Southern Stories / Retold from St. Nicholas

by Various

In the center of the city is a large open square called the Plaza de la Constitucion, surrounded by beautiful live-oaks and pride-of-India trees, with their long, hanging-mosses and sweet-smelling blossoms.

Most of the streets are narrow, without sidewalks, and from the high-walled gardens comes the smell of orange-blossoms, while roses and other flowers bloom everywhere and all the time.

At the southern end of the town stands the old Convent of St. Francis, which is now used as barracks for United States soldiers.

The old palace of the governor still stands, but now contains the post-office and other public buildings. There was once a wall around the town, and one of the gates of this still remains. There is a tower on each side of the gateway, and the sentry-boxes, and loopholes through which the guards used to look out for Indians and other enemies, are still there. Along the harbor edge of the town is a wall nearly a mile long, built at great expense by the United States Government as a defense against the encroachments of the sea. This is called the sea wall, and its smooth top, four feet wide, is a favorite promenade. Walking northward on this wall, or on the street beside it, if you like that better, we reach, a little outside of the town, what I consider the most interesting feature of St. Augustine. This is the old fort of San Marco, which, since it came into the possession of our government, has been renamed Fort Marion.

THE SPANISH COAT-OF-ARMS.

The old fort is not a ruin, but is one of the best-preserved specimens of the style of fortification of the Middle Ages. We cross the moat and the drawbridge, and over the stone door-way we see the Spanish coat-of-arms, and under it an inscription stating that the fort was built during the reign of King Ferdinand VI of Spain, with the names and titles of the dons who superintended the work. It took sixty years to build the fort, and nearly all the work was done by Indians who were captured and made slaves for the purpose. Passing through the solemn entrance, we come to an open square surrounded by the buildings and walls of the fort, which, in all, cover about an acre of ground. On the right is an inclined plane which serves as a stairway to reach the ramparts where the cannon were placed. The terre-plein, or wide, flat surface of the ramparts, makes a fine walk around the four sides of the fort from which we can have views of land and sea. At each corner was a watch-tower, three of which remain; and into these one can mount, and through the narrow slits of windows get a view of what is going on outside without being seen himself. At one end of the fort is the old Spanish chapel, and all around the square are the rooms that used to be occupied by the officers and the soldiers. Into the chapel the condemned prisoners used to be taken to hear their last mass before being marched up to the north rampart and shot.

Down in the foundations of the fort are dungeons into which no ray of sunlight can enter. After the fort came into the possession of our government, a human skeleton was found in one of the dungeons, chained to a staple in the wall; and in another dungeon, without door or window and completely walled up, there were discovered two iron cages which had hung from the walls, each containing a human skeleton. The supports of one of the cages had rusted away, and it had fallen down, but the other was still in its place. A great many romantic stories were told about these skeletons, and by some persons it was supposed that they were the remains of certain heirs to the Spanish throne whose existence it was desirable utterly to blot out. One of the skeletons was that of a woman or girl. The cages and skeletons have been removed, but we can go into the dungeons if we take a lantern. Anything darker or blacker than these underground cells cannot be imagined. I have seen dungeons in Europe, but none of them were so hopelessly awful as these.

In another part of the fort is a cell in which Osceola, the celebrated Indian chief, was once imprisoned, in company with another chief named Wild Cat. There is a little window near the top of the cell, protected by several iron bars; and it is said that Wild Cat starved himself until he was thin enough to squeeze between two of the bars, having first mounted on the shoulders of Osceola in order to reach them. Whether the starving part of the story is true or not, it is certain that he escaped through the window.

When I last visited San Marco, it was full of Indian prisoners who had been captured in the far West. Some of them were notorious for their cruelties and crimes, but in the fort they were all peaceable enough. It was one of these Indians, a big, ugly fellow, who lighted me into the dungeon of the skeleton-cages.