The monument on the public square was erected in 1812-13, upon the information of the adoption of the Spanish constitution, as a memorial of that event, in pursuance of a royal order to that effect, directed to the public authorities of all the provincial towns. Geronimo Alvarez was the Alcalde under whose direction it was erected. The plan of it was made by Sr. Hernandez, the father of the late General Hernandez. A short time after it was put up, the Spanish constitution having had a downfall, orders were issued by the government that all the monuments erected to the constitution throughout its dominions, should be demolished. The citizens of St. Augustine were unwilling to see their monument torn down; and with the passive acquiescence of the governor, the marble tablets inscribed Plaza de la Constitucion being removed, the monument itself was allowed to stand; and thus it remains to this day, the only monument in existence to commemorate the farce of the constitution of 1812. In 1818, the tablets were restored without objection.
The bridge and causeway are the work of the government of the United States. The present sea-wall was built between 1835 and 1842, by the United States, at an expense of one hundred thousand dollars.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PRESENT APPEARANCE OF ST. AUGUSTINE, AS GIVEN BY THE AUTHOR OF THANATOPSIS—ITS CLIMATE AND SALUBRITY.
St. Augustine has now attained, for this side of the Atlantic, a period of most respectable antiquity. In a country like America, where States are ushered into existence in the full development of maturity, where large cities rise like magic from the rude forest, where the "oldest inhabitant" recollects the cutting down of the lofty elms which shadowed the wigwam of the red man, perchance on some spot now in the heart of a great city; an antiquity of three centuries would be esteemed as almost reaching back (compared with modern growth) to the days of the Pharaohs.
The larger number of early settlements were unsuitably located, and were forced to be abandoned on account of their unhealthiness; but the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine has remained for near three hundred years where it was originally planted; and the health of its inhabitants has, for this long period, given it a deserved reputation for salubrity and exemption from disease, attributable to locality or extraneous influences or causes.
The great age attained by its inhabitants was remarked by De Brahm; the number and healthfulness of the children that throng its streets, attract now, as they did then, the attention of strangers. This salubrity is easily accounted for, by the almost insular position of the city, upon a narrow neck of land nearly surrounded by salt water; the main shore, a high and healthy pine forest and sandy plains, so near the ocean as to be fanned by its constant breezes, and within the sound of its echoing waves; a situation combining more local advantages for salubrity could hardly be imagined. While it will never probably increase to any great extent in population, it will hardly be likely to decrease. Its health, easy means of support, unambitious class of inhabitants, with their strong attachments and family and local ties, will contribute to maintain St. Augustine as the time-honored ancient city, with its permanent population, and its visitors for health, for centuries perhaps yet to come.
I cannot perhaps better conclude these historic notices than by giving the impressions of the author of Thanatopsis,[43] one whose poetic fame will endure as long as American literature exists. Writing from St. Augustine in April, 1843, he says:
"At length we emerged upon a shrubby plain, and finally came in sight of this oldest city of the United States, seated among its trees on a sandy swell of land, where it has stood for three hundred years. I was struck with its ancient and homely aspect, even at a distance, and could not help likening it to pictures which I had seen of Dutch towns, though it wanted a wind-mill or two to make the resemblance perfect. We drove into a green square, in the midst of which was a monument erected to commemorate the Spanish constitution of 1812, and thence through the narrow streets of the city to our hotel.
"I have called the streets narrow. In few places are they wide enough to allow two carriages to pass abreast. I was told that they were not originally intended for carriages; and that in the time when the town belonged to Spain, many of them were floored with an artificial stone, composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock; and that no other vehicle than a hand-barrow was 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, built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of small shells, 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. You are told that these are the remains of those who inhabited the country under the Spanish dominion, and that the dialect you have heard is that of the island of Minorca.
"'Twelve years ago,' said an acquaintance of mine, 'when I first visited St. Augustine, it was a fine old Spanish town. A large proportion of the houses which you now see roofed like barns, were then flat-roofed; they were all of shell rock, and these modern wooden buildings were then not erected. That old fort which they are now repairing, to fit it for receiving a garrison, was a sort of ruin, for the outworks had partly fallen, and it stood unoccupied by the military, a venerable monument of the Spanish dominion. But the orange-groves were the wealth and ornament of St. Augustine, and their produce maintained the inhabitants in comfort. Orange-trees of the size and height of the pear-tree, often rising higher than the roofs of the houses, embowered the town in perpetual verdure. They stood so close in the groves that they excluded the sun; and the atmosphere was at all times aromatic with their leaves and fruit, and in spring the fragrance of the flowers was almost oppressive.'