of one of the first spirited naval combats of the Civil War, when the Union forces early in 1862 recaptured the Navy Yard and defenses. The name of Pensacola was originally given by the Choctaws to the bearded Europeans who first settled there, and signifies the "hair people."

THE FLORIDA GULF COAST.

The coast of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico has various attractive places, reached by a convenient railway system. h.o.m.osa.s.sa is a popular resort about fifty miles southwestward from Ocala. A short distance in the interior is the locality where the Seminoles surprised and ma.s.sacred Major Dade and his men in December, 1835, only three soldiers escaping alive to tell the horrid tale. The operations against these Indians were then mainly conducted from the military post of Tampa, and thither were taken for deportation the portions of the tribe that were afterwards captured, or who surrendered under the treaty. When Ferdinand de Soto entered this magnificent harbor on his voyage of discovery and gold hunting, he called it Espiritu Sancto Bay. It is from six to fifteen miles wide, and stretches nearly forty miles into the land, being dotted with islands, its waters swarming with sea-fowl, turtles and fish, deer abounding in the interior and on some of the islands, and there being abundant anchorage for the largest vessels. This is the great Florida harbor and the chief winter resort on the western coast. It was the main port of rendezvous and embarkation for the American forces in the Spanish War of 1898. The head of the harbor divides into Old Tampa and Hillsborough Bays, and on the latter and at the mouth of Hillsborough River is the city, numbering about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The great hotels are surrounded by groves with orange and lemon trees abounding, and everything is invoked that can add to the tourist attractions. The special industry of the resident population is cigar-making. Port Tampa is out upon the Peninsula between the two bays, several miles below the city, and a long railway trestle leads from the sh.o.r.e for a mile to deep water. Upon the outer end of this long wharf is Tampa Inn, built on a ma.s.s of piles, much like some of the constructions in Venice. The guests can almost catch fish out of the bedroom windows, and while eating breakfast can watch the pelican go fis.h.i.+ng in the neighboring waters, for this queer-looking bird, with the duck and gull, is everywhere seen in these attractive regions. An outer line of keys defends Tampa harbor from the storms of the Gulf. There are many popular resorts on the islands and sh.o.r.es of Tampa Bay, and regular lines of steamers are run to the West India ports, Mobile and New Orleans. All the surroundings are attractive, and a pleased visitor writes of the place: "Conditions hereabouts exhilarate the men; a perpetual sun and ocean breeze are balm to the invalid and an inspiration to a robust health. The landscape affords uncommon diversion, and the sea its royal sport with rod and gaff."

Farther down the coast is Charlotte Harbor, also deeply indented and sheltered from the sea by various outlying islands. It is eight to ten miles long and extends twenty-five miles into the land, having valuable oyster-beds and fisheries, and its port is Punta Gorda. Below this is the projecting sh.o.r.e of Punta Ra.s.sa, where the outlet of Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchie River, flows to the sea, having the military post of Fort Myers, another popular resort, a short distance inland, upon its bank. The Gulf Coast now trends to the southeast, with various bays, in one of which, with Cape Romano as the guarding headland, is the archipelago of "the ten thousand islands," while below is Cape Sable, the southwestern extremity of Florida. To the southward, distant from the sh.o.r.e, are the long line of Florida Keys, the name coming from the Spanish word _cayo_, an island. This remarkable coral formation marks the northern limit of the Gulf Stream, where it flows swiftly out to round the extremity of the Peninsula and begin its northern course through the Atlantic Ocean.

Although well lighted and charted, the Straits of Florida along these reefs are dangerous to navigate and need special pilots. Nowhere rising more than eight to twelve feet above the sea, the Keys thus low-lying are luxuriantly covered with tropical vegetation. From the Dry Tortugas at the west, around to Sand's Key at the entrance to Biscayne Bay, off the Atlantic Coast, about two hundred miles, is a continuous reef of coral, upon the whole extent of which the little builder is still industriously working. The reef is occasionally broken by channels of varying depth, and within the outer line are many habitable islands. The whole s.p.a.ce inside this reef is slowly filling up, just as all the Keys are also slowly growing through accretions from floating substances becoming entangled in the myriad roots of the mangroves. The present Florida Reef is a good example of the way in which a large part of the Peninsula was formed. No less than seven old coral reefs have been found to exist south of Lake Okeechobee, and the present one at the very edge of the deep water of the Gulf Stream is probably the last that can be formed, as the little coral-builder cannot live at a greater depth than sixty feet. The Gulf Stream current is so swift and deep along the outer reef that there is no longer a foundation on which to build.

The Gulf Stream is the best known of all the great ocean currents. The northeast and southeast trade-winds, constantly blowing, drive a great ma.s.s of water from the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea, and westward through the pa.s.sages between the Windward Islands, which is contracted by the converging sh.o.r.es of the Yucatan Peninsula and the Island of Cuba, so that it pours between them into the Gulf of Mexico, raising its surface considerably above the level of the Atlantic.

These currents then move towards the Florida Peninsula, and pa.s.s around the Florida Reef and out into the Atlantic. It is estimated by the Coast Survey that the hourly flow of the Gulf Stream past the reef is nearly ninety thousand million tons of water, the speed at the surface of the axis of the stream being over three and one-half miles an hour. To conceive what the immensity of this flow means, it is stated that if a single hour's flow of water were evaporated, the salt thus produced would require to carry it one hundred times the number of ocean-going vessels now afloat. The Gulf Stream water is of high temperature, great clearness and a deep blue color; and when it meets the greener waters of the Atlantic to the northward, the line of distinction is often very well defined. At the exit to the Atlantic below Jupiter Inlet the stream is forty-eight miles wide to Little Bahama Bank, and its depth over four hundred fathoms.

There are numerous harbors of refuge among the Florida Keys, and that at Key West is the best. This is a coral island seven miles long and one to two miles broad, but nowhere elevated more than eleven feet above the sea. Its name, by a free translation, comes from the original Spanish name of _Cayo Hueso_, or the Bone Island, given because the early mariners found human bones upon it. Here are twenty thousand people, mostly Cubans and settlers from the Bahamas, the chief industry being cigar-making, while catching fish and turtles and gathering sponges also give much employment. There are no springs on the island, and the inhabitants are dependent on rain or distillation for water. The air is pure and the climate healthy, the trees and shrubbery, with the residences embowered in perennial flowers, giving the city a picturesque appearance. Key West has a good harbor, and as it commands the gateway to and from the Gulf near the western extremity of the Florida coral reef, it is strongly defended, the prominent work being Fort Taylor, constructed on an artificial island within the main harbor entrance. The little Sand Key, seven miles to the southwest, is the southernmost point of the United States. Forty miles to the westward is the group of ten small, low and barren islands known as the Dry Tortugas, from the Spanish _tortuga_, a tortoise. Upon the farthest one, Loggerhead Key, stands the great guiding light for the Florida Reef, of which this is the western extremity, the tower rising one hundred and fifty feet. Fort Jefferson is on Garden Key, where there is a harbor, and in it were confined various political prisoners during the Civil War, among them some who were concerned in the conspiracy to a.s.sa.s.sinate President Lincoln.

Here, with the encircling waters of the Gulf all around us, terminates this visit to the Sunny South. As we have progressed, the gradual blending of the temperate into the torrid zone, with the changing vegetation, has reminded of Bayard Taylor's words:

"There, in the wondering airs of the Tropics, s.h.i.+vers the Aspen, still dreaming of cold: There stretches the Oak from the loftiest ledges, His arms to the far-away lands of his brothers, And the Pine tree looks down on his rival, the Palm."

And as the journey down the Florida Peninsula has displayed some of the most magnificent winter resorts of the American Riviera, with their wealth of tropical foliage, fruits and flowers, and their seductive and balmy climate, this too has reminded of Cardinal Damiani's glimpse of the "Joys of Heaven":

"Stormy winter, burning summer, rage within these regions never, But perpetual bloom of roses and unfading spring forever; Lilies gleam, the crocus glows, and dropping balms their scents deliver."

Along this famous peninsula the sea rolls with ceaseless beat upon some of the most gorgeous beaches of the American coast. To the glories of tropical vegetation and the charms of the climate, Florida thus adds the magnificence of its unrivalled marine environment.

Everywhere upon these pleasant coasts--

"The bridegroom, Sea, Is toying with his wedded bride,--the Sh.o.r.e.