Kitabı oku: «A Guide-Book of Florida and the South for Tourists, Invalids and Emigrants», sayfa 2

4. AIKEN, S. C., AND THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS

Within the past ten years the advantages for invalids of a residence in the highlands of the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee have been repeatedly urged on the public. The climate in these localities is dry and mild, exceedingly well adapted, therefore, for such cases as find the severe cold of Minnesota irritating, and the moist warmth of Florida enervating. Aiken, S. C., Atlanta, Ga., Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, East Tennessee, and other localities offer good accommodations, and have almost equal advantages in point of climate. Like other resorts, they do not agree with all invalids, but they are suitable for a large class.

One of the best known and most eligible is

Atlanta

From Aiken to Augusta, 16 miles, $1.00. From Augusta to Atlanta by the Georgia railway, 171 miles, $8.50; 11 hours.

Hotels.– The National, on Peach Tree Street, $4.00 per day; the United States and the American, opposite the depot, $3.00 per day.

Telegraph Office in Kimball’s Opera House. Post Office, corner of Alabama and Broad streets.

Bathing House on Alabama street, near U. S. Hotel.

Circulating Library at the Young Men’s Library Association on Broad street.

Atlanta has about 20,000 inhabitants. The water is pure, the air bracing, and the climate resembles that of Northern Italy. The Walton Springs are in the city, furnishing a strongly chalybeate water, much used, and with great success, as a tonic. The fall and spring months are peculiarly delightful, and the vicinity offers many pleasant excursions.

Communication by rail either to Chattanooga and East Tennessee, or south to Macon, etc., is convenient.

5. – FROM CHARLESTON TO SAVANNAH

The tourist has the choice of the railway via Coosawhatchie, or via Augusta, Georgia, or the steamers. The first mentioned road was destroyed during the war, and is not yet in running order.

Steamboats also leave Charleston every Thursday and Saturday, direct for Fernandina, Jacksonville and Palatka, and should be chosen by those who do not suffer from seasickness. They are roomy, and the table well supplied.

Savannah

Hotels.– *Screven House, Pulaski House, both $4.00 a day. *Marshall House, $3.00 per day, $15.00 per week, an excellent table. *Pavilion Hotel, Mr. Noe. Proprietor; a quiet, pleasant house for invalids, $3.00 per day.

Boarding Houses.– Mrs. McAlpin, South Broad street; Mrs. Kollock, South Broad street; Mrs. Savage, Barnard Street; all $3.00 per day, $14.00 per week.

Post Office and Telegraph Office on Bay street, near the Pulaski House.

Street Cars start from the post office to various parts of the city. Fare, 10 cents; 14 tickets for $1.00. Omnibuses meet the various trains, and steamboats will deliver passengers anywhere in the city for 75 cents each.

Livery Stables are connected with all the hotels.

Restaurants.– The best is the Restaurant Francais, in Whitaker Street, between Bay and Bryan Streets.

Newspapers.– Daily Savannah News, Daily Morning News.

Bookstores.– J. Schreiner & Co., near the Pulaski House. (Brinton’s Guide-Book, Historical Record of Savannah.)

Depots.– The Central Railroad depot is in the southwestern part of the city, corner of Liberty and E. Broad Streets. The railroad from Charleston has its terminus here. The Atlantic and Gulf Railroad is in the south-eastern part of the city, corner of Liberty and E. Broad Streets.

Savannah is situated in Chatham county, Ga., on a bluff, about forty feet high, seven miles above the mouth of the river of the same name, on its right bank. Its present population is estimated at 40,000.

The city was founded by Gov. James Oglethorpe, in 1733. It played a conspicuous part during the Revolution. With characteristic loyalty to the cause of freedom the Council of Safety passed a resolution in 1776 to burn the town rather than have it fall into the hands of the British. Nevertheless, two years afterwards the royal troops obtained possession of it by a strategic movement. In the autumn of 1779 the American forces under General Lincoln, and the distinguished Polish patriot, Count Casimir Pulaski, with their French allies under Count d’Estaing, made a desperate but fruitless attempt to regain it by assault. Both the foreign noblemen were wounded in a night assault on the works. Count Pulaski mortally. The spot where he fell is where the Central Railroad depot now stands.

The chief objects of interest are the monuments. The *finest is to the memory of Pulaski. It is in Chipewa square, and is a handsome shaft of marble, surmounted by a statue of Liberty, and supported on a base of granite. Its height is 55 feet; its date of erection 1853.

An older and plainer monument, some fifty feet high, without inscription, stands in Johnson square. It was erected in 1829, and is known as the Greene and Pulaski monument.

The city is beautifully laid out, diversified with numerous small squares, with wide and shady streets. Broad Street and Bay Street have each four rows of those popular southern shade trees known as the Pride of India, or China trees (Melia Azedarach).

A praiseworthy energy has supplied the city with excellent water from public water works; and, in Forsyth Park, at the head of Bull Street, is a fountain of quite elaborate workmanship.

Some of the public buildings are well worth visiting. The Georgia Historical Society has an excellent edifice, on Bryan Street, with a library of 7,500 volumes, among which are said to be a number of valuable manuscripts.

The *Museum, on the northeast corner of Bull and Taylor streets, contains a number of local curiosities.

The Custom House is a handsome fire-proof structure of Quincy granite.

The Exchange building, now used as the Mayor’s office, etc., offers, from its top, the best view of the city.

Excursions.– Several days can be passed extremely pleasantly in short excursions from the city. One of the most interesting of these will be to

*Bonaventure Cemetery.– This is situated 3 miles from the city, on the Warsaw river. A stately grove of live oaks, draped in the sombre weeds by the Spanish moss, cast an appropriate air of pensiveness around this resting place of past generations. A cab holding four persons to this locality costs $8.00.

Thunderbolt, a small town, (two hotels), 4½ miles south-east of the city, on a creek of the same name, is worth visiting, chiefly for the beautiful drive which leads to it. Cab fare for the trip, $8.00.

White Bluff, on the Vernon river, 10 miles from the city has two unpretending hotels, and is a favorite resort of the citizens on account of the excellent shell road which connects it with the city. Cab fare for the trip, $10.00.

Bethesda Orphan House, also 10 miles distant, is erected on the site chosen by the Rev. Mr. Whitfield, very early in the history of the colony. Selina, the pious Countess of Huntington, took a deep interest in its welfare as long as she lived, and it is pleasant to think that now it is established on a permanent footing.

Jasper Spring, 2 miles from the city, is pointed out as the spot where the bold Sergeant Jasper, with one assistant, during the revolutionary war, surprised and captured eight Britishers, and forced them to release a prisoner. The thoughtless guard had stacked arms and proceeded to the spring to drink, when the shrewd Sergeant who, anticipating this very move, was hidden in the bushes near by, rushed forward, seized the muskets, and brought the enemy to instant terms.

6. SAVANNAH TO JACKSONVILLE

The tourist has the choice of three routes for this part of his journey. He can take a sea steamer, and passing out the Savannah river, see no more land until the low shores at the mouth of the St. John River come in sight. Or he can choose one of several small steamboats which ply in the narrow channels between the sea-islands and the main, touching at Brunswick, Darien, St. Catharine, Fernandina, etc., (fare $10.00). Or lastly he has the option of the railroad, which will carry him through to Jacksonville in twelve hours and a half, in a first class sleeping car.

The channel along the coast lies through extensive salt marshes, intersected by numerous brackish creeks and lagoons. The boats are small, or they could not thread the mazes of this net-work of narrow water-courses. The sea-islands, famous all over the world for their long-staple cotton, have a sandy, thin soil, rising in hillocks and covered with a growth of live-oak, water-oak, bay, gum and pine. Between the islands and the main land the grassy marshes extend for several miles. In the distance the western horizon is hedged by a low wall of short-leaved pine. The sea islands are moderately healthy, but the main land is wet, flat and sterile, and its few inhabitants are exposed to the most malignant forms of malarial fever and pneumonia.

On St. Catharine island is the plantation formerly owned by Mr. Pierce Butler, and the scene of Mrs. Francis Kemble Butler’s well-known work, “Life on a Georgia Plantation.” On Cumberland island, the most southern of the sea-islands belonging to Georgia, is the Dungerness estate, 6000 acres in extent, once owned by Gen. Nat. Greene, of Revolutionary fame, and recently bought by Senator Sprague, of Rhode Island, for $10 per acre. With proper cultivation it would yield magnificent crops of sea-island cotton.

Fernandina on Amelia Island, the terminus of the Fernandina and Cedar Keys Railroad, is a town of growing importance (pop. about 2,000; hotels, Virginia House, containing the telegraph office; the Whitfield House, both $3.00 per day; newspaper, the Island City Weekly.) This is one of the old Spanish settlements, and the traces of the indigo fields are still visible over a great part of the island. Fernandina-Oldtown is about a mile north of the present site.

The sub-tropical vegetation is quite marked on the island. Magnificent oleanders, large live oaks, and dense growths of myrtle and palmettos conceal the rather unpromising soil. The olive has been cultivated with success, and there is no reason why a large supply of the best table oil should not be produced here.

A low shell mound covers the beach at Fernandina, and in the interior of the island are several large Indian burial mounds. Several earthworks thrown up during the late war overlook the town and harbor. Fernandina harbor is one of the best in the South Atlantic Coast, landlocked and safe. Its depth is 6½ fathoms, and the water on the bar at low tide is 14 feet. The tide rises from 6 to 7 feet. In spite of what seems its more convenient situation, Fernandina does not seem destined to be a rival of Jacksonville.

PART II.
FLORIDA

1. HISTORICAL

Long before Columbus saw

 
“the dashing,
Silver-flashing,
Surges of San Salvador,”
 

a rumor was abroad among the natives of the Bahamas, of Cuba, and even of Yucatan and Honduras, that in a land to the north was a fountain of water, whose crystal waves restored health to the sick, and youth to the aged. Many of the credulous islanders, forsaking their homes, ventured in their frail canoes on the currents of the Gulf, and never returning, were supposed to be detained by the delights of that land of perennial youth.

This ancient fame still clings to the peninsula. The tide of wanderers in search of the healing and rejuvenating waters still sets thitherward, and, with better fate than of yore, many an one now returns to his own, restored to vigor and life. Intelligence now endorses what superstition long believed.

The country received its pretty and appropriate name, Terra florida, the Flowery Land, from Juan Ponce de Leon, who also has the credit of being its discoverer. He first saw its shores on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1513 – not 1512, as all the text books have it, as on that year Easter Sunday came on April 20th.

At that time it was inhabited by a number of wild tribes, included in two families, the Timucuas, who dwelt on the lower St. John, and the Chahta-Muskokis, who possessed the rest of the country. In later times, the latter were displaced by others of the same stock known as Seminoles (isti semoli, wild men, or strangers). A remnant of these still exist, several hundred in number, living on and around Lake Okee-chobee, in the same state of incorrigible savagery that they ever were, but now undisturbed and peaceful.

The remains of the primitive inhabitants are abundant over the Peninsula. Along the sea shores and water courses are numerous heaps of shells, bones and pottery, vestiges of once populous villages; small piles of earth and “old fields” in the interior still witness to their agricultural character; and large mounds from ten to twenty-five feet in height filled with human bones testify to the pious regard they felt toward their departed relatives, and the care with which, in accordance with the traditions of their race, they preserved the skeletons of the dead. As for those “highways” and “artificial lakes” which the botanist Bartram thought he saw on the St. John river, they have not been visible to less enthusiastic eyes. Mounds of stones, of large size and enigmatic origin, have also been found (Prof. Jeffries Wyman).

For half a century after its discovery, no European power attempted to found a colony in Florida. Then, in 1562, the celebrated French Huguenot, Admiral de Coligny, sent over a number of his own faith and nation, who erected a fort near the mouth of the St. John. As they were upon Spanish territory, to which they had no right, and were peculiarly odious to the Spanish temper by their religion, they met an early and disastrous fate. They were attacked and routed in 1565 by a detatchment of Spaniards under the command of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a soldier of distinction. The circumstance was not characterized by any greater atrocity than was customary on both sides in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, but it has been a text for much bitter writing since, and was revenged a few years after by a similar massacre by a French Protestant, Dominique de Gourgues, and a party of Huguenots.

Pedro Menendez established at once (1565) the city of St. Augustine and showed himself a capable officer. Under the rule of his successors the Spanish sway gradually extended over the islands of the eastern coast, and the region of middle Florida. The towns of St. Marks and Pensacola were founded on the western coast, and several of the native tribes were converted to Christianity.

This prosperity was rudely interrupted in the first decade of the eighteenth century by the inroads of the Creek Indians, instigated and directed by the English settlers of South Carolina. The churches were burned, the converts killed or scattered, the plantations destroyed, and the priests driven to the seaport towns.

The colony languished under the rule of Spain until, in 1763, it was ceded to Great Britain. Some life was then instilled into it. Several colonies were planted on the St. John river and the sea coast, and a small garrison stationed at St. Marks.

In 1770 it reverted once more to Spain, under whose rule it remained in an uneasy condition until 1821, when it was purchased by the United States for the sum of five million dollars. Gen. Andrew Jackson was the first Governor, and treated the old inhabitants in his usual summary manner. In 1824 the seat of government was fixed at Tallahassee, the site of an old Indian town.

At the time of the purchase there were about 4,000 Indians and refugee negroes scattered over the territory. These very soon manifested that jealousy of their rights, and resentment against the whites, which have ever since been their characteristics. From the time of the cession until the out-break of our civil struggle, the soil of Florida was the scene of one almost continual border war. The natives gave ground very slowly, and it was estimated that for every one of them killed or banished beyond the Mississippi by our armies, the general government expended ten thousand dollars.

2. – BOOKS AND MAPS

The facts which I have here sketched in barest outline have been told at length by many able writers. The visitor to the scene of so many interesting incidents should provide himself with some or all of the following works, which will divert and instruct him in many a lagging hour:

Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World. This contains an admirably written account of the Huguenot colony on the St. John.

Fairbanks, The Spaniards in Florida. (Published by Columbus Drew, Jacksonville, Florida.) An excellent historical account of the Spanish colony.

Sprague, History of the Florida War. This is a correct and vivid narrative of the struggle with the Seminoles. The book is now rarely met with in the trade.

Gen. George A. McCall, Letters from the Frontiers. (Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1868.) These letters are mostly from Florida, and contain many interesting pictures of army life and natural scenery there.

R. M. Bache, The Young Wrecker of the Florida Reef. (Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, Philadelphia, 1869.) This is a “book for boys,” and is interesting for all ages. The author was engaged on the Coast Survey, and describes with great power and accuracy the animal and vegetable life of the Southern coast.

Life of Audubon. (Putnam & Son, 1869.) This contains a number of letters of the great ornithologist while in Florida.

A detailed description of the earlier works on the peninsula can be found in a small work I published some years ago, entitled “The Floridian Peninsula, Its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities.” (For sale by the publishers of the present book.)

On the Antiquities of the Peninsula. Prof. Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard College, published, not long since, a very excellent article in the second volume of the American Naturalist.

Every tourist should provide himself with a good State map of Florida. The best extant is that prepared and published by Columbus Drew, of Jacksonville, Florida, in covers, for sale by the publishers of this work. Two very complete partial maps have been issued by the U. S. government, the one from the bureau of the Secretary of War, in 1856, entitled, “A Military Map of the Peninsula of Florida South of Tampa Bay,” on a scale of 1 to 400,000, the other from the U. S. Coast Survey office in 1864, drawn by Mr. H. Lindenkohl, embracing East Florida north of the 29th degree, on a scale of 10 miles to the inch. The latter should be procured by any one who wishes to depart from the usual routes of tourists.

3. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF FLORIDA

1. Geological Formation

Florida is a peninsula extending abruptly from the mainland of the continent in a direction a little east of south. It is nearly 400 miles in length, and has an average width of 130 miles. Its formation is peculiar. Every other large peninsula in the world owes its existence to a central mountain chain, which affords a stubborn resistance to the waves. Florida has no such elevation, and mainly a loose, low, sandy soil. Let us study this puzzle.

The Apalachian (usually and incorrectly spelled Appalachian) plain, sloping from the mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, lies on a vast bed of tertiary, limestone and sand rock. About the thirtieth parallel of north latitude this plain sinks to the sea level, except in middle Florida, where it still remains 200 feet and more in height. This elevation gradually decreases and reaches the water level below the 28th parallel, south of Tampa Bay. It forms a ridge or spine about sixty miles in width, composed of a porous limestone somewhat older than the miocene group of the tertiary rocks, a hard blueish limestone, and a friable sand rock.¹ Around this spine the rest of the peninsula has been formed by two distinct agencies.

Between the ridge and the Atlantic ocean is a tract of sandy soil, some forty miles in width, sloping very gently to the north. It is low and flat, and is drained by the St. John river. So little fall has this noble stream that 250 miles from its mouth it is only 12 miles distant from an inlet of the ocean, and only 3 feet 6 inches above tide level, as was demonstrated by the State survey made to construct a canal from Lake Harney to Indian River. A section of the soil usually discloses a thin top layer of vegetable mould, then from 3 to 6 feet of different colored sand, then a mixture of clay, shells, and sand for several feet further, when in many parts a curious conglomerate is reached, called coquina, formed of broken shells and small pebbles cemented together by carbonate of lime, no doubt of recent (post tertiary) formation. The coquina is never found south of Cape Canaveral, nor north of the mouth of the Matanzas river.

For the whole of this distance a glance at the map will show that the coast is lined by long, narrow inlets, separated from the ocean by still narrower strips of land. These inlets are the “lagoons.” The heavy rains wash into them quantities of sediment, and this, with the loose sand blown by the winds from the outer shore, gradually fills up the lagoon, and changes it into a morass, and at last into a low sandy swamp, through which a sluggish stream winds to its remote outlet. Probably the St. John river was at one time a long lagoon, and probably all the land between the ridge described and the eastern sea has been formed by this slow process.

The southern portion of the peninsula is also very low, rarely being more than six feet above sea level, but its slope, instead of being northward, is generally westward. Much of the surface is muddy rather than sandy, and is characterized by two remarkable forms of vegetable life, the Everglades and the Big Cypress.

The Everglades cover an area of about 4,000 square miles, and embrace more than one half of the State south of Lake Okee-chobee. They present to the eye a vast field of coarse saw-grass springing from a soil of quicksand and soft mud, from three to ten feet deep. During the whole year the water rests on this soil from one to four feet in depth, spreading out into lakes, or forming narrow channels. The substratum is a limestone, not tertiary, but modern and coralline. Here and there it rises above the mud, forming “keys” or islands of remarkable fertility, and on the east and south makes a continuous ridge along the ocean, one to four miles wide, and from ten to fifteen feet high, which encloses the interior low basin like a vast crescentic dam-breast.

Lake Okee-chobee, 1,200 square miles in area, with an average depth of twelve feet, is, in fact, only an extension of the Everglades.

South of the Caloosa-hatchie river, between the Everglades and the Gulf, extends the Big Cypress. This is a large swamp, fifty miles long and thirty-five miles broad. Here the saw-grass gives way to groves of cypress trees, with a rank and tangled undergrowth of vines. The soil is either bog or quicksand, generally covered one or two feet deep with stagnant water. The sun’s rays rarely penetrate the dense foliage, and on the surface of the water floats a green slime, which, when disturbed, emits a sickening odor of decay. Crooked pools and sluggish streams traverse it in all directions, growing deeper and wider toward the Gulf shore, where they cut up the soil into numberless segments, called the Thousand Islands.

The whole of this southern portion of the peninsula lies on a modern, coral formation. The crescent-shaped ridge which forms the eastern and southern boundary of the Everglades, commences north of Key Biscayne Bay, and sweeps southwest to Cape Sable. From the same starting point, another broken crescent of coralline limestone, but many miles longer, extends to the Dry Tortugas, forming the Florida Keys. And beyond this again some five or six miles, making a third crescent, is the Florida Reef. Outside of the Reef, the bottom abruptly sinks to a depth of 800 or 900 fathoms. Between the Reef and the Keys is the ship channel, about 6 fathoms in depth; and between the Keys and the main land the water is very shallow, and covers broad flats of white calcareous mud. Between the coast-ridge and Lake Okee-chobee, the “Keys,” which are scattered through the Everglades, are disposed in similar crescentic forms, some seven regular concentric arcs having been observed. They are all formed of the same character of coral rock as the present Reef and Keys, and undoubtedly owe their existence to the same agency. Each of these crescents was at one time a reef, until the industrious coral animals built another reef further out in the water, when the older line was broken up by the waves into small islands. Thus, for countless thousands of years, has this work of construction been going on around the extremity of the tertiary back bone ridge which at first projected but a short distance into the waters.

What, it may be asked, has impressed this peculiar and unusual crescentic shape to the reefs? This is owing to the Gulf Stream. This ocean-river rushes eastward through the Straits of Florida at the rate of five or six miles an hour, yet it does not wash the reef. By some obscure law of motion, an eddy counter-current is produced, moving westward, close to the reef, with a velocity of one or two miles an hour. Off Key West this secondary current is ten miles wide, with a rapidity of two miles per hour. Its waters are constantly whitened by the calcareous sands of the reef – the relics of the endless conflict between the waves and the untiring coral insects. The slowly-built houses of the latter are broken and tossed hither and thither by the billows, until they are ground into powder, and scattered through the waters. After every gale the sea, for miles on either side of the reef, is almost milk-white with the ruins of these coral homes.

But nature is ever ready with some compensation. The impalpable dust taken up by the counter-current is carried westward, and gradually sinks to the bottom of the gulf, close to the northern border of the gulf stream. At length a bank is formed, reaching to within 80 or 90 feet of the surface. At this depth the coral insect can live, and straightway the bank is covered with a multitudinous colony who commence building their branching structures. A similar process originated all the crescent-shaped lines of Keys which traverse the Everglades and Big Cypress.