100 



THE CANADIAN H0KTIUUI.TURI8T, 



cut rei)resents a group of date palms, 

 whose long, slender trunks, crowned 



Dati; Palms. 



with waving plumes of drooping, fea- 

 thery foliage, form an interesting object 

 to one quite unaccustomed to the sight 

 of tropical vegetation. Near this old 

 and now almost ruined building, we 

 encountered a yoke ol' oxen hitched to 

 a cart, which gave us our first and 

 abiding iiujiression of the cattle of 

 Florida. We stood and looked at them 

 with a sense of bewilderment. Whei'e 

 were we ? Was yonder water the Nile 'i 

 Had we been looking at the pyramids'? 

 Were the.se the kine that Pharaoh 

 saw, that had eaten uj) the fat kine, and 

 still were ill-favored and lean 1 Doubt- 

 less they were ; for never, no never, had 

 usuch a vision of life and death, of mov- 



ing bones and horns and hoofs ever 

 passed before mortal vision. But future 

 observations dispelled the illusion. We 

 saw many more cattle during our fur- 

 ther explorations in Florida that were 

 just the counterpart of these. They 

 were frequently to be met with stand- 

 ing nearly leg deep in the river, feeding 

 upon the weeds that grew at the bottom. 

 Poor brutes. There was no grass upon 

 this sandy soil, hence the river bottom 

 was their only pasture ground. 



St. Augustine stands upon a narrow 

 peninsula, with the Matanzas river on 

 the east and the St. Sebastian on the 

 west. Across this peninsula a wall was 

 built by the Spaniards as a defence, 

 tiii'ough whicli a gateway gave access 

 to the city. The wall has disappeared, 

 but tliis city gate yet stands in some 

 measure of pi-eservation, and forms an 

 interesting relic of the past. Of all 

 these relics of an older time the old 

 Fort is the most attractive. It is said 

 to have been more than a hundred and 

 sixty years in building, having been 

 commenced in 1592, only one hundred 

 years after the discovery of America. 

 Its stone walls were laid in the sweat 

 and groans of slaves and prisoners of 

 war. It had its moat and drawbridge, 

 its sentry towers and bastions, and its 

 dungeons too. I crossed the moat and 

 [»assed within its massive arched en- 

 t)-ance ; looked into the looms once 

 occu|)ied by mail-clad tenants, stepped 

 into its donjon keep, and groped ray 

 way around its dark, dismal inner 

 prison, whei'e, it is said, were found 

 within the present century human 

 skeletons in cages. . I climbed up the 

 stone stairway, that has echoed to the 

 tread of armed men that have been 

 sleeping for centuries, and, walking 

 along by the parapet, climbed the tower 

 at the north-eastern angle, and looked 

 out of the window towards the sea. The 

 old fort is slowly crumbling to decay; 

 it has no place in modern warfare. It 



