Petals Plucked from Sunny ClimesBrooks, A. M. (Abbie M.)
History
Petals Plucked from Sunny Climes
Brooks, A. M. (Abbie M.)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Florida -- Description and travel; Florida -- History
_Translation._--Don Ferdinand VI. being King of Spain, and the
Field Marshal Don Alonzo Fernando Hereda being Governor and Captain
General of this place, St. Augustine, of Florida, and its Province.
This fort was finished in the year 1756. The works were directed by
the Captain Engineer, Don Pedro de Brazos y Garay.
Every year hundreds of visitors rush into Fort Marion, and then the
dungeon, with an awe-stricken feeling, as though the imaginary groans
which are said to have been uttered here centuries since were ready to
burst through the rocks and echo again, like the words of Plato, which
his friends said froze in the winter, but on the return of spring thawed
out again.
Several years after the cession of Florida to the United States the
north-east bastion of this fortress caved in, immediately under the
highest tower, disclosing a dungeon fourteen feet square. On the same
day was made the discovery of a square rock, cemented in an opening
similar to those in the casemates, only much less, which was undoubtedly
the entrance.
A tempest there you scarce could hear,
So massive were the walls.
Some human bones and hair were then discovered and seen by volunteers
from the ship Dolphin--a published account of which was forwarded to
Washington, and deposited in the Congressional Library. The Smithsonian
Institute has no knowledge of these cages, bones, or any thing
pertaining to them ever having been placed there--which forever
silences all inquiries in that direction. They told us, while in
Washington, that when visitors came to the Institute asking information
about them, the Professors were at a loss to know what they implied by
their interrogations.
It has long been a demonstrated fact that some of the St. Augustine
natives have a way of answering questions asked about them in accordance
with their impressions, regardless of dates or historic records. The
following description of the old fort mysteries is a change from the
iron cages--the writer having visited the dungeon before the cage tale
had been invented: "We were taken into the ancient prisons of the
fort-dungeons, one of which was dimly lighted by a grated window, the
other entirely without light, and by the flame of a torch we were shown
the half-obliterated inscriptions scratched on the walls long ago by
prisoners. But in another corner of the fort we were taken to look at
the secret cells which were discovered a few years since in consequence
of the sinking of the earth over a narrow apartment between them. These
cells are deep under ground, vaulted over head, and without windows. In
one of them a wooden machine was found, which some supposed might have
been a rack, and in the other a quantity of human bones. The doors of
these cells had been walled up, and concealed with stucco, before the
fort passed into the hands of the Americans."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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