A FLORIDA CART.
Aunt Diana was weary, but jubilant; she had the Professor and the Trojan war, and did her duty by them. Miss Sharp ambled along on the other side, and said “Indeed!” at intervals. Sara read her letters with a dreary sort of interest; her letters were always from “Ed.,” she used to say. John and I, strolling in advance, carried on a good, comfortable, political fight over our newspapers.
“Another cemetery,” said Sara, as the white crosses and head-stones shone out in the sunset on one side of the road.
Mokes, stimulated to unusual conversational efforts by the successes of the day, now brought forward the omnipresent item. “This is—er, I suppose, the old Huguenot burying-ground, a—er—a spot of much interest, I am told.”
“Yes,” replied Sara. “This is the very spot, Mr. Mokes.”
“Oh no, Miss St. John,” said Aunt Diana, coming to the rescue, “you mistake. This is Tolomato.”
“It makes no difference. I am now convinced that they are all Huguenot burying-grounds,” replied Sara, calmly.
The little cemetery was crowded with graves, mounds of sand over which the grass would not grow, and heavy coquina tombs whose inscriptions had crumbled away. The names on the low crosses, nearly all Spanish, Minorcan, Corsican, and Greek, bore witness to the foreign ancestry of the majority of the population. We found Alvarez, La Suarez, Leonardi, Capo, Carrarus, Ximanies, Baya, Pomar, Rogero, and Hernandez. Among the Christian names were Bartolo, Raimauld, Rafaelo, Geronimo, Celestino, Dolorez, Dominga, Paula, and Anaclata.
“It looks venerable, but it only dates back about one hundred years,” said John. “Where the old Dons of two or three centuries ago buried their dead, no one knows; perhaps they sent them all back home, Chinese fashion. An old bell which now hangs in the cathedral is said to have come from here; it bears the inscription, ‘Sancte Joseph, ora pro nobis; D. 1682,’ and is probably the oldest bell in the country.”
“And what was it doing here?” said Mokes, with the air of a historian.