Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 45 



Spanish rule. The churches and forts had crum- 

 bled into nothing: only the cannon and the brazen 

 bells, half buried in the rotting mould, remained to 

 mark the place where once stood spire and citadel. 

 The deserted plantations, the untraveled causeways, 

 no longer marred the face of the tree-clad land, 

 for even their sites had ceased to be distinguishable ; 

 the great high-road that led to Pensacola had faded 

 away, overgrown by the rank luxuriance of the 

 semi-tropical forest. Throughout the interior the 

 painted savages roved at will, uncontrolled by Span- 

 iard or Englishman, owing allegiance only to the 

 White Chief of Tallasotchee. 1 St. Augustine, with 

 its British garrison and its Spanish and Minorcan 

 townsfolk, 2 was still a gathering place for a few 

 Indian traders, and for the scattered fishermen of 

 the coast ; elsewhere there were in all not more than 

 a hundred families. 3 



Beyond the Chattahooche and the Appalachicola, 

 stretching thence to the Mississippi and its delta, 

 lay the more prosperous region of West Florida. 4 

 Although taken by the English from Spain, there 

 were few Spaniards among the people, who were 



1 "Travels by William Bartram," Philadelphia, 1791, pp. 

 184, 231, 232, etc. The various Indian names are spelt in a 

 dozen different ways. 



* Reise, etc. (in 1783 and '84), by Johann David Schopf, 

 1788, II. 362. The Minorcans were the most numerous and 

 prosperous; then came the Spaniards, with a few Creoles, 

 English, and Germans. 



3 J. D. F. Smyth, "Tour in the United States" (1775), 

 London, 1784, II. 35. 



4 Do. 



