rious,
for the eggs were stale.

ST. AUGUSTINE

BY FRANK R. STOCKTON

The city of St. Augustine, on the eastern coast of Florida, stands in
one respect preeminent among all the cities of the United States--it is
truly an old city. It has many other claims to consideration, but these
are shared with other cities. But in regard to age it is the one member
of its class.

Compared with the cities of the Old World, St. Augustine would be called
young; but in the United States a city whose buildings and monuments
connect the Middle Ages with the present time, may be considered to have
a good claim to be called ancient.

After visiting some of our great towns, where the noise and bustle of
traffic, the fire and din of manufactures, the long lines of buildings
stretching out in every direction, with all the other evidences of
active enterprise, proclaim these cities creations of the present day
and hour, it is refreshing and restful to go down to quiet St.
Augustine, where one may gaze into the dry moat of a fort of medieval
architecture, walk over its drawbridges, pass under its portcullis, and
go down into its dungeons; and where in soft semi-tropical air the
visitor may wander through narrow streets resembling those of Spain and
Italy, where the houses on each side lean over toward one another so
that neighbors might almost shake hands from their upper windows, and
are surrounded by orange-groves and rose-gardens which blossom all the
year.

St. Augustine was founded in 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who was
then Governor of Florida. Here he built a wooden fort which was
afterward replaced by the massive edifice which still exists. St.
Augustine needed defenses, for she passed through long periods of war,
and many battles were fought for her possession. At first there were
wars in Florida between the Spanish and the French; and when the town
was just twenty-one years old, Sir Francis Drake captured the fort,
carrying off two thousand pounds in money, and burned half the buildings
in the town. Then the Indians frequently attacked the place and
committed many atrocities; and, half a century after Drake, the
celebrated English buccaneer Captain John Davis captured and plundered
the town.

Much later, General Moore, Governor of South Carolina, took the town and
held it for three months, but was never able to take the fort. In 1740
General Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia, attacked St. Augustine,
planting bat