The orange-wine manufactured by Genovar & Brother well deserves to supplant the miserable, adulterated, yeasty preparations which are sold and drunk daily by those whose minds are afterward in a constant state of doubt as to the amount of harm incurred by the potion imbibed.
It is April, and the season has arrived when visitors commence leaving; all amusements in which they delighted have become stale—even the yacht-races, which contributed so largely to the entertainment of those fond of boating; while outsiders are constantly under the impression that the boats are trying to tack for another course, making an effort to anchor, or turning in for a nap.
The Southern Indians imprisoned here for the past three years have been a subject of comment and amusement for most of the visitors, while their presence in the city was any thing but desirable to certain aggrieved persons, who succeeded in obtaining an escape-valve for their feelings by the following expressions, printed in the Savannah Morning News, entitled, “A Page from the Unwritten History of the Ancient City”:
“St. Augustine, Fla., March 4, 1878.—While the prominent points in St. Augustine, which present themselves to visitors, are written threadbare, there is an undercurrent, although felt by the suffering, that has never been stirred by the anxious inquirers after information. It is God’s poor—those reduced by circumstances over which they have no control. Many exclaim, Lo! the poor Indian; but none consider the avenues to employment which the presence of these scalping, murdering, human heart-eaters, are causing in this water-locked city by the sea. When teaching the Indian to appreciate the value of a Government which proposes to protect them, at the same time enabling them to participate in all the privileges of an enlightened organization, why cannot they be made self-sustaining, and hired out, as other convicts? What heroic deeds of greatness have they ever achieved, that they should be treated like prisoners of State, instead of inhuman fiends, at whose record of crime Satan would grin with delight? Many of them are permitted to roam with freedom, not only in every portion of the city, but in the country around, thus terrifying timid citizens with their presence, causing them to change their habitations to the town for protection. While they are fed and clothed by the Government, free, they hire themselves out at lower wages than poor laborers can work for, and be sustained. This has become a great source of grievance to the community, which they desire to have redressed by their removal. Much of the money they make is only to buy food for a pampered taste, which has been acquired since they came here, and not to sustain their existence. If labor has to compete with crime, the hand of industry with the bloody hand, where is the hope on which honesty is to hinge and work its way through the world? The whole can be told in a few words: While these sixty savages are here being employed in every department of manual labor, thus taking the bread from the mouths of dependent women and children, it is productive of suffering in our midst, whilst those advanced in life look in vain for a support to their sons, whose hands are tied by these savage oppressors.”
Two weeks after the news of the pope’s death had been received in other cities, and the drapery of mourning become dusty, the cathedral bells here commenced tolling at sunrise, and continued the entire day until dusk. The chimes in Rome were never struck with more regularity, and when the sun sank to his home in the west a sigh of relief was felt, that every thing has an end. If the day was spent by the Catholics in mourning for the pope, the night was spent by the visitors in giving expression to the most jubilant demonstrations of joy—the festivities being gotten up by the Yacht Club, which appears to be the only central live-figure head-light in the city now. On this occasion the Yacht House was illuminated with Chinese lanterns, which encircled it over the water’s edge; calcium lights blazed with overpowering brilliancy, and the most dazzling rockets shot through the air like meteors, while the brass band discoursed very loud, stirring strains, and the little boats glided about on the bay, like ignes-fatui, with lights suspended on their masts or on their bows, glittering through the darkness, resembling a distant constellation. With the freedom of uncaged birds, fresh from bondage, every one appeared buoyant, giving themselves up to the pleasure of the hour with a kind of abandon as if, after all, it might be a panoramic view produced by some Eastern Magi. After the illumination on the water was ended, the string-band commenced playing, when busy feet kept time to the harp and viol, without a thought of the confessional which would have to be met before the next sacrament.
For a few days past the weather has been rather capricious, the sunshine hidden behind damp clouds, and the wind more boisterous than sight-seekers enjoy. We imagine some of the tourists’ note-books are full enough of complaints. The weather is delicious now, the air all balm, the sky all blue, the bananas waving in the gentlest of breezes, the sea heaving softly under the sunlight. We shall miss this changeful sea at St. Augustine, the reviving air, the lovely palms, the mocking-bird upon whose happiness the day closed too soon, as from his perch in a neighboring orange-tree he trills his song of joy until the night is far spent.
St. Augustine, April, 1878.—The Indians have gone! Yes, the pets of some and the pests of others have left St. Augustine amidst the sympathetic demonstrations of a crowd, followed by the best wishes of all, that they may arrive safely at their points of destination. The marks of improvement are evident on the outside of them; but none need nurse the delusion that it has struck in. On being asked what they were going to do with their clothes when they went West, they replied, with a symbolic jerk, “Tear them off, and throw them away!” Think of Mrs. Black Horse and Mochi, with their heads dressed in fashionable Mother Goose hats, with plumes and white tissue veils, that had been given them by lady-visitors, their bodies rolled up in a buffalo-skin, before a campfire, after a long march in the rain, or fresh from a war-dance, with the dripping scalps of white men hung from their waists as trophies of bloody triumphs! They were delighted at the prospect of freedom; beating against rock walls and prison-bars was too much pressure for them—to which they yielded in sullen despair. They left their literature—religious picture-books and buffalo-hunts not being in harmony—“Moody and Sankey” song-books suddenly losing all charm for them, “Hold the Fort” being changed to “Leave the Fort.” They said, “Me man, no school.” Some of them could speak Spanish, and while here learned a little English. They corresponded with their kindred on the plains by picture-writing. A lady-visitor wished Minimic, or Eagle’s Head, to give her a letter written him by his wife, when he replied, “What white squaw do with my squaw’s letter?” The poetry of the idea was evidently lost on him.
The “noble red man” of the novel-writer and these coarse savages, whose rough nature repels all polish, are quite different. Three of these Indians, who have taken to the customs of the whites more kindly than the others, are to be sent North and educated, the expense incurred being the enterprise of private individuals.
A year previous to their departure, while the work of civilization was supposed to be progressing very rapidly, in the midst of untiring efforts on the part of Church-missionaries to convert them, one of the tribes was discovered plotting mutiny. They could not endure the strain of civilization—it was too much for them. White Horse, chief of the Kiowas, reckoning the number of moons long past since he had the promise of freedom, excited an insurrectionary movement among the Kiowas, twenty-four in number. When their intentions were manifested by insubordination, a squad of armed soldiers were ordered from the barracks to seize them after they had entered their mess-room in the casemate. The Indians were marched out in pairs, and searched, to which they submitted without resistance. A number of barbed, steel-pointed arrows, and pistols, were found on their persons. They did not intend a general massacre; only those who opposed them in their efforts to escape were to be murdered. The fort was closed for a day or two only, when White Horse and his principal accomplices—Lone Wolf, Woman’s Heart, and To-Zance—were put in irons. These Indians pined for their homes; their lofty, aristocratic natures revolted against the discipline to which they were subjected, as unmanly and unsuited to the dignity of a warrior, who had roamed with unrestrained movements over the plains, free as the herd which he killed. Most of the Indians, while here, employed their time in making bows and arrows, and polishing sea-beans, while the women worked over old bead moccasins, and freshened them up with new soles and buckskin linings, all of which were bartered to visitors—thus making their bondage more endurable, besides furnishing themselves with pocket-money.
As in time past, the old fort, that has lifted its turrets unmoved for centuries to the fierce gales which visit the coast, will again become the home of the lizard, a resort for bats, the abode of the owl, whose shrill screechings and weird movements make the darkness of night more suggestive of a ghoul-haunted castle, where unhappy spirits are supposed to assemble, when “coarser spirits wrapped in clay” are snoring to the ascending and descending scale of unwritten sounds.