HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. CCXCV.--DECEMBER, 1874.--Vol. L. THE ANCIENT CITY. IN TWO PARTS.--PART I. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. [Illustration: GARDEN IN ST. AUGUSTINE.] “The world is far away; the broad pine-barrens Like deserts roll between; Be then our mother--take us for thy children, O dear St. Augustine!” It was a party of eight, arranged by Aunt Diana. She is only my aunt by marriage, and she had with her a _bona fide_ niece, Iris Carew, a gay school-girl of seventeen, while I, Niece Martha, as Aunt Diana always calls me, own to full forty years. Professor Macquoid went for two reasons--his lungs, and the pleasure of imparting information. It was generally understood that Professor Macquoid was engaged upon a Great Work. John Hoffman went for his own amusement; with us, because he happened to sail on the same steamer. He had spent several winters in Florida, hunting and fishing, and was in his way something of a Thoreau, without Thoreau’s love of isolation. Mr. Mokes went because Aunt Diana persuaded him, and Sara St. John because I made her. These, with Miss Sharp, Iris Carew’s governess, composed our party. We left New York in a driving January snow-storm, and sailed three days over the stormy Atlantic, seeing no land from the winter desolation of Long Branch until we entered the beautiful harbors of Charleston and Savannah, a thousand miles to the south. The New York steamer went no farther; built to defy Fear, Lookout, and the terrible Hatteras, she left the safe, monotonous coast of Georgia and Upper Florida to a younger sister, that carried us on to the south over a summer sea, and at sunrise one balmy morning early in February entered the broad St. Johns, whose slow coffee-colored tropical tide, almost alone among rivers, flows due north for nearly its entire course of four hundred miles, a peculiarity expressed in its original name, given by the Indians, Il-la-ka--“It hath its own way, is alone, and contrary to every other.” “The question is,” said Sara St. John, “_is_ there any thing one ought to know about these banks?” “‘Ye banks and bray-aas of bon-onny Doo-oon,’” chanted Iris, who, fresh as a rose-bud with the dew on it, stood at the bow, with the wind blowing her dark wavy hair back from her lovely face; as for her hat, it had long ago found itself discarded and tied to the railing for safe-keeping. “The fresh-water shell heaps of the St. Johns River, East Florida,” began the Professor, “should be--should be somewhere about here.” He peered around, but could see nothing with his near-sighted eyes. “Iris,” called Aunt Diana through the closed blinds of her state-room, “pray put on your hat. Miss Sharp! Where is Miss Sharp?”