SPANISH GARDENS 19 



tures; and forthwith began his efforts to increase the 

 city's population and to induce the Indians to settle 

 in its vicinity. Assistance was sent him from Havana 

 and the work of rebuilding was earnestly advanced; 

 and it was at this time presumably, that stone build- 

 ings began to be the rule. One at least had been built 

 before, however, for it is noted that at the time of the 

 Spanish evacuation, in 1763, there stood an old stone 

 house with the date 1571 upon its front. 



But notwithstanding the efforts of its governor, St. 

 Augustine was sixty-five years in growing to a town 

 of three hundred householders. At that time, how- 

 ever, 1648 it had beside, "a flourishing Monastery 

 of the Order of St. Francis, with fifty Franciscans : and 

 in the city alone a vicar, a parochial curate, etc., at- 

 tached to the Castle." Thus was its prosperity gauged 

 by pontifical measure. 



Sacked and plundered by a buccaneer, worried by 

 the Indians, and harried by the English from their 

 Colony on the north, successively from this date on, it 

 yields nothing more about its gardens until nearly the 

 end of the century. Then, from the pen of the devout 

 and God-fearing Quaker, Jonathan Dickinson, who 

 was shipwrecked on the coast below St. Augustine with 

 his wife and small baby, as they were voyaging from 

 Port Royal in Jamaica to "Pensilvania," and with 

 whom he reached the city after nearly three months 



