47 
mark the following: the Seminoles, as it is asserted, manifestly 
stirred up by the English, without the least provocation, com¬ 
menced a war against the United States, in the year 1818. Ge- 
neral Jackson defeated them, and directed the two Englishmen, 
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, who had sold weapons and ammuni¬ 
tion to the Indians, as well as stimulated them to war against 
the United States, to be hanged. After this, he attacked Pensa¬ 
cola and the Barrancas, where the Indians were sheltered and pro¬ 
tected by the Spanish authorities. The town of Pensacola was 
poorly fortified and soon mastered. General Jackson then open¬ 
ed a cannonade of two pieces of artillery on Fort Barrancas. The 
Spanish governor hid himself under the steps of the coast battery, 
and surrendered the fort, since by the agreeing statement of two 
captains, the garrison refused to fight, (consisting of three com¬ 
panies of the Spanish regiment of Louisiana,) because they had 
received their pay for some time. “Audacibus fortuna juvat! ?? 
On the 14th of January I took a walk in front of the town to 
view the former fortifications of this place. These works owe 
their foundation to the English. England, indeed avowedly pos¬ 
sessed this country, West Florida, from 1763 to 1783; at the 
treaty of Versailles, it was fully given up to Spain, after it had 
been conquered by Don Galvez, then governor of Louisiana, who 
afterwards was Viceroy of Mexico. The best defence of Pensa¬ 
cola consists in the marshes which surround it. Beyond the 
marshes lie undistinguishable sand hillocks, which were occupied 
by forts. A thousand paces in front of the town, to the left of 
the road leading to Mobile, lies a fort. 
The form of this fort, I made out from the remains grown over 
with bushes. Behind it was open, and there are still the ruins of 
a bomb-proof powder magazine, built of brick, which the English 
blew up in 1814. It appeared partly covered with timber. 
A thousand paces farther to the left, are the ruins of another 
somewhat larger fort, upon another small eminence so disposed 
as to command the interior of the first. It appears to have been 
calculated for from four to five hundred men, while the first 
could only shelter two hundred. The ramparts of both are com¬ 
posed merely of sand, and the high bushes of various species, 
which flourish to a remarkable degree on the ruins, exhibit the 
productive force of the climate. The soil around the forts, also 
consisting of sand only, yields palmettoes and dwarf oaks. I had 
remarked the same soil upon the land side of Fort Barrancas, and 
besides cactus, some of which grew in a screw-like form through 
the bricks, many of them in the driest sand. In 1782, a hand¬ 
ful of Waldeckers, then in English pay, defended these works 
against fifteen thousand Spaniards, and in the absence of an Eng- 
