When St. Augustine was laid out, the theory of those days was that, without excessively narrow streets, it was impossible to have a cool town in these low latitudes. The narrower the streets, they argued, the more perfect the draught through them; and so it comes that, from the projecting second-story balconies on the one side, in the main street of St. Augustine, you can almost step to the similar balconies on the other side. In the street itself there is no room for sidewalks, and I am not even sure that carts can pass each other.[23] Behind each house is a luxuriant garden; great masses of flowers hang over the walls or depend from the trellises; and, through the open doors, one gets glimpses of hammocks, swinging under vine-clad trees, and huge, but airy, Sleepy-Hollow chairs. Curious little piazzas jut into the narrow streets, and dark Spanish faces, with coal-black brows and liquid eyes, look out from the windows. One such, a pretty Madame Oliveras, whose husband has gone to the Rebel army, and concerning whose fate, on his (now daily expected) return, his fond wife is prettily anxious, displays a tempting array of palmetto work in her rag-carpeted little parlor—toy baskets, hats, napkin rings, fans and the whole catalogue of palmetto fancy work—drawing numerous greenbacks from the Yankees, and evoking, in consequence, much warm politeness from the grateful grass widow. There are not many Rebels here, she thinks; but the fact that any number of wives, like her, are expecting returning husbands, “now that paroles have been given,” remains unexplained. Of course the Government will never think of interfering with their little plantations; surely, they meant no harm, and knew no better than to fight for their State, as they were told! * * * * * Passing through an old cemetery, where obelisks of granite, without a word of inscription, have stood for nearly three hundred years; where old tombs have fallen to pieces in the lapse of time, and human bones protrude amid the decaying masonry; while, over all, the rich vegetation of the semi-tropical climate throws a kindly concealing veil of beauty, we come out into groves of exquisite fragrance. The ground is covered with oranges, and the fruit is still clinging to the trees in bunches that bend down and almost break the branches. The oranges are of a size, and especially of a flavor, never found at the North; and the deliciously dreamy, luxuriously indolent retreats one finds amid these orange groves, and in the pleasant cottages of the owners, make St. Augustine seem a town of another continent and century.