Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; Its Literary History, Indian Tribes and AntiquitiesBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
History
Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; Its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Florida -- Antiquities; Florida -- History; Florida -- History -- Bibliography; Indians of North America -- Florida
The next book that comes under our notice we owe to the misfortune of a
shipwreck. On the “twenty-third of the seventh month,” 1696, a bark,
bound from Jamaica to the flourishing colony of Philadelphia, was
wrecked on the Floridian coast, near Santa Lucea, about 27° 8´, north
latitude. The crew were treated cruelly by the natives and only saved
their lives by pretending to be Spaniards. After various delays and much
suffering they prevailed on their captors to conduct them to St.
Augustine. Here Laureano de Torres, the governor, received them with
much kindness, relieved their necessities, and furnished them with
means to return home. Among the passengers was a certain Jonathan
Dickinson a Quaker resident in Pennsylvania. On his arrival home, he
published a narrative of his adventures,[62] that attracted sufficient
attention to be reprinted in the mother country and translated into
German. It is in the form of a diary, introduced by a preface of ten
pages filled with moral reflections on the beneficence of God and His
ready help in time of peril. The style is cramped and uncouth, but the
many facts it contains regarding the customs of the natives and the
condition of the settlement give it value in the eyes of the historian
and antiquarian. Among bibliopolists the first edition is highly prized
as one of the earliest books from the Philadelphia press. The printer,
Reinier Jansen, was “an apprentice or young man” of William Bradford,
who, in 1688, published a little sheet almanac, the first printed matter
in the province.[63] After his return the author resided in Philadelphia
till his death, in 1722, holding at one time the office of Chief Justice
of Pennsylvania. He must not be confounded with his better known
cotemporary of the same name, staunch Presbyterian, and first president
of the College of New Jersey, of much renown in the annals of his time
for his fervent sermons and addresses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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