The Ancient City

“Massacred him,” concluded Sara. “You need not go on, Sir. I know all about it. I was there.”

“You were there, Miss St. John!”

“Certainly,” replied Sara, calmly. “I am now convinced that in some anterior state of existence I have assisted, as the French say, at all the Florida massacres. Indian, Spanish, or Huguenot, it makes no difference to me. I was there!”

“I trust our young friend is not tinged with Swedenborgianism,” said the Professor aside to John Hoffman. “The errors of those doctrines have been fully exposed. I trust she is orthodox.”

“Really, I do not know what she is,” replied John.

“Oh yes, you do,” said Sara, overhearing. “She is heterodox, you know; decidedly heterodox.”

In the mean while Aunt Diana kept firmly by the side of the Captain. It is safe to say that the young man was never before called upon to answer so many questions in a given space of time. The entire history of the late war, the organization of the army, the military condition of Europe, and, indeed, of the whole world, were only a portion of the subjects with which Aunt Di tackled him on the way home. Iris stood it a while, and then, with the happy facility of youth, she slipped aside, and joined John Hoffman. Iris was a charming little creature, but, so far, for “staying” qualities she was not remarkable.

A second time we passed the cemetery. “I have not as yet investigated the subject,” said the Professor, “but I suppose this to be the Huguenot burying-ground.”

“Oh yes,” exclaimed Miss Sharp; “mentioned in my guide-book as a spot of much interest. How thrilling to think that those early Huguenots, those historical victims of Menendez, lie here– here in this quiet spot, so near, you know, and yet – and yet so far!” she concluded, vaguely conscious that she had heard that before somewhere, although she could not place it. She had forgotten that eye which, mixed in some poetic way with a star, has figured so often in the musical performances of the female seminaries of our land.

“Very thrilling; especially when we remember that they must have gathered up their own bones, swum up all the way from Matanzas, and buried each other one by one,” said Sara.

“And even that don’t account for the last man,” added John.

Miss Sharp drew off her forces, and retired in good order.

“Iris,” I said, the next morning, “come here and give an account of yourself. What do you mean, you gypsy, by such performances as that of last night?”

“I only meant a moonlight walk, Cousin Martha. I knew I never could persuade Aunt Di, so I took Miss Sharp.”

“I am surprised that she consented.”

“At first she did refuse; but when I told her that the Professor was going, she said that under those circumstances, as we might expect much valuable information on the way, she would give her consent.”

“And the Professor?”

“Oh, I asked him, of course; he is the most good-natured old gentleman in the world; I can always make him do any thing I please. But poor Miss Sharp – how Aunt Di has been talking to her this morning! ‘How you, at your age,’ was part of it.”

A week later we were taken to see the old Buckingham Smith place, now the property of a Northern gentleman, who has built a modern winter residence on the site of the old house.

“This is her creek, Aunt Di,” I said, as the avenue leading to the house crossed a small muddy ditch.

“Whose, Niece Martha?”

“Maria Sanchez, of course. Don’t you remember the mysterious watery heroine who navigated these marshes several centuries ago? She perfectly haunts me! Talk about Huguenots arising and glaring at you, Sara; they are nothing to this Maria. The question is, Who was she?”

“I know,” answered Iris. “She is my old friend of the Dismal Swamp. ‘They made her a grave too cold and damp,’ you know, and she refused to stay in it. ‘Her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, her paddle I soon shall hear – ’ ”

“Well, if you do, let me know,” I said. “She must be a very muddy sort of a ghost; there isn’t more than a spoonful of water in her creek as far down as I can see.”

“But no doubt it was a deep tide-water stream in its day, Miss Martha,” said John Hoffman; “deep enough for either romance or drowning.”

Beyond the house opened out the long orange-tree aisles – beautiful walks arched in glossy green foliage – half a mile of dense leafy shade.

“This is the sour orange,” said our guide, “a tree extensively cultivated in the old days for its hardy growth and pleasant shade. It is supposed to be an exotic run wild, for the orange is not indigenous here. When Florida was ceded to England in exchange for Cuba, most of the Spanish residents left, and their gardens were then found well stocked with oranges and lemons, figs, guavas, and pomegranates.”

“Poor Florida! nobody wanted her,” said John. “The English only kept her twenty years, and then bartered her away again to Spain for the Bahamas, and in 1819 Spain was glad to sell her to the United States. The latter government, too, may have had its own thoughts as to the value of the purchase, which, although cheap at five millions in the first place, soon demanded nineteen more millions for its own little quarrel with that ancient people, the Seminoles.”

“Headed, do not forget to mention, by Osceola,” added Sara.

“Beautiful fruit, at least in appearance,” I said, picking up one of the large oranges that lay by the hundreds on the ground. “Are they of no use?”

“The juice is occasionally sold in small quantities,” replied our guide. “At one time it commanded a price of a dollar per gallon, and was used in place of vinegar in the British navy. It makes a delicious acid drink when fresh – better than lemonade.”

We lingered in the beautiful orange aisles, and heard the story of the old place: how it had descended from father to son, and finally, upon the death of the owner who was childless, it came into the possession of a nephew. But among other papers was found one containing the owner’s purpose to bequeath his property to the poor colored people of St. Augustine. This will, if it could so be called, without witnesses, and in other ways informal, was of no value in the eyes of the law. The owner had died suddenly away from home, and there was no testimony to prove that the paper expressed even a cherished intention. Nevertheless, the heir at law, with rare disinterestedness, carried out the vague wish; the place was sold, and all the proceeds invested for the benefit of the colored people, the charity taking the form of a Home for their aged and infirm, which is supported by the income from this money, the building itself having been generously given for the purpose by another prominent citizen of St. Augustine.

“You must see old Uncle Jack,” concluded the speaker. “Before the war his master sent him several times to Boston with large sums of money, and intrusted him with important business, which he never failed to execute properly. By the terms of the will he has a certain portion of the land for his lifetime. That is his old cabin. Let us go over there.”

Close down under the walls of the grand new mansion stood a low cabin, shaded by the long drooping leaves of the banana; hens and chickens walked in and out the open door, and most of the household furniture seemed to be outside, in the comfortable Southern fashion. Uncle Jack came to meet us – a venerable old man, with white hair, whose years counted nearly a full century.

“The present owner of the place has ordered a new house built for Jack, a picturesque porter’s lodge, near the entrance,” said our guide, “but I doubt whether the old man will be as comfortable there as in this old cabin where he has lived so long. The negroes, especially the old people, have the strongest dislike to any elevation like a door-step or a piazza; they like to be right on the ground; they like to cook when they are hungry, and sleep when they are tired, and enjoy their pipes in peace. Rules kill them, and they can not change: we must leave them alone, and educate the younger generation.”

Returning down the arched walks, we crossed over into a modern sweet-orange grove, the most beautiful in St. Augustine or its vicinity. Some of the trees were loaded with blossoms, some studded with the full closed buds which we of the North are accustomed to associate with the satin of bridal robes, some had still their golden fruit, and others had all three at once, after the perplexing fashion of the tropics.

“There are about eight hundred trees here,” said our guide, “and some of them yield annually five thousand oranges each. There is a story extant, one of the legends of St. Augustine, that formerly orange-trees covered the Plaza, and that one of them yielded annually twelve thousand oranges.”

“What an appalling mass of sweetness!” said Sara. “I am glad that tree died; it was too good to live, like the phenomenal children of Sunday-school literature.”

“In the old Spanish days,” said John, “this neighborhood was one vast orange grove; ships loaded with the fruit sailed out of the harbor, and the grandees of Spain preferred the St. Augustine orange to any other. In Spain the trees live to a great age; some of them are said to be six hundred years old, having been planted by the Moors, but here an unexpected frost has several times destroyed all the groves, so that the crop is by no means a sure one.”

“So the frost does come here,” I said. “We have seen nothing of it; the thermometer has ranged from sixty-eight to seventy-eight ever since we arrived.”

“They had snow in New York last week,” said Aunt Di.

“It has melted, I think,” said John. “At least I saw this item last evening in a New York paper: ‘If the red sleigher thinks that he sleighs to-day, he is mistaken!’ ”

“Shades of Emerson and Brahma, defend us!” said Sara.

Then we all began to eat oranges, and make dripping spectacles of ourselves generally. I defy any one to be graceful, or even dainty, with an orange; it is a great, rich, generous, pulpy fruit, and you have got to eat it in a great, rich, generous, pulpy way. How we did enjoy those oranges under the glossy green and fragrant blossoms of the trees themselves! We gave it up then and there, and said openly that no bought Northern oranges could compare with them.

“I don’t feel politically so much disturbed now about the cost of that sea-wall,” said Sara, “if it keeps this orange grove from washing away. It is doing a sweet and noble duty in life, and herein is cause sufficient for its stony existence.”

We strolled back to the town by another way, and crossed again the Maria Sanchez Creek.

“Observe how she meanders down the marsh, this fairy streamlet,” I said, taking up a position on the stone culvert. “Observe how green are her rushes, how playful her little minnows, how martial her fiddler-crabs! O lost Maria! come back and tell your story. Were you sadly drowned in these overwhelming waves, or were you the first explorer of these marshes, pushing onward in your canoe with your eyes fixed on futurity!”

Nobody knew; so we went home. But in the evening John produced the following, which he said had been preserved in the archives of the town for centuries. “I have made a free translation, as you will see,” he said; “but the original is in pure Castilian.”

“THE LEGEND OF MARIA SANCHEZ CREEK

“Maria Sanchez