CHAPTER XVII.
Dungeness, and the “Greatest of the Lees”—Cultivation of the Olive—Criminations of the Officers.
When Nathaniel Greene, one of the best and most trusted of Washington’s Generals, retired to civil life, it was with an estate seriously embarrassed by his patriotic sacrifices. During his brilliant campaign in the Southern Department, the battles of the Cowpens, Guilford Court-House and Eutaw Springs, destroyed the British power in Georgia and the Carolinas. At its close there was only left to Washington the easier task of concentrating all his forces upon Cornwallis in Virginia, and so ending the war. But in carrying on this campaign, General Greene had been compelled to exhaust his private means in his efforts to clothe and feed his army. Congress voted him thanks and medals; North and South Carolina and Georgia voted him waste lands. He died in Georgia. Congress, enlarging its bounty, then voted him a monument. The grateful people whom he saved, had actually forgotten where they buried him; the monument was never built; and to this day “no man knoweth the place of his burial.”
His wife removed to one of the Georgia land grants, a little island on the extreme Southern border of the State, but a few miles from Fernandina. Here she married again, builded, planted olive trees and died; and when they came to put a head-stone to her grave, they inscribed it to the memory of “Catharine Miller,” widow of the late Major-General Nathaniel Greene. Poor Miller was never mentioned, and General Greene, whose grave was not worth a head-stone, had a name good enough to lend special honor to the monument of his re-married and then wealthy wife.
Our last trip along the upper coast of Florida was to steam over to this little island, given by Georgia to Greene, and passed subsequently into the hands of Rebels, who have now deserted it to the negroes.
Landing at a tumble-down dock, and climbing the bluff, we came to a corn-field, cleanly cultivated by the negroes, skirted a little wood, giving wide berth to a black-snake in the path, and then, through some tangled shrubbery, suddenly came out in front of what had been intended for a fine mansion. It was built of shell concrete, and but partly finished, when the family deserted it at the approach of the national forces. Since then the negroes have been too busy supporting themselves to give much thought to house building, and now the mansion of their “masters” is likely to remain unbuilt forever.
But no neglect could destroy the magnificent shrubbery. Beneath the few spreading live-oaks, were superb oleanders, as large as Northern apple-trees, and in full bloom. Great bayonet plants reminded us that we were still in the spiteful land of the Palmetto. Cactus reached above our heads, cloth of gold roses, mimosa and a score of Southern flowering shrubs, to which our Northern amateur florists could give no names, made up a tangled mass of luxuriant loveliness all about the house. Beyond these stretched the rows of olive trees. “Here you can make beaucoup de l’argent,” exclaims our enthusiastic little French Mayor of Fernandina; and straightway whips you out a bottle of oil from his vest pocket to prove it. The happy dreamer imagines olive oil the Philosopher’s stone, and is sure that now, with these olive trees of Dungeness, and the young ones he is planting at Fernandina, the future of Florida is secure. And, indeed, so far as being able to grow olives and make oil is concerned, it is. The orchard here has received no attention since the flight of the Rebel owners, but the olive crop this year, in spite of the neglect, will be good, and the trees look vigorous and hardy.
Through a wilderness of forest trees and dense undergrowth, a blind path led to a little cleared eminence, shut in by a wall of the same shell concrete—the family grave-yard. Conspicuous among the dozen moss-covered monuments is that of Mrs. General Greene, already referred to. Near it is another, inscribed to the foremost of Greene’s Generals, beside whose grave, we may well stop thoughtfully and long:
“Sacred to the memory of