96 UP THE ST. JOHNS RIVER. 



am sure we saw the counterpart of the Stygian pool. 

 And yet it was not all so gloomy. Bright-hued flowers, 

 green parasites entwining whole groups of adjacent trees, 

 great bunches of mistletoe on the oaks, and now and 

 then a bright cardinal bird or blue jay flitting among 

 the branches, gave us plenty to admire, and almost 

 whiled away the time ; and we had our own internal 

 resources songs, stories, and hard-boiled eggs. 



In the morning, after our arrival at St. Augustine, 

 our first trip was to the Old Fort. This venerable 

 pile of coquina is interesting principally because of 

 its antiquity, and from the historical associations 

 connected with it. Started three hundred years ago, 

 it was a hundred years in building. It was owned 

 and garrisoned successively by Spanish, English, 

 United States, and Confederate troops. It was bom 

 barded by Sir Francis Drake s fleet, the marks of 

 whose balls are still visible on its sea face. It has 

 gloomy dungeons, in one of which, , discovered some 

 years since by accident, two chained skeletons were 

 found. It has an old vaulted chapel, with its altar and 

 niches for images, now all defaced, and the floor marred 

 and scarred as though it had been used to chop wood on. 

 Our irreverent member thought that the old monks 

 must have had sharp knees, from the looks of the floor. 

 The &quot; old sergeant,&quot; who acted as our cicerone, is a 

 character, and relieved his dry statistics with a drier 

 humor peculiarly his own. lie showed us a dungeon 

 where two Seminole chiefs I forget their names had 

 been confined, and a slit in the wall through which one 

 of them escaped. They must have starved that Indian 

 very successfully before he could have accomplished it. 

 A subterranean passage is popularly supposed to exist, 



