Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
On Cumberland Island is the estate of Dungeness. General Nathaniel
Greene of Rhode Island, one of Washington's most trusted officers, was
the commander of the Revolutionary armies in the South in 1780-81
which drove the British out of that section, gained the victory of
Cowpens in South Carolina, and compelled the withdrawal of Cornwallis
to Yorktown, which ended in his surrender. After the close of the war,
in gratitude for his great services, the people of Georgia presented
him with this estate of about ten thousand acres. He made it his home
for a time, but it afterwards passed away from his family, and being
neglected, the old coquina stone mansion was burnt. The house has
since been reconstructed, and a picturesque avenue of moss-hung live
oaks a mile long stretches over the island near it to the sea. In a
little cemetery on the estate are the graves of General Greene's widow
and daughter. Here is also the grave of "Light Horse Harry" of the
Revolution (the father of General Robert E. Lee), who died abroad in
1818. He had visited and loved Dungeness, and requested to be buried
there. Oaks and palmettos embower these modest graves, which are
carefully preserved.
ANCIENT ST. AUGUSTINE.
St. Augustine, thirty-six miles southeast of Jacksonville, on the
seacoast, is the oldest city in the United States, founded by Menendez
in 1565, and existing to this day with the characteristics of a
Spanish town of the sixteenth century, which have been also reproduced
in the architecture of most of the newer buildings. A small inlet from
the ocean, about fifteen miles south of the mouth of St. John's
River, stretches its arms north and south, the latter arm, called
Matanzas River, seeking the sea again about eighteen miles below. It
thus forms Anastasia Island, sheltering the harbor like a breakwater,
and behind it the city is built, being protected by a sea-wall nearly
a mile long, built of coquina or shell-stone. Another arm of the sea,
called San Sebastian River, is a short distance inland, so that the
town site is really upon a peninsula. About five thousand people
reside permanently in St. Augustine, a few of Spanish descent, and
more of them the offspring of a colony of Minorcans who came in 1769,
but in winter the Northern visitors to the palatial hotels swell the
population to over ten thousand. The town is built on a level sandy
plain, and the older streets are narrow, being only a few feet wide
and without sidewalks. The projecting balconies of some of the ancient
houses almost touch those opposite. The old streets are paved with
coquina and the old houses are built of it, this curious
shell-limestone, quarried on Anastasia Island, hardening upon exposure
to the air. A few streets running north and south, crossed by others
at right angles, and a broader front street bordered by the sea-wall
which makes a fine promenade, compose the town. This sea-wall of
coquina is capped with granite, and was built after the American
occupation of the city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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