44 The Winning of the West 



any way, and she has had little to do with our na- 

 tional history, and nothing whatever to do with the 

 history of the West. 



In the peninsula of East Florida, in the land of 

 the cypress, palmetto, and live oak, of open savan- 

 nas, of sandy pine forests, and impenetrable, in- 

 terminable morasses, a European civilization more 

 ancient than any in the English colonies was mould- 

 ering in slow decay. Its capital city was quaint St. 

 Augustine, the old walled town that was founded 

 by the Spaniards long years before the keel of 

 the Half-Moon furrowed the broad Hudson, or 

 the ships of the Puritans sighted the New England 

 coast. In times past St. Augustine had once and 

 again seen her harbor filled with the huge, cumbrous 

 hulls, and whitened by the bellying sails, of the 

 Spanish war vessels, when the fleets of the Catho- 

 lic king gathered there, before setting out against 

 the seaboard towns of Georgia and the Carolinas; 

 and she had to suffer from and repulse the retalia- 

 tory inroads of the English colonists. Once her 

 priests and soldiers had brought the Indian tribes, 

 far and near, under subjection, and had dotted the 

 wilderness with fort and church and plantation, the 

 outposts of her dominion ; but that was long ago, and 

 the tide of Spanish success had turned and begun 

 to ebb many years before the English took posses- 

 sion of Florida. The Seminoles, fierce and warlike, 

 whose warriors fought on foot and on horseback, 

 had avenged in countless bloody forays their fellow- 

 Indian tribes, whose very names had perished under 



