Here they found much to interest them;--the great mineral spring, one hundred feet in diameter and thirty feet deep, its water so clear that the bottom could be distinctly seen and so impregnated with soda and sulphur as to make it most healthful, giving ground for the legend that it is the veritable Fountain of Perpetual Youth sought out by Ponce de Leon. The ruins of an old Spanish mill close at hand interested them also. These consisted of an immense brick smokestack and furnace covered with vines; two large iron wheels, thrown down when the mill was destroyed, in a way to cause one to overlap the other, and now a gum tree grows up through them so that the arms of the wheels are deeply imbedded in its trunk. Our friends found this so charming a spot that they spent some days there. Then returning down the river, to the ocean, they continued their voyage in a southerly direction. Their next pause was at St. Augustine, which they found a most interesting old city--the oldest in the United States--noted for its picturesque beauty, its odd streets ten to twenty feet wide, without sidewalks, its crumbling old city gates, its governor's palace, its coquina-built houses with overhanging balconies, its sea walls and old fort, its Moorish cathedral, and the finest and most striking hotel in the world. But what interested our party more than anything else was the old fort--called San Marco by the Spaniard, but now bearing the American name of Fort Marion. They went together to visit it and were all greatly interested in its ancient and foreign appearance; in the dried-up moat, the drawbridges, the massive arched entrance, dark under-ways and dungeons. "Papa," said Elsie, "it's a dreadful place, and very, very old, isn't it?" "Yes," he answered; "it was probably begun in 1565. About how long ago was that?" "More than three hundred years," she returned after a moment's thought. "Oh, that is a long, long while!" "Yes," he said, "a very long while, and we may be very thankful that our lives were given us in this time rather than in that; for it was a time of ignorance and persecution." "Yes, yes, ignorance and persecution;" the words came in sepulchral tones from the depths of the nearest dungeon, "here have I lain for three hundred years with none to pity or help. Oh, 'tis a weary while! Shall I never, never escape?" "Oh, papa," cried Elsie in tones of affright, and clinging to his hand, "how dreadful! Can't we help him out?" "I don't think there is anyone in there, daughter," the captain said in reassuring tones, her Uncle Harold adding, with a slight laugh, "And if there is he must surely be pretty well used to it by this time." All their little company had been startled at first and felt a thrill of horror at thought of such misery, but now they all laughed and turned to Cousin Ronald, as if saying surely it was his doing.