ST. AUGUSTINE.


Robinson Crusoe, if need be, and never tire of its love-


lines.


h wide
ks and
td vines
e water
( walks


ich teeming garden
fields; such noble
magnolias; such a
; such broad, wind
to the house-park;
; puch a glorious se


s such brilliant flowers;
groves of grand old live-
tropical luxuriance of tan-
ing avenues, leading from
such delightfully perplex-
!a-beach, the twin of that


on Amelia Island; such oysters, lining the sound-shore
in millions; such game and fish; and such a clear, pure
air-no, never could I tire of Dungeness !-dreamy, ro-
mantic, delicious, entrancing old Dungeness !

 ST. AUGUSTINE.-The visitor to St. Augustine may en-
joy the consciousness that the spot on which he then stands
has behind it a longer stretch of authentic history than any
other within the limits of the United States. It is, indeed,
the oldest European settlement in our country, having been
founded by the Spaniards under Menendez in 1565, forty-
two years prior to the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia,
and fifty-five years before the landing of the Pilgims at
Plymouth Rock. Its history has been checkered and ro-
mantic in the highest degree; it was from the very first a
place of considerable note, and the theatre of interesting
events; and it still possesses a curious aspect and flavor of
antiquity. Coming to it from bustling, active, Northern-
like Jacksonville or Fernandina, one is conscious of a com-
plete and sudden change of time and place-as if the brief
ride on steamer and railway had produced magic results,
and landed him in some quaint, old, dead-alive Spanish town
of the middle ages. The large influx of wealthy settlers
from the North has greatly altered the character of the
place within the past few years; but the smart modern vil-
las still have the air of foreign intruders, and the quaint,
romantic old city retains at once its individuality and its
unlikeness to anything else in America.