Matanzas is situated eighteen miles below St. Augustine, at the mouth of the Bloody Matanzas River. In the vicinity a boarding-house has recently been erected, for the accommodation of visitors. The echoes from busy life are so faint and far away, and so long in reaching us here, that we feel as though we were in another state of existence--the outside world only affecting us like a spent wave, as it dies away on the shore. The fishing-boats steal slowly by with nets and lines; the fishermen are silent, although their lives are not sad; but they snare the voiceless dwellers of the deep, which have peculiar habits to be studied, and baited for with cautious movements, before they can be captured. There is no crowding, no jostling, no dust--all is peace, and the pure air is life. An occasional schooner approaches from New York; it comes like a good angel on a mission of mercy, laden with stores for the sustenance of citizens and strangers. Fort Matanzas, although cracked and seamed from turret to foundation, is ever redolent of past memories. It is about twenty feet in height, and formerly had brass cannon mounted on the ramparts, designed to command Matanzas Bar. During the Spanish rule of 1800, to the time of its cession to the United States, it was occupied by a company of soldiers, who guarded the entrance to St. Augustine; also for the punishment of officers or soldiers who had been drunk, or wandering from the path of duty in any way. Its last commander was Captain Christobal Bravo, whose son, bearing the same name, is now a worthy citizen of St. Augustine, and can relate incidents which occurred during the time his father was stationed there. This fortress, inferring from facts furnished by the old French records, is, no doubt, the one commenced by the two hundred who escaped the night previous to the fatal massacre by Melendez. It never had a portcullis, or sally-port, but was entered by an escalade from the outside, after which the ladder was drawn up and dropped down inside, where were casemates for the soldiers' quarters and rations, also an ordnance department, and lock-up for delinquents to cool off from their potions and meditate upon the uncertainties of all earthly pleasures--particularly that of taking a glass too much! It is partly concealed by vines and foliage--reminding us that Nature, when not interrupted, comes to close the yawning gaps of busy-fingered Time, planting a twining ivy, a hardy cactus, or a climbing rose, covered with blooms and verdure--thus teaching us the lesson of resignation, which clothes our misfortunes in the garments of grace, producing the flowers of fragrance, although the jagged edges of rough, rugged paths surround us. Here we have a fine view of the sea, where the sun rises fresh every morning as the day after its creation; and we can imagine Aurora scattering flowers before his chariot as the fleecy clouds, decked with the purity of the day-dawn, burst upon our delighted vision.