3i6 Editors Letter- Box. 



St. Augustine, Fla., Wednesday, March 13, 1867. 



Messrs. Tilton & Co., — I promised you a letter from this "land of flowers " 

 for the readers of your new Horticultural Magazine. I fulfil the promise ; but 

 how little there is of horticultural interest you cannot easily imagine. Instead 

 of a land of flowers, this is a land of desolation rather than cultivation. 



This town is a grand old ruin. It once was — the Lord knows what! It is 

 hard to say what it is now, except a queer place, as compared with a Massachu- 

 setts village of two thousand people ; which is the numerical strength of this 

 " city," counting the garrison, visitors, and residents. These are composed of 

 about thirty heads of Northern families, in which is embodied all there is here 

 of active life and energy ; and the balance is an admixture of the old Minorcan 

 race, imported by the English during the twenty years they held possession 

 (1761-1781), with a small number of old Spanish, a few "natives of the South," 

 a few, very few, foreigners, and about the usual proportion of negroes, who can 

 muster about a hundred and forty votes, — which shows that something like a 

 third of the inhabitants are colored. 



It is said, that in all the house-yards and gardens, and also outside the walls 

 (for this was a walled city), the land was thickly planted with orange-trees ; and, 

 previous to the destructive frost of 1835, oranges were exported by the miUion. 

 Perhaps that is true ; indeed, I hope it is : for, unless that is the fact, I doubt 

 whether a million orange values ever were exported from the place — that is, of 

 the products of the earth — since it was first discovered in 1512 by old Ponce de 

 Leon. 



I am also morally certain that the native population, if it remains in its present 

 condition of inertia, never will grow aught that can be exported. Indeed, from 

 the very foundation, the city has been a military dependant, a very parasite, and, 

 whenever left to its own resources, has sunk, as it is now, into poverty, and a mis- 

 erable mode of existence, approximating to beggary. 



About one-third of the houses in the town are so decayed as to be uninhabit- 

 able, or only tenantable under the discomfort of leaky roofs. From many, the 

 roofs are entirely gone, and from many places where handsome mansions once 

 stood the materials have been carried away to build other houses. 



The walls of all the old buildings, including the curious old castle, or fort, 

 the sea-wall, and many garden-walls, were built of " coquina rock," — an ag- 

 glomeration of small shells. The quarry is on Anastasia Island, in front of the 

 town, and is inexhaustible. 



The town is upon a narrow peninsula, its shape a parallelogram, about a mile 

 long, and fourth of a mile wide ; the fort at the north-east angle on the sea front, 

 and the barracks at the south-east. This is an imposing structure, built in the 

 Indian war of '35, and afterwards suftered to become much dilapidated, but 

 now being completely repaired, and rendered capable of accommodating a thou- 

 sand men. 



The streets are all narrow, without sidewalks, and none of them hardly wide 

 enough for two teams to pass. Of course there is no room for shade-trees, ex- 

 cept on the Plaza ; and not many are seen there. 



