There are two fine, well-appointed hotels there, wide shady lanes leading straight up from the river wherein some pretty cottage homes are nestling, though these, like the rest, are left to run to seed when the earth is at its loveliest, and the June roses begin to bloom.
The springs from which this place takes its name are situated in the centre of the town and in close proximity to the hotel. The water is clear and sparkling, and is used for bathing as well as for drinking purposes; it is classed among the healthiest of the sulphur springs. We pass more orange groves, the trees partly stripped of their golden fruit, for the gatherers are hard at work, and the oranges are lying in heaps upon the ground like mounds of yellow cannon balls. One or two scattered villages and we reach Tocoi, when we take the cars for St. Augustine.
Tocoi is nothing but a rough wooden shed dignified by the name of a railway station, where tourists, when they have landed from the boat, may find temporary shelter from the sun’s burning rays while they wait—and they always have to wait—for the train to carry them on; as there is only one narrow line of rail and one train passing to and fro this waiting process is sometimes trying to the patience. There are not more than half-a-dozen of us landed from the steamer, and having seen us safely off her deck she gives a little shriek of delight, as though glad to be rid of us, and puffs on her way again. We glance round upon our somewhat dingy, dirty surroundings, then along the line for our train. There are no signs of it; there is nothing in sight but a miserable shanty in the last stages of dilapidation. Outside, in the tumble-down porch, a coloured woman with a gaudy handkerchief tied round her head is busy at the washtub, while her dusky brood are tumbling about with a colony of fat pigs and long-legged Cochin-Chinas. We seat ourselves on a hamper under the eaves of the shed—it is close and fusty inside—and wait.
Presently a train that does not seem much larger than a child’s plaything comes puffing slowly along as much as to say, “I’m coming! I’m coming! Don’t be in a hurry.”
We enter a miniature car, wherein we sit three abreast; our Liliputian engine gives a series of asthmatic gasps, as though it had hardly strength to carry itself along, and objected to its living freight, but it is presently lashed by its fire fiend into obedience, and sets off with a jerk.
Our road lies through the densest of dense jungles, a wild and seemingly impenetrable forest, whose tangle of palms, cypresses and oaks, all entwisted with heavy Spanish moss,
“Lets not one sunshaft shoot between!”
After a delightful drive of about an hour and a half our little toy train rings a tinkling bell, and we slacken our already slack pace into the shed dignified by the name of the St. Augustine depot.
CHAPTER XII.
St. Augustine.—A land of the long ago.—A chat with a Spanish antiquity.—Quaint streets.—City gate.—Fort Marion.—The old Slave Market.—The monuments.—The Plaza.—Cathedral and Convent.