The minds of the Seloes were much exercised with the appearance of their new visitors, the impression being received that they were immortal, with their steel-covered bodies and bonnets, which flashed like meteors in the sunlight, while music, more enchanting than any which had ever filled their most fanciful imaginations, floated on the silent air.
During the early history of St. Augustine it appeared to be disputed ground for all explorers—French, Spanish, and English. Sir Francis Drake in 1586 drove the Spaniards from here during the war with Spain, the Spanish retiring so hastily they left fourteen brass cannon, besides a mahogany chest containing two thousand pounds in the castle. During 1665, Davis, the buccaneer, captured the town again. In 1762 a writer describes it as being at the foot of a hill, shaded with trees, the town laid out in the form of an oblong square, the streets cutting each other at right angles.
In 1764 the Spanish left the town, and the English took possession, when we find this graphic account, from which observant visitors can note the changes:
“All the houses are built of masonry, their entrances being shaded by piazzas, supported by Tuscan pillars, or pilasters, against the south sun. The houses have to the east windows projecting sixteen or eighteen inches into the street, very wide and proportionally high. On the west side their windows are commonly very small, and no opening of any kind to the north, on which side they have double walls six or eight feet asunder, forming a kind of gallery, which answers for cellars and pantries. Before most of the entrances were arbors of vines, producing plenty and very good grapes. No house has any chimney for a fire-place; the Spaniards made use of stone urns, filled them with coals, left them in the kitchens in the afternoon, and set them at sunset in their bedrooms, to defend themselves against those winter seasons which required such care. The governor’s residence has both sides piazzas, a double one to the south, and a single one to the north; also a Belvidere and a grand portico decorated with Doric pillars and entablatures.
“The roofs are commonly flat. The number of houses in the town are about nine hundred. The streets are narrow on account of shade. In a few places they are wide enough to permit two carriages to pass abreast. They were not originally intended for carriages, many of them being floored with artificial stone, composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock, no other vehicle than a hand-barrow being allowed to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the wheels of the carts and carriages introduced by the new inhabitants. The old houses are built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of small shells, which overhang the streets with their wooden balconies; and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the pomegranate and of the orange-tree now fragrant with flowers, and rising yet higher the leaning boughs of the fig with its broad, luxuriant leaves. Occasionally you pass the ruins of houses—walls of stone, with arches and stair-cases of the same material, which once belonged to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange language. These are the remains of the Spanish dominion inhabitants, speaking the language of their country.”
In 1757 no vessel could approach the coast of St. Augustine without running the risk of being taken by the French privateers. It has not always been the home of Spanish Dons and guitar-playing, as in 1777. Captain Rory McIntosh, the Don Quixote of the country, lived here, and paraded the streets in true Scottish style, dressed in the Highland costume. His home was with Mr. Archibald Lundy, then a merchant of St. Augustine. He was present at the taking of Fort Moosa, under command of General Oglethorpe, and mentions his share in the fight with characteristic bravado: “I am a scoundrel, sir! At Fort Moosa a captain of Spanish Grenadiers was charging at the head of his company, and, like a varmint, sir, I lay in the bushes and shot the gallant fellow.”
On June 17, 1821, the American flag first floated from Castle San Marco. A meeting was afterward held in the governor’s palace, where the exercising of a right was declared which had banished the Huguenots from the soil centuries before: “Freedom to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience.”
The archives of St. Augustine were said to have been delivered to the United States Collector. They were sealed in eleven strong boxes, for the purpose of being sent to Cuba, but detained by Captain Hanhan, and afterward forwarded to Washington.
Dr. McWhir, an Irish Presbyterian preacher, visited Florida in 1823 and 1824, preaching at St. Augustine and Mandarin. He organized the first Presbyterian Church in the State, located at Mandarin. It was also mainly through his influence that the Church in St. Augustine was founded.
In 1834 St. Augustine answered to the following description: “Situated like a rustic village, with its white houses peeping from among the clustered boughs and golden fruit of the favorite tree, beneath whose shade the invalid cooled his fevered brow and imbibed health from the fragrant air.” It was, indeed, a forest of sturdy orange-trees, whose rich foliage of deep green, variegated with golden fruit, in which the buildings of the city were embowered, and whose fragrance filled the body of the surrounding atmosphere so as to attract the attention of those passing by in ships at sea, and whose delicious fruit was the great staple of export. The plaza then contained many orange-trees, one of which was over a century old, producing, in a single season, twelve thousand oranges—more than eight thousand being nothing unusual for many of the trees in a year.