AN OLD-WORLD TOWN IN AMERICA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2085, 8 February 1894, Page 42

AN OLD-WORLD TOWN IN AMERICA.

The appearance of St. Augustine (Florida) to the visitor from other parts of the country is as quaint and peculiar as its history is bloody and varied. Nothing at all like it is to be seen in any part of the United States. It resembles some of the old towns of Spain and Italy. The streets are quite narrow, one, which is nearly a mile long, being but 15ft wide, and that in which a principal hotel stands being 12Er, while the widest of all is but 25fG. An advantage of these narrow streets in this warm climate is that they give shade, and increase the draught of air through them as through a flue. Indeed, some of the streets seem almost like a flue rather than an open way ; for many of the houses, with high roof and dormer windows, have hanging balconies along their second storey, which seem almost to touch each other over the narrow street ; and the families sitting in these of a warm evening can chat confidentially, or even shake hands with their over-the-way neighbours. The street walls of the houses are frequently extended in front of the side-garden— the house roof, and perhaps a side balcony, covering this extension — or the houses are built around uncovered courts, so that, passing through the main door of a building, you find yourself still in the open air, instead of within the dwelling. These high and solid garden walls are quite common along the principal streets; and an occasional latticed door gives you a peep into the attractive area beyond the rrassive structure, with perhaps a show of huge stone arches, or of a winding staircase between heavy stone columns, or of a profusion of tropical vegetation in the winter garden, bringing to mind the stories in poem and romance of the lovers of Spanish damsels, and of stolen interviews at the garden gate, or elopements by means of the false key or the bribed porter. The principal streets were formerly well paved or floored with shell-concrete, portions of which are still to be seen above the shifting sand; and this flooring was so carefully swept that the dark-eyed maidens of old Castile, who then led in society here, could pass and re-pass without soiling their satin slippers. No rumbling wheels' were permitted .to crush the firm road-bed, or to whirl the dust into the airy verandahs, where in undisturbed repose sat the .Spanish dons acd dames. — From Oaseell's " Picturesque America."