Mr. Christobal Bravo, an old and much-respected citizen of the place, who is still alive, was the mayor who surrendered the town.
Immediately after the close of the Rebellion, real estate in the city possessed very little value. Within a short time, however, as a few wealthy men began to secure sites for winter residences, the prices suddenly leaped to the full value, and, in many cases, fictitious values, which they have since maintained.
The climate of St. Augustine is unsurpassed by that of any location in the world. The mass of testimony to its healthfulness and agreeableness is constantly accumulating, and dates from its first settlement.
The extreme old age attained by the aborigines in Florida has been referred to in the extract from Laudonnère. Romans mentions a man, eighty-five years old, who had gone five miles on foot to catch fish, while his mother was meantime busy preparing bread.
The following quaint testimony is from “Romans’s History”:
“Before I quit this subject of the air, I cannot help taking notice of a remark, which I have read somewhere, made by Dr. James McKenzie, which is, ‘The soon molding of the bread, moistness of sponge, dissolution of loaf sugar, and rusting of metals, are marks of a bad air.’ Now every one of those marks are more to be seen at St. Augustine than in any place I ever was at. And yet I do not think that on all the continent there is a more healthy spot. Burials have been less frequent here than anywhere else, where an equal number of inhabitants are found; and it was remarked, during my stay there, that, when a detachment of the royal regiment of artillery once arrived there in a sickly state, none of the inhabitants caught the contagion, and the troops themselves soon recruited. The Spanish inhabitants lived here to a great age, and certain it is, that the people of the Havannah looked on it as their Montpellier, frequenting it for the sake of health.”
Forbes remarks that the Ninth Regiment of British troops never lost a man by natural death during the eight months they were quartered in the town. The undeviating salubrity “of St. Augustine, under the British flag, was certainly augmented by the perfect cleanliness and neatness which was the characteristic of the town during that epoch, and that it continued so while the buildings crumbled into ruins over the heads of the indolent Spaniards, and the dirt and nuisance augmented in every lot is an additional proof of the natural healthfulness of the place.”[40]
From October to June the weather is temperate, the thermometer having a mean of fifty-eight degrees in the winter, and sixty-eight degrees in the spring. During the winter months there are frequent cloudy days, and usually several cold storms in a season. From twenty-five years’ observations Dr. Baldwin, of Jacksonville, prepared a table showing the average of clear days in January to be 20 3/10; February, 19 5/10; March, 20 4/10; April, 25. For the whole year, 235 clear days.
The climate of St. Augustine is sufficiently cold in winter to brace up the constitution, after being relaxed by summer heats. On the other hand, it is sufficiently warm to entice the invalid to be out of doors, and to present opportunities for open-air exercises. The east winds that prevail are tempered by the proximity of the Gulf Stream, a vast volume of warm water moving along the coast of Florida, whose effect is felt thousands of miles farther north in modifying the temperature of the British Isles.
The peculiar location of St. Augustine, upon a narrow peninsula, provides a natural drainage that renders the place particularly desirable as a health resort. Through the winter rains are infrequent, that being the dry season in Florida; whatever rain falls, however, is immediately absorbed by the sandy soil, and, in many parts of the city, the slope of the surface carries the rain-fall immediately into the tide-water environing the city, before it has time to be absorbed by the earth.