VISITING THE SUNNY SOUTH.

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V.

VISITING THE SUNNY SOUTH.

Sir Walter Raleigh—Roanoke Island—Virginia Dare—Potatoes—Tobacco—Carolina—Cape Hatteras—Cyclones—Wilmington—Fort Fisher—Blockade Running—Charleston—Palmetto Trees—John C. Calhoun—Fort Moultrie—Osceola's Grave—Fort Sumter—Opening of the Civil War—The Swamp Angel—St. Michael's Church—Port Royal—Savannah—General Oglethorpe—Count Pulaski—Fort Pulaski—Bonaventure Cemetery—Okifenokee Swamp—Jacksonville—The Alligator—Oranges—Land of Flowers—Juan Ponce de Leon—Ferdinand de Soto—The Huguenots—Pedro Menendez—Dominique de Gourgues—Florida Peculiarities—Cumberland Sound—St. Mary's River—Cumberland Island—Jekyll Island—Amelia Island—Fernandina—Dungeness—General Greene—Light Horse Harry—St. Augustine—Matanzas River—Anastasia Island—Coquina—Fort San Marco—Fort Marion—Grand Hotels—Dade's Massacre—Coa-coo-chee, the Wildcat—Ormond—Daytona—New Smyrna—The Southern Cassadega—Indian River—Titusville—Rockledge—Fort Pierce—Jupiter Inlet—Palm Beach—Miami—Biscayne Bay—St. John's River—Mandarin—Palatka—Ocklawaha River—Lake Apopka—Lake Eustis Region—Ocala—The Silver Spring—Navigating the Ocklawaha—Lake George—Volusia—Lake Monroe—Enterprise—Sanford—Winter Park—Orlando—Lake Tohopekaliga—Kissimmee River—Lake Okeechobee—The Everglades—Lake Arpeika—The Seminoles—Suwanee River—Cedar Key—Tallahassee—Achille Murat—Wakulla Spring—Appalachicola—Pensacola—Homosassa—Tampa—Charlotte Harbor—Punta Gorda—Caloosahatchie River—Fort Myers—Cape Romano—Cape Sable—Florida Keys—Coral Building—The Gulf Stream—Key West—Fort Taylor—Sand Key—Dry Tortugas—Fort Jefferson—Florida Attractions.

CAROLINA.

Sir Walter Raleigh, of chivalrous memory, sent the first English colony to America in the sixteenth century. He was a half-brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the English explorer, and had previously accompanied Gilbert to Newfoundland. He sent out an expedition in 1584, which selected Roanoke Island, south of the Chesapeake, for a settlement, and for this enterprise Queen Elizabeth knighted Raleigh, gave him a grant of the whole country, and directed that the new land be named in her honor, Virginia. In 1585-86 colonizing expeditions were sent to Roanoke, but they did not prosper. The colonists quarrelled with the Indians, and in the latter year the Governor returned to England for provisions and reinforcements, leaving behind with the colony his daughter, Mrs. Dare, and a granddaughter, nine days old, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the new land. Then came the Spanish Armada to conquer England, and the long war with Spain. Nobody went to succor the little band of exiles on Roanoke Island for three years, and when they did, the settlement was obliterated, the hundred colonists and little Virginia Dare had disappeared, and no tidings of them were ever obtained. Thus perished Raleigh's colony; and, his means being exhausted, he was discouraged and sent no more expeditions out to America. His enterprise failed in making a permanent settlement, but it gave two priceless gifts to Europe. The returning Governor took back to England the potato, which Raleigh planted on his Irish estate and which has proved the salvation of old Erin, and also the Virginia tobacco, which he taught the people to smoke, and the fragrant weed became the solace of the world.

No further attempts at colonization were made until the seventeenth century, when new grants were issued, and the country was named Carolina in honor of King Charles I. The Atlantic Coast south of the Chesapeake Bay entrance is low and bordered by sand beaches, which for most of the distance in front of North Carolina are far eastward of the mainland, with broad sounds and river estuaries between. These long and narrow beaches protrude in some cases a hundred miles into the ocean and form dangerous shoals, the extensive Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds being enclosed by them, the former stretching fifty miles and the latter seventy-five miles into the land. Out in front of Pamlico Sound projects the shoulder of Cape Hatteras into the Atlantic, the outer point of a low, sandy island, with shoals extending far beyond it, and marked by the great beacon of this dangerous coast, a flashing light one hundred and ninety feet high. Here is the principal storm factory of the southern coast, noted for cyclonic disturbances and dreaded by the mariner. Upon the outer Diamond Shoals the Government has long tried in vain to erect a lighthouse. A lightship is kept there, but is frequently blown from her moorings and drifts ashore. The Gulf Stream, coming with warm and speedy current up from Florida, is here diverged out into the ocean by the shoulder of Hatteras; and, similarly, the whirling West India cyclones of enormous area come along with their resistless energy, destroying everything in their paths. In the terrific hurricane of the autumn of 1899 a wind velocity of one hundred and sixty miles an hour was reached momentarily, and the anemometer at Hatteras was blown down after having recorded a velocity of one hundred and twenty miles. The actual force exerted by one of these great cyclones in its work of devastation, which uproots trees, demolishes buildings and strews the coast with wrecks, has been calculated as equalling one thousand million horse-power.

WILMINGTON AND FORT FISHER.

The interior of North Carolina adjoining the Sounds is largely swamp land, and the broad belt of forest, chiefly pines, which parallels the coast all along the Atlantic seaboard. Through this region the railway extends southward from Virginia past Weldon to Wilmington, an uninteresting route among the swamps and pine lands, showing sparse settlement and poor agriculture, the wood paths exhibiting an occasional ox-team or a stray horseman going home with his supplies from the cross-roads store, a typical representative of the "tar-heels of Carolina." The railway crosses the deep valley of Roanoke River, and then over the Tar and Neuse Rivers, traversing the extensive district that provides the world's greatest supply of naval stores—the tar, pitch, turpentine, rosin and timber that are so largely shipped out of the Cape Fear River from Wilmington. This is the chief city of North Carolina, having about twenty thousand people, and is located on the Cape Fear River twenty-six miles from its mouth. The city spreads along the eastern shore upon the peninsula between it and the ocean. The first settlement antedates the Revolution, when the inhabitants, who were sturdy patriots, drove out the royal Governor and made Fort Johnson, at the mouth of the river, an American stronghold. Upon the secession of the Carolinas in 1860-61 this fort was occupied by the Confederates and replaced by the larger work on Federal Point, between the river and the sea, known as Fort Fisher. Owing to the peculiar location and ease of entrance, the Cape Fear River became famous in the Civil War as a haven for blockade-runners, the effective defense made by Fort Fisher fully protecting this traffic. As the Union blockade of the Southern harbors became more completely effective with the progress of the war, this finally was about the only port that could be entered, and an enormous traffic was kept up between Wilmington and Nassau, on the British island of New Providence, in the Bahamas, not far away, some three hundred fleet foreign steamships safely running the blockade into Cape Fear River during 1863 and 1864. The notoriety of this traffic, from which enormous profits were made, became world-wide, and it was decided late in 1864 that Fort Fisher had to be captured, in order to make the Southern blockade entirely effective. A joint land and naval attack was made by General Butler and Admiral Porter in December, 1864, but they were obliged to retire without seriously damaging the fort. Then General Butler ineffectively attempted to blow up the fort by exploding a powder-boat near it. Finally a new expedition was landed in January, 1865, under General Terry, and in coÖperation with the navy, which made a fierce bombardment, they captured the fort on the 15th, after severe loss, the works being partially destroyed the following day by the accidental explosion of the powder magazine. This capture ended the blockade-running at Wilmington, and had much to do with precipitating the fall of Richmond in the following April.

On the Ashley, near Charleston, S. C.

CHARLESTON AND FORT SUMTER.

The railway from Wilmington to the South at first goes westward through a region largely composed of swamps, and then entering South Carolina turns southward past Florence to Charleston. The country is a variation of pine barrens and morass, sparsely inhabited, but raising much cotton, with many bales brought to the stations for shipment. There is a much larger population of blacks than of whites. Charleston, the metropolis of South Carolina, is an active seaport with sixty-five thousand inhabitants, having a good export trade in cotton, timber, naval stores, rice, fruits and phosphate rock, of which there are extensive deposits on Ashley River nearby. It is a low-lying city, built upon a peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, just inland from the ocean, and having a good harbor. Its many wooden houses are varied by more pretentious ones of brick and stone, but there is an air of decadence produced by the traces still remaining of the earthquake of 1886, which destroyed the greater part of the buildings and killed many people. The dwelling architecture of Charleston presents the tropical features of open verandas, spacious porticos and broad windows looking out upon gardens in which the palmetto tree grows, typical of South Carolina, the "Palmetto State." At the point of the peninsula between the rivers is the Battery, a park and popular promenade overlooking the harbor, with Fort Sumter down on its little shoal-like island, seen as a small dark streak upon the distant horizon. The first settlements in this part of South Carolina were made on the west bank of Ashley River, but the town, which had been named in honor of King Charles II., in 1680 was transferred to its present site. Charleston was prominent in the Revolution, its troops under Colonel Moultrie repelling a British attack upon Sullivan's Island in 1776; but the city was captured by Sir Henry Clinton in 1780 after an obstinate defense. Before the Civil War it was the chief cotton-shipping port of America, though it is now surpassed by the Gulf ports and by Savannah. The great memory in the city of that time of its greatest prosperity is of the apostle of "State Rights," the South Carolina statesman, John C. Calhoun, who died in 1850. His statue stands in Citadel Square, and his grave is in St. Philip's churchyard.

The broad estuary of Charleston harbor is completely landlocked, and has an entrance from the sea about a mile wide. On the southern side is Fort Moultrie, which was enlarged from the battery that repulsed the British attack in 1776, on Sullivan's Island, this now being a favorite summer resort, and dotted with wooden cottages facing the sea. Just behind the fort is the grave of Osceola, the famous chief of the Seminoles, who long carried on war in the Florida everglades, but was captured and brought a prisoner to Fort Moultrie, dying in 1838. Fort Sumter, three miles below Charleston, stands upon a shoal of about three acres, out in mid-channel, which is protected from the water encroachment by stone rip-rapping. It was faced with brick during the Civil War, but the work has since been modernized. At the opening of the war, Major Anderson occupied this fort with the small force of seventy-five men, which, after the secession of South Carolina from the Union, December 20, 1860, had been transferred thither from Fort Moultrie, the State troops immediately seizing Moultrie and all the other forts around the harbor, and the Federal public buildings in Charleston. They also constructed new batteries on Morris Island, the nearest land to Fort Sumter. On January 9, 1861, the Government at Washington sent the steamer "Star of the West" into the harbor with provisions and a reinforcement of two hundred and fifty troops. The first shot of the Civil War was on that day fired at her from Morris Island, and the ship being struck by this and subsequent shots, her commander abandoned the project and withdrew. There was a good deal of negotiation and delay afterwards, the Government, on April 8th, finally determining to provision Fort Sumter, as Anderson's supplies would be exhausted on the 15th, and so informing the Governor of South Carolina. On the 11th, General Beauregard, commanding the State forces, demanded the surrender of the fort, which was refused. Major Anderson was notified early next morning that the fort would be fired upon in one hour, and cannonading began at 4.20 A.M. on the 12th. A fleet of vessels appeared off the harbor at noon with provisions, exchanged signals with the fort, but made no attempt to land, and on the 13th terms of surrender were arranged by which Major Anderson and his little command marched out on the 14th with the honors of war, saluting the American flag with fifty guns. This bombardment and evacuation set the North in a blaze of patriotic excitement and began the Civil War.

The naval forces of the United States attacked Fort Sumter in April, 1863, but were repulsed, the monitor "Keokuk" being so seriously injured that she afterwards sunk. Subsequently, the Union troops landed on Morris Island, erected batteries, and in August partly destroyed the works at Sumter; and its bombardment, and also that of Charleston, continued with but brief intermission till the war closed in 1865. On Morris Island was set up the original "long-range gun," General Gillmore's "Swamp Angel" now adorning a drinking-fountain at Trenton, New Jersey; and its ability, until it unfortunately burst, to shoot its bolts into Charleston, then regarded as an almost impossible distance to carry a projectile, attracted the attention of gunnery experts throughout the world. Its conspicuous mark was the white spire of St. Michael's Church up in the beleaguered city. This famous old church, dating from 1752, was struck six times during these attacks and seriously damaged. It was also partly demolished by a cyclone in 1885, and nearly destroyed by the earthquake of 1886; but it has been since restored, and its prominent steeple commands a good view. Charleston, however, seems to have always been used to this sort of thing. Its statue of William Pitt in front of the City Hall had the right arm broken off by a British cannon-shot in 1780. But if the city is thus somewhat in dilapidation, its grand development of foliage and flowers gives a compensation. Everywhere in the suburbs and in the streets and gardens are seen magnificent azaleas, magnolias, camellias, and the famous live oak, which flourish in luxuriance and add to the charms of this restful South Carolina metropolis.

THE CITY OF SAVANNAH.

The seacoast of South Carolina and Georgia is composed largely of deeply indented bays, with many islands, tortuous bayous, and a labyrinth of water ways bordered by dense vegetation. Southward from Charleston harbor to the Savannah River many creeks provide a system of inland navigation and form fertile islands. There are two capacious Sounds, St. Helena and Port Royal, the latter being one of the finest harbors in the world, and the rendezvous of the American North Atlantic naval squadron when in these waters. This was the place of first landing of the original South Carolina colonists before they went to the Ashley River, and its chief town now is Beaufort, on St. Helena Island. These coast islands raise the famous "sea-island cotton," and the whole lowland region produces prolific crops of rice. The adjacent land is generally swampy, and its chief industry, outside of cultivating the fields, is the working of the extensive phosphate deposits, which are manufactured into fertilizers. The railway, largely constructed on piles, passes through much marsh and morass, crosses swift-running dirty streams, and over the swamps and among the pine timber, varied by the oak, bay tree and laurel, which the humid atmosphere has hung with garlands of sombre gray moss and clusters of ivy and other creeping plants. The festooned moss, overrunning and often destroying the foliage of the trees, gives the scene a weird and ghostly appearance. The railway route is bordered by an apparently almost impenetrable jungle, the few settlements are widely separated, and population is sparse, seeming to be chiefly negroes dressed in ancient-looking clothing ornamented with patches. The few whites who appear are bilious and yellowish, their complexions and garb being alike of the butternut hue, while both races seem to talk the same dialect. Thus moving farther southward, the Carolina "tar-heels" are replaced by the "crackers" and "butternuts," looking as if they had been rolled for a generation in the clayey soils drained by the Edisto, Coosawhatchie and Savannah Rivers and their neighboring streams, and who, farther inland, are the "clay-eaters" of Georgia. Then crossing the Savannah River, the route is upon the level lowlands down its Georgia bank, and into the city of Savannah, arriving amid a vast collection of rosin and pitch barrels, cotton bales and timber.

Savannah—derived from the Spanish word sabana, a "meadow or plain"—is known popularly as the "Forest City," and is built upon a bluff along the river shore, eighteen miles from the sea. It has fifty thousand people and a large export trade in naval stores, rice, timber and cotton, in the latter export being second only to New Orleans. It received great impetus after the Civil War, owing to its excellent railway connections with the interior, and is now the chief port of the Southern Atlantic coast. The city extends upon a level sandy plain, stretching back from the bluff shore along the river, has broad streets crossing at right angles, with small parks at the intersections, and many trees border the streets and fill the parks, so that it is fairly embowered in foliage, thus presenting an attractive and novel appearance. This adornment makes Savannah the most beautiful city of the coast—the oak, palmetto and magnolia, with the holly, orange, creeping ivy and clustering vines, setting the buildings in a framework of delicious green. The business quarter is along the bluff, where the ships moor alongside the storehouses, which have their upper stories on a level with the busy Bay Street at its top. Much of the present beauty of the city is due to the foresight of its founder who laid out the plan—General Oglethorpe, who selected this place in 1733 for the capital of his Province of Georgia, the youngest of the original thirteen colonies.

General James Edward Oglethorpe was a native of London and an officer in the British army, who, being of philanthropic tendencies, obtained a grant of the Province from King George for the purpose of providing an asylum for the poor debtors of England and a home for the Protestants of all nations. After founding the city and receiving a colony of Protestants from Salzburg, he visited England and brought out John and Charles Wesley in 1735, and got George Whitefield to come and preach to the colonists in 1737. War breaking out with Spain, he attacked Florida, carrying his invasion to the gates of St. Augustine, but was repulsed. He returned to England in 1743, but though he lived until 1785 as a retired general upon half-pay, he never revisited America. The British captured Savannah in the Revolution, and repulsed a combined French and American attempt to recapture it in 1779. In this attack Count Pulaski fell, and the spot, now Monterey Square, near the centre of the city, is marked by the Pulaski Monument, one of the noblest shafts in America. Count Pulaski is the patron saint of Savannah, and Fort Pulaski, named in his honor, guards the Savannah River entrance from the sea. During the Civil War, however, this fort was practically useless, as it was captured by the Unionists in 1862, and Tybee Roads, the harbor at the entrance, was hermetically sealed throughout the war by the blockading fleet. General Sherman's triumphant march through Georgia ended in December, 1864, at Savannah, and his headquarters are still pointed out, opposite Madison Square. Savannah has a fine pleasure-ground in Forsyth Park, with its wealth of trees and ornamental shrubbery, and the adjoining Parade Ground containing the Confederate Soldiers' Monument. The favorite route to the southern suburbs is the famous Thunderbolt Shell Road leading to Thunderbolt River, and noted for its avenues of live oaks draped with Spanish moss. Here is also the favorite burial-place, the Bonaventure Cemetery, where the graves and tombstones are laid out alongside passages embowered by live oaks, their wide-stretching, gaunt and angular limbs being richly garlanded with the gray moss and encircled by creeping ivy. The long vista views under these sombre archways have an elfish look, peculiarly appropriate for a city of the dead, and it would take little imagination to conjure up the spirits of the departed and see them wandering beneath these canopies of shrouds.

THE CITY OF JACKSONVILLE.

Southward from Savannah, the railway route to Florida renews the monotonous landscape of woods and swamps. For ninety miles it goes in an almost straight line southwest through the pine belt of Southern Georgia, crossing the Ogeechee and Altamaha Rivers to Waycross, and then, turning to the southeast, proceeds in another almost straight line for about an equal distance towards the coast, and crosses St. Mary's River into Florida. It traverses the edge of the noted Okifenokee Swamp of Georgia, the Indian "weaving, shaking, water," a moist and mushy region of mystery and legend, drained by the poetic Suwanee, the Indian "Echo river," which has been made the theme of a favorite melody. This stream flows through Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, while on the eastern side the extensive swamp overflows into the winding St. Mary's River leading to the Atlantic. To the southward, the pine woods of Florida grow out of a sandy soil nearly as level as a floor, in which almost every depression and fissure seems filled with water, and the balsamic odors of these pines, combined with the mildness of the winter climate, give an indication of the attractions which make Florida so popular as a resort for the Northern people. The route finally reaches the broad St. John's River at the Florida metropolis, Jacksonville, a Yankee city in the South, bearing the name of the famous President, General Andrew Jackson, and having thirty thousand population, largely of Northern birth. This is the centre of the railway system of Florida and of most of the business of the State, having a large export trade in timber, naval stores, phosphates, oranges and other Florida products. To the visitor, probably the first most forcible impression is made by the free growth of oranges along the streets and in the house gardens. The city stands upon the northern and outer bank of a magnificent bend of St. John's River, this noble stream, which flows northward from Southern Florida, being a mile wide, and sweeping around to the eastward at Jacksonville to reach the sea about twenty-five miles beyond, its navigation having been improved by dredging and constructing jetties to maintain a channel through the bar at the mouth. The business section is near the shore, and the railways come down to the wharves; while, as the curving river stretches away to the southward, the bank is lined with rows of fine suburban villas, occupied by the business men who have built their comfortable homes amid the oranges, oleanders, magnolias and banana trees. The river has low tree-clad shores, and far over on the opposite bank are more villas and orange groves.

Jacksonville is well supplied with hotels and lodging-houses, which accommodate the crowds of winter visitors from the North, and it spreads into various suburban villages reached by steamboats and hard shell roads. It is the great entrepÔt for Florida, standing at the northern verge, the salubrious and equable climate being the attraction, for frost is rare, and the winters are usually clear and dry and give a most magnificent atmosphere. Rows of splendid oaks line the streets, and form fine archways of green, giving a delicious shade. Besides the orange, the alligator is also a Jacksonville attraction, live ones being kept as pets, little ones sent northward in boxes for gifts, and dead ones of all sizes prepared for ornaments. This reptile is the type and emblem of Florida; his skin and teeth are worked into fantastic shapes, and his curious bones and formation do duty in the make-up of many "Florida curiosities." In fact, outside of the timber, which is most prolific, the best known Florida crops are the alligator and the orange. Although frosts have killed many in late years, yet the product of the orange trees is still large, Southern Florida containing the most famous orange groves, especially along the Indian River and on the lakes of the upper St. John's River, where they are usually planted on the southern borders of the lakes, so that the frost is killed by the winds carrying it over the water, and thus the orange trees are protected.

THE LAND OF FLOWERS.

In the early sixteenth century there flourished a valiant Spaniard of noble birth, a grandee of Aragon, who had taken part in the conquest of Grenada, Don Juan Ponce de Leon. He had accompanied Columbus on one of his American voyages, and in 1510 was appointed Governor of Puerto Rico. The bold Don Juan had become somewhat worn by a life of dangerous buccaneering and romantic adventure, and being rather advanced in years he was losing the attractiveness which had long added charms to his gallantries. From the Indians of Puerto Rico he heard of an island off to the northwestward, which they called Bimini, and he listened with wonder and constantly increasing interest to the tales they told of an extraordinary and miraculous spring which it contained that would restore youth to the aged and health to the decrepit—the "Fountain of Perpetual Youth." They described it as being in a region of surpassing beauty, and said there were found abundant gold and many slaves in this land of promise. The rugged old warrior was fired with the prospect of restored youth, and soon secured from the king a grant of Bimini. In March, 1513, he sailed with a large expedition from Puerto Rico, discovered some of the Bahama Islands, coasted along the mainland to latitude 30° 8' north, and on Easter Sunday, April 8th, landed a short distance south of St. John's River and took possession, calling the country Florida, from "Pasqua Florida," the Spanish name for the day. He did not find the magic spring, however, but he did discover a fairy scene, a land filled with a profusion of fruits and flowers. Though he subsequently diligently searched for it, he unfortunately never found the miraculous fountain. He explored the Gulf Coast, and returned to the quest again in 1521, when he got into quarrels with the Indians, was mortally wounded in a combat, and went back to Cuba to die.

Another Spanish grandee, fired with zeal for gold and conquest, appeared upon the scene somewhat later in the sixteenth century. Ferdinand de Soto, a native of Jerez, whose only heritage was his sword and shield, had accompanied various expeditions to Darien and Nicaragua, and in 1532 joined Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, where he acquired great wealth, with which he returned to Spain. Soon after, being anxious for more adventure, he was appointed Governor of Cuba and Florida, and given a commission to explore and settle the Spanish possessions in the latter country, then including the whole northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In May, 1539, he sailed from Havana with a large fleet and six hundred men, coasted around Florida and landed at Tampa Bay on the Gulf side, where his explorations ashore began in July. Fabulous stories had been told him of the wealth of the country by those who had been there, and De Soto's plan was to go everywhere in search of gold. He captured Indians for guides, and found a Spaniard, Juan Ortiz, whom they had taken captive several years before, but who was now living with them as a friend, knew their language and became interpreter. Then De Soto, by his aid, began a most difficult exploration, advancing through thick woods, north and east, amid tangled undergrowth, over bogs and marshes, crossing rivers and lakes, fighting the Indians who resented his cruelties, for he made them his slaves and bearers of burdens, tortured and killed them if they resisted. But he found no gold, though he pushed steadily onward, and turning westward in the quest, his numbers growing smaller and the survivors weaker under the weight of their privations. He travelled a long distance, crossing Northern Florida and Georgia into the Carolinas, and probably to Tennessee, descending the Alabama River, and having a battle with the Indians near Mobile Bay in October, 1540; then turning again northward, crossing the Mississippi River, which he discovered in May, 1541, near the Chickasaw Bluffs, exploring it nearly to the mouth of the Missouri, and then turning southward he sailed down the river, and finally died of fever near the mouth of Red River in May, 1542. During the three years' wanderings nearly half his force had perished in battle, or of privation and disease. The Indians were in awe of him and believed him immortal, and a panic therefore seized his surviving followers, who feared annihilation if the savages discovered that De Soto was dead. So they quietly buried him at night, from a boat in midstream, sinking the corpse in the great Father of Waters. Discouraged and almost hopeless, his followers managed to build some small vessels, and the next year arrived safely in Mexico.

Neither of these expeditions succeeded in colonizing Florida, but they left a feeling of hatred among the Indians, caused by the Spanish cruelties, which always afterwards existed. In 1564 some French Huguenots, led by RenÉ de LoudonniÈre, attempted making a settlement at the mouth of St. John's River, and built Fort Caroline there. News of this reached Spain, and in 1565 another colonization expedition was sent out under Don Pedro Menendez d'Aviles, which set sail from Cadiz, and on St. Augustine's Day, August 28th, landed not far from where Ponce de Leon had made his first invasion, and founded a colony which he named St. Augustine, in honor of his day of arrival. As soon as Menendez was established on shore he attacked the Huguenots at St. John's River, and hanged such of them as had escaped being killed in the battle, declaring that he did this because they were Protestants. Some of them who had been away from the fort at the time were afterwards shipwrecked near St. Augustine, and these he also captured and put to death. The French Fort Caroline was then garrisoned by the Spaniards, its name changed to Fort San Mateo, and they also fortified with redoubts both sides of the river entrance. The story of the atrocities of Menendez was received with indignation in France, but the King, controlled by intrigue, dared do nothing, such was his fear of the power of Spain.

Full vengeance was afterwards taken, however. Dominique de Gourgues, a French gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, who hated the Spaniards with a mortal hatred, took up the quarrel, sold his inheritance, borrowed money, and equipped a small expedition of three vessels and one hundred and eighty men. He concealed his real object, and sailing for some time through the tropical seas, finally came to Cuba, when he first made known his purpose to his followers. He landed at St. Mary's River, opening communication with the Indians, and a joint attack upon the Spaniards to the southward was arranged. In May, 1568, the fort and redoubts at St. John's River were stormed and taken, a few Spaniards being captured alive, all the rest having been slain in the combat. Gourgues was shown nearby the trees whereon Menendez had hanged the French prisoners when he first took the fort, having placed over them the inscription "Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans." He hanged his Spanish prisoners on the same trees, and over them was also nailed an inscription, burned with a hot iron on a tablet of pine, "Not as Spaniards, but as Traitors, Robbers and Murderers." Gourgues' mission of vengeance was fulfilled. His Indian allies demolished the fort and the redoubts at the mouth of the river. He then sailed home with his expedition, landing at Rochelle on the day of Pentecost, where the Huguenots greeted him with all honor, and whilst he was scorned at court and lived for some years in obscurity, Queen Elizabeth showed him great favor; and as he was going overland to join the army of Portugal to once more fight his enemies, the Spaniards, he fell ill at Tours and died. The French made no more attempts at settlement in Florida, and the Spaniards afterwards possessed it, though frequently being at war with the English. Spain finally ceded the "Land of Flowers" to the United States, which took final possession in 1821.

SOME FLORIDA PECULIARITIES.

Florida is a strange region, yet most attractive. The traveller regards its surface as mainly a monotonous level of forest and swamp, with fruit and floral embellishments, but it in fact rises by an almost insensible ascent from the coast towards the interior, where there is a central summit ridge all along the peninsula of about three hundred feet elevation, covered with pine woods. Most of the surface, however, is but a few feet above the sea-level, these "flatlands," as they are called, being grass-grown savannahs, pine woods, swamps and cabbage-palm thickets. The southern part of the peninsula is the region of the everglades, which have been formed by successive dykes of coral, built by the industrious little insect long ago. The upper part of this region is occupied by the extensive but shallow waters of Lake Okeechobee, which merges insensibly into the everglades south and east, the Seminoles calling this grass-grown and spongy region, which is still the abode of some remnants of the tribe, Pa-ha-yo-kee, meaning "much grass in water." These everglades are penetrated in all directions by tortuous water channels of slight depth; and at frequent intervals in the whole district there are wooded islands possessing fertile soils and covered with dense tropical vegetation. These islands are said to have been surrounded by the sea in bygone ages, and they then stood in the same relation to the mainland as do the present Southern Florida reefs and keys. Wide tracts of cypress swamp separate the everglades from the Gulf of Mexico, while in Southern Florida they approach within a few miles of the Atlantic Coast, being separated by an intervening dyke of coral, crossed by frequent streams of rapid current, for the everglades are far from being stagnant swamps. There are also many other extensive swamps in the State.

The Florida seacoast is usually protected by sand beaches which are quite hard, and are separated from the mainland by interior lagoons. The mangrove and the coral, constantly growing, are ever encroaching, however, on the sea-waters, and thus Florida seems to have been constructed. The country is full of water courses, lakes and springs, some of the latter being regarded as among the most remarkable in the world, the famous Silver Spring near Ocala being estimated as discharging three hundred millions of gallons daily. There are countless springs along the coasts, and one of these bursts up in the sea near St. Augustine, two miles off shore, with a torrent so vigorous that the ocean waves break over the column of fresh water as if it were a sunken reef. Scientific investigators are amazed at the vast amounts of water everywhere visible and discharged from these springs, and with only the narrow and low peninsula for a watershed, the problem as to where the vast water supply comes from baffles solution. Some of the Florida lakes are subject to remarkable fluctuations of level, and one of them, Lake Jackson, ran suddenly dry at the time of the Charleston earthquake in 1886, but after a few weeks the water began returning, and it soon resumed its natural proportions.

CUMBERLAND SOUND.

The memory of the Duke of Cumberland, 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 Cumberland 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 compass in every direction until it finally heads eastward and debouches in Cumberland 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 Cumberland 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-shipping town of Brunswick. To the southward of the Cumberland entrance is Amelia Island in Florida. The sound behind Amelia and Cumberland 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 Nassau 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 noble," 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 massacre; 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 Cumberland Island is the estate of Dungeness. General Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island, one of Washington'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 gratitude 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 passed 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 shell-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 shell-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 passages 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 passing 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 Constitucion, having a monument commemorating the Spanish Liberal Constitution 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 spacious 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 massacre during the Seminole War. Major Dade, a gallant officer, and one hundred and seven men, were ambushed and massacred 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 massacre 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 shore 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 shell 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 Cassadaga," or Spiritualists' Assembly. 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 shores, stretching down to Jupiter Inlet, are lined with luxuriant vegetation, and the water is at times highly phosphorescent. Upon the western shore are most of the celebrated Indian River orange groves whose product is so highly prized. At Titusville, 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, washing 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 shores 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 steamship port for lines to Nassau, Key West and Havana, is growing. Nassau 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 shores 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, shipping 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 shores 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 shore, 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.

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 title 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 shores, 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 passage 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 grassy 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 spacious 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 passage. It is navigated by stout and narrow flat-bottomed boats of light draft, constructed so as to quickly turn sharp corners, bump the shores 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 noble 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 passenger boat, after bumping 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," "Hell's half-acres," "Log Jams," "Bone Yards" and "Double S Bends" are passed, 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 passage 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 flourishing towns, Enterprise on the northern shore 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 passes is mostly a prairie with herds of cattle and much game, and is only sparsely 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 "grass water," the shores being generally a swampy jungle. This district for many miles is a mass of waving sedge grass 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, Tallahassee, 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 sturdily 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 rushing 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 Tallahassee, 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 principally lumber and cotton. The shallowness of most of these Gulf harbors, which readily silt up, destroys their usefulness as ports for deep-draft shipping. The route farther westward skirts the Gulf Coast, crosses Escambia Bay and reaches Pensacola, on its spacious 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. Homosassa is a popular resort about fifty miles southwestward from Ocala. A short distance in the interior is the locality where the Seminoles surprised and massacred 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 shore for a mile to deep water. Upon the outer end of this long wharf is Tampa Inn, built on a mass 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 fishing 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 shores 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 shore of Punta Rassa, 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 shore, 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 space 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 mass of water from the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea, and westward through the passages between the Windward Islands, which is contracted by the converging shores 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 pass 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 assassinate 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,

Shivers 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 Shore.

He decorates her shining brow with shells,

And then retires to see how fine she looks,

Then, proud, runs up to kiss her."

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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