A Zigzag Journey in the Sunny South; or, Wonder tales of early American history ... Fully illustrated

Front matter

The Zigzag Series. BY HEZEK1AH BUTTERWORTH. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN EUROPE. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN CLASSIC LANDS. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE ORIENT. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE OCCIDENT. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN NORTHERN LANDS. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN ACADIA. ZIGZAG JOURNEYS IN THE LEVANT. A ZIGZAG JOURNEY IN THE SUNNY SOUTH. ESTES AND LAURIAT, Publishers, BOSTON, MASS. OLD TIMES IN ST. AUGUSTINE A Zigzag Journey IN THE SUNNY SOUTH; OR, Wonder Tales of Early American History, BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH. A VISIT TO THE SCENES AND ASSOCIATIONS OF THE EARLY AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES AND THE WEST INDIES. FULLY ILLUSTRATED. BOSTON: EST ES AND LA.URIAT, 301-305 Washington Street. 1887. Copyright, 1886, By Estes and Lauriat. All Rights Reserved. PREFACE, HIS melange of historical and dialect stories is intended to direct the attention of young people to the romances of the South, and to suggest literary and historic studies relating to the Gulf States and the Islands of the Southern Cross.

The narrative takes one to Florida and the islands first visited by Columbus. The writer is indebted to his friends for several interpolated sketches and stories, — among them, to Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spof ford, Mr. James Parton, Paul H. Hayne, Mrs. Marie B. Williams, Mrs. Mary E. C. Wyeth, and the late " Sherwood Bonner." The volume has grown out of courses of reading which the writer took to prepare him for a winter excursion to Jacksonville, Tampa, and Havana, and follows the course of the other Zigzag books in picturing countries -by stories. H. B. 2S Worcester Street, Boston CONTENTS. Chapter Page I. Strange Stories 15 II. How to visit Cuba. — A Romance of North Carolina 56 III. The Old Red Settle and an Evening of Merry Provincial Stories . 82 IV. Some Strange Historic Stories 106 V. The Old Red Settle goes South 144 VI.

Charleston, and the Stories of William Gilmore Simms 170 VII. Beautiful Savannah, and Southward 180 VIII. Story-telling at St. Augustine 206 IX. Funny Tales of the Negro Cabins. — The St. John's River .... 233 X. The Isle of June 253 XI. Old Hispaniola 278 XII. Columbus's own Stories of New Spain 290 XIII. At the Tomb of Colon. — The Mississippi 3°6 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE PAGE Washington's House at Mount Vernon . 166 Old Times in St. Augustine . . Frontispiece In the Heart of Florida 17 Washington's Grave at Mount Vernon . 167 Jesuit Mission in Florida 21 Charleston 171 Indians in Flight 29 Sumter 173 Admiral Gaspard de Coligny .... 39 Marion 175 Massacre of the Huguenots at Fort Caroline 43 Pickens 178 Oglethorpe with the Indians .... 181 The French discovering the Remains of the Ribaut Expedition 47 Savannah Harbor 183 Fountain in Forsyth Park, Savannah . 184 Landing of Columbus $2 View of Jacksonville Harbor .... 186 Statue of Columbus ....... 54 Natural Forest 187 Havana .....* 57 Water-carrier 191 George II 61 In the Everglades 199 Charles Edward 69 Scene on the St. John's River .... 203 The Emigrant's House in the Clearing . 72 The Auction 209 Arrest of Charles Edward 73 The Boy Promises 214 " Us Chilluns " 80 Scene in Martinique 218 The Old Red Settle 83 In the Heart of Georgia 227 The Scarecrow 90 Ancient Negro Burial-places .... 229 The Barn Theatricals 97 Mouth of the St. John's 235 Look Aloft 98 " She done clomb up de chimney !

Chapter I. Strange Stories

HE romance of North American history lies largely in the South." The remark was made by Mr. Charles Laurens to Charlie Leland on the piazza of an old New England tavern at Lakeville, Mass. Mr. Laurens was a native of St. Augustine, Fla., a gentleman of means and fine historic tastes. He and his wife and son were spending the summer in Massachusetts, at the old historic towns of Plymouth, Duxbury, and Middleborough. Lakeville is a part of Old Middleborough. Mr. Laurens had been led hither by the Indian associations and traditions of Assawamsett Lake, a calm expanse of water that lay directly in front of the hotel. On the shores of this lake is the old Winslow Reservation; and here live the descendants of Massasoit, the good sachem who protected the infant colony of Plymouth for nearly forty years.

Mr. Laurens had brought with him, on this visit to the North, his son Henry, a lad of about sixteen years, hoping to stimulate his historic taste. There were a number of summer boarders at the hotel. Among these were Mr. Leland and his own son Charlie, a lad of whom some account has been given in a former volume of this series. Mr. Leland was a Boston gentleman and a repre sentative business man, as Mr. Laurens was a worthy representative of the culture of the South. The two gentlemen became friendly, and their sons, Charlie Leland and Henry Laurens, intimate. " I . supposed it was the North that was the fuller of stories and legends," said Charlie Leland to Mr. Laurens. " Not of the picturesque and romantic kind," said Mr. Leland. "Who are some of the heroes of the Southern romances?" asked Charlie. * Well, first, Columbus." ' But Columbus did not visit our shores."

" No ; but the Antilles, the scene of the most romantic voyage ever foreseen by faith and made by man, are in America and in the Sea of the South. The bones of Columbus lie in Havana." " They ought to find their last resting-place beneath the rotunda of our National Capitol," said Mr. Leland. " I could not now more than begin to enumerate the Southern romances." continued Mr. Laurens: "as, for example, the Spanish voyages of discovery; the search for the Seven Cities of Gold and the Fountain of Youth ; Ponce de Leon ; De Soto ; La Salle ; the Huguenots; the Spanish legends of St. Augustine and Mobilea; the poetic episodes of Sir Walter Raleigh ; Bienville ; Iberville ; Oglethorpe; Flora Macdonald ; Pulaski ; Lord Fairfax and the boyhood of Washington ; grand Lord Baltimore ; Marion and his men ; Greene in South Carolina ; Moultrie ; Tarleton ; Cornwallis ; Bal four; John and Charles Wesley's visit ; the preaching of Whitefield.

Pardon me ; only a few of the old romances come to my mind now. The South has found no true historian ; and with the exception of William Gilmore Simms, no one who has written in sympathy her IN THE HEART OF FLORIDA STRANGE STORIES. 19 picturesque eras and heroic people. Southern history is a long poetic procession, going on for more than three hundred years." " I never dreamed that the South was associated with such names," said Charlie. " I knew it as mere history lesson, but I never so pictured it in my mind before." " There are two sections of our country," said Mr. Leland, "that the true historian and the poet have but half touched. One is the vast empire of the Southern States, and the other is Rhode Island." Little Rhode Island ? " asked Charlie, incredulously 'Yes." ' But why, father?

" I will give you a few points after the manner of my good friend Mr. Laurens: the Northmen; Verrazano; Bishop Berkeley; Massasoit ; Roger Williams under the protection of Massasoit at Mount Hope; King Philip; Anne Hutchinson ; Sir Henry Vane and Williams; the Antinomians ; the first Baptists; the proclama tion of liberty of the conscience and freedom of the soul, — a principle that has made America what she is, and that has revolutionized Europe, and has just been promulgated in India; the Revolutionary romances; Greene; Barton; Prescott ; — but I, too, will stop. It is a tremendous history for so small a territory; there ought to be a history of Rhode Island written in the spirit and coloring of Hawthorne's ' Twice Told Tales.' " " The tales of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and of Plymouth have been twice told, and many times told," said Mr. Laurens.

" The world knows them, while the equally noble stories of other colonies and parts of the country have scarcely been told at all. History is dumb until it finds a poet, or what is the same thing, a poetic historian. The whole world knows Germany, because her heroes, her lakes, rivers, and mountains, her trades and occupations, have all found a poet. It is the land of song." " I wish," said Charlie Leland to Mr. Laurens, "that you would A ZIGZAG JOURNEY IN THE SUNNY SOUTH. 20 * tell us some of the old tales of the South that are not generally known." " I think," said Henry, " that the most delightful stories of the South for boys, and girls are those that are never printed at all, — the half-fairy tales and stories of old family history as related in the old negro cabins." Charlie Leland looked surprised.

" The negroes are the natural story-tellers of the South," said Mr. Laurens. " A story, to fill the imagination of the young, must have a flavor of superstition and mystery. The negro is supersti tious to such a degree as to lend a lively coloring to the most homely romance." "When I was a little boy," said Henry, "I always used to go to the negro cabins for my stories. Father never could interest me ; but old Moxon, the revivalist preacher, could." " I used to belong to a society at school called the Zigzag Club," said Charlie Leland. " It had for its object the telling of legendary and historic stories, and afterward the visiting of the places associated with these stories. Why could not we form a little society, for the few days that we are to be together, for the telling of stories, — strange stories of the North and South, stories but little ' known out of the sections where they occurred ?

" " Provincialisms," said Mr. Laurens. " Would you not oblige us by telling some of the stories of the South that you have suggested ? " " Thank you for the compliment. My son has just said that I could never interest him in telling a story ; but I will agree to tell a story of Southern life, historical or social, or even of the old negro cabins, for .every story that you tell me of your own delightful region. How will that do? " " I think, perhaps, that father should answer that question for me." " I will do my best," said Mr. Leland. JESUIT MISSION IN FLORIDA " And you, Henry ? " " I will relate as many stories of the South as you will of the North, as many of St. Augustine as you of the region about the Middleborough lakes, even if I have to resort to old Moxon's bugaboos, as father used to call them."

" Let us call ourselves the Assawamsett Club, and begin our story-telling this evening. Could we not meet on the piazza for story-telling every evening, immediately after supper ? " Mr. Laurens smiled approvingly; and thus began on the piazza of the old tavern some agreeable story-telling which ended in a journey which it is the purpose of this book to describe, — a journey from Plymouth to the tomb of Colon at Havana, by the way of the Southern seaboard cities, and the St. John's River through Florida. It was June, the time of the most delightful days of the Northern climate. The daylight does not fade out of the crimson sky until nearly nine o'clock in the evening. The hours of the lingering light are full of long shadows, and comfortably cool ; they are the pleasantest hours that can be spent on the piazza of a Northern hotel.

Great orchards shaded the landscape around the Lakeville inn. The lake was surrounded with woods. It was full of sunshine in the long June days; and when the full moon rose upon it, it seemed a mirror. The ospreys wheeled over it and screamed in the noon day sunshine, and the night-hawks or whippoorwills made sad the groves with their notes through half the nights. The road in front of the inn was old, protected by gray stone walls, and followed provincial curves and zigzags. In the evening the quiet old country town seemed like dreamland ; for here perished the Indian tribes of old, and their graves are here, and the shells of their feasts and the arrows of their warfare fill the soil. ZIGZAG JOURNEY IN THE SUNNY SOUTH. 24 The first meeting of the Assawamsett Club found an audience that filled the piazza.

The club was organized with seven mem bers, — Mr. and Mrs. Laurens and their son, Mr. Leland and Charlie, a stately old lady named Endicott, and an old Middleborough farmer named Felix; both the latter had the reputation of being "antiquarians " and good story-tellers. Their membership had been suggested by the people of the hotel. The purpose of the club was announced to be " The Telling of Provincial Stories, North and South." There was but one article to the Club's verbal constitution, " That only stories that are strange shall be told." This article was Charlie Leland's suggestion. By "strange" he meant, we suppose, such stories as are generally unfamiliar, that have not been the subjects of romances, poems, and boys' books, and that have an original stamp and coloring. The Club was ready for a story.

Who should begin ? Mr. Leland suggested Mr. Laurens, but he was not quite prepared. Mr. Laurens suggested Mr. Leland. " Not prepared." They both suggested Mr. Felix. " Not quite ready." Then Mrs. Laurens suggested Mrs. Endicott, — "the Widder Endi cott," she was called in Middleborough. The Widow Endicott raised her gold-bowed spectacles in a very self-possessed way. A strange story ? " said she. Yes," — "yes," — "yes." " Well, you good Southern people have come to the right region for strange stories. This place was first all full of Indians, then of witches and ghosts, and then of patriots. But I have n't anv story to tell." " Tell the one about the Powder-Candle," said Felix. " Well, Felix, as all the rest seem to have backed down at the very start, and as somebody must begin, else where will the Club end, I will do the best I can.

Strange that you should fix upon me ! " The widow gave her gold-bowed spectacles another push, and said : MY GRANDMOTHER'S GRANDMOTHER'S CHRISTMAS CANDLE. There were no Christmas celebrations in my old Puritan home in Swansea, such as we have in all New England homes to-day. No church bells rung out in the darkening December air ; there were no children's carols learned in Sunday-schools ; no presents, and not even a sprig of box, ivy, or pine in any window. Yet there was one curious custom in the old town that made Christmas Eve in many homes the merriest in the year. It was the burning of the Christmas candle ; and of this old, forgotten custom of provincial towns I have an odd story to tell. The Christmas candle ? You may never have heard of it. You may fancy that it was some beautiful image in wax or like an altar-light.

This was not the case. It was a candle containing a quill rilled with gunpowder, and its burning excited an intense interest while we waited for the expected explosion. I well remember Dipping-Candle Day ; it was a very interesting day to me in my girlhood, because it was then that the Christmas candle was dipped. It usually came in the fall, in the short, lonesome days of November, just before the new schoolmaster opened the winter term of the school. My grandmother brought down from the garnet her candle-rods and poles. The candle-rods were light sticks of elder, some fifty in number, and the poles were long pine bars. These poles were tied two each to two chairs ; and the rods, after they had been wicked, were laid upon them at short distances apart. " Wicking the candle-rods " is a phrase of which few people to-day know the meaning.

Every country-store in old times contained a large supply of balls of cotton candle-wick. This wick was to be cut, put upon the candle-rods, twisted, and tallowed or waxed, so as to be convenient for dipping. How many times have I seen my grandmother, on the long November even ings, wicking her candle-rods ! She used to do the work, sitting in her easy chair before the great open fire. One side of the fireplace was usually hung with strings of dried or partly dried apples, and the other with strings of red peppers. Over the fireplace were a gun and the almanac ; and on the hearth there were usually, in the evening, a few sweet apples roasting ; and at one end of it was the dog, and at the other the cat. Dipping candles would seem a comical sight to-day. My grandmother used to sit over a great iron kettle of melted tallow, and patiently dip the wicks on the rods into it, until they grew to the size of candles.

Each rod contained about five wicks, and these were dipped together. The process was repeated perhaps fifty. or more times. A quill of powder was tied to the wick of the Christmas candle before dipping, and the wick was so divided at the lower end that the candle should have three legs. The young people took a great interest in the dipping as well as the burning of the Christmas candle. My grandmother's candle-rods had belonged to her grandmother, who had lived in the early days of the Plymouth Colony. They had been used since the days of King Philip's War. There was a story of the dark times of the Indian war that my grandmother used to relate on the night that we burned our Christmas candle, — a story that my grandmother told of her grandmother, and of the fortunate and timely explosion of one of that old lady's Christmas candles in the last days of Philip's War, when the sight of a hostile Indian was a terror to the unarmed colonist.

" It was well that candle went off when it did," my grandmother used to say. "If it had not, I don't know where any of us would have been to-night ; not here, telling riddles and roasting apples and enjoying ourselves, I imagine. I have clipped a powder-candle every season since, not that I believe much in keeping holidays, but because a powder-candle once saved the family." She continued her story : — " My grandmother was a widow in her last years. She had two children, Benjamin and my mother, Mary. She lived at Pocasset, and the old house overlooked Mount Hope and the bay. Pocasset was an Indian province then, and its Indian queen was named Wetamoo. "My grandmother was a great-hearted woman. She had a fair amount of property, and she used it for the good of her less fortunate neighbors. She had kept several poor old people from the town-house by giving them a home with her.

Her good deeds caused her to be respected by every one. " The Indians were friendly to her. She had done them so many acts of kindness that even the haughty Wetamoo had once called to see her and made her a present. The old house was near an easy landing-place for boats on the bay ; and the Indians, as they came from their canoes, passed through the yard, and often stopped to drink from the well. It was no uncommon thing, on a hot summer's day, to find an Indian asleep in the street or under the dooryard trees. " Among the great men of the tribe was an Indian named Squammaney ; Warmmesley he was sometimes called, also Warmmesley-Squammaney. He was a giant in form, but his greatness among his people arose from his supposed magical power and his vigorous voice. It was believed that he could whoop and bellow so loud and long as to frighten away evii spirits from the sick, so that the patient would recover.

All the Indians regarded old Squammaney with fear and awe, and he was very proud of his influence over them. "When an Indian fell sick, Warmmesley-Squammaney was called to the bedside. If old Warmmesley could not drive the evil spirits away, the patient believed that he must die. " Squammaney did his supposed duty in such cases. He was a faithful doc tor. He covered himself with dried skins, shells, and feathers, and approached the hut of the patient with as mysterious and lofty an air as one of the old time physicians of the gig and saddle-bags. As he drew near the hut, he would rattle the dried skins, and howl. He would look cautiously into the hut, then run away from it a little distance, leap into the air, and howl. Then he would cautiously return ; and if the case were a bad one, he would again run away, leap into the air, and howl.

At last he would enter the hut, examine the sick man or woman, and utter mysterious cries. He would fix the mind of the sufferer entirely upon himself by a kind of mesmeric influence ; then he would begin to move in a circle around the patient, shaking the dried skins and beads, bobbing his plumes, and chanting an Indian ditty. Gradually his movements would become more swift ; he would howl and leap, his voice rising higher at every bound ; he would continue this performance until he fell down all in a heap, like a tent of dried skins. But by this time the mind of the patient was usually so withdrawn from his sufferings as to quite forget them ; and con sequently it often happened that the invalid and old Warmmesley-Squammaney rose up together, and indulged in hand-shaking, thus concluding an exhibition of some of the remarkable effects of mesmeric influence, which were possible in those old times as well as now.

" In his peculiar way old Warmmesley once cured of rheumatism a Puritan deacon who rewarded him by calling him a ' pagan.' The deacon had been confined to his room for weeks. Some Indians called to see him, and pitying his condition, set off in great haste for Warmmesley. The latter came, in his dried skins, with his head bristling with horns and feathers. The astonished deacon forgot his infirmities at the first sight of the terrible object ; and as soon as Warmmesley began to leap and howl, and shake his beads, shells, and dried skins, the white man leaped from his bed, and running to the barn, knelt clown and began to pray. There his wife found him. It is old Warmmesley,' said she. "•The old pagan!' said he, rising up. 'What was it, Ruth, that was the matter with me ? ' " My grandmother had caught the spirit of Eliot, the Indian Apostle, and she used to hold in the old kitchen a religious meeting, each week, for the instruction of the 'praying Indians' of the town.

The Indians who became Christians were called ' praying Indians ' by their own people, and came to be so called by the English. Among the Indians who came out of curiosity was the beautiful Princess Amie, the youngest daughter of the great chief Massasoit, who protected Plymouth Colony for nearly forty years. " Warmmesley came once to my grandmother's meetings, and tried to sing. He wished to out-sing the rest, and he did, repeating over and over again, — He lub poor Indian in de wood, An' me lub God, and dat be good I '11 praise him two times mo' ! ' " Just before the beginning of the Indian war, my grandmother offended Warmmesley. The English had taught him bad habits, and he had become a cider-drinker. He used to wander about the country, going from farm-house to farm-house, begging for ' hard ' cider, as old cider was called.

" One day my grandmother found him lying intoxicated under a tree in the yard, and she forbade the giving of Warmmesley any more cider from the cellar. A few days afterward, he landed from his canoe in front of the grounds, and came to the workmen for cider. The workmen sent him to my grandmother. ' No, Warmmesley, no more,' said she, firmly. ' Steal your wits. Wicked ! ' Warmmesley begged for one porringer, — just one. ' Me sick,' he pleaded. ' No, Warmmesley. Never. Wrong.' ' Me pay you ! ' said he, with an evil look in his eye. ' Me pay you ! ' " Just then a flock of crows flew past. Warmmesley pointed to them and said, — '"It's coming — fight — look up there! Ugh, ugh!' — pointing to the crows. 'Fight English. Look over' — pointing to the bay — 'fight, fight — me pay you ! Ugh ! Ugh ! ' INDIANS IN FLIGHT.

" My grandmother pointed up to the blue sky, as much as to say that her trust was in a higher power than man's. " Warmmesley turned away reluctantly, looking back with a half-threatening, half-questioning look, and saying, ' Ugh ! Ugh ! ' He evidently hoped that my grandmother would call him back, but she was firm. "The upper windows of the old house overlooked the bay. " It was fall. The maples flamed, and the oak leaves turned to gold and dust ; the flocks of birds gathered, and went their unknown way. The even ings were long. . It was harvest time. The full moon rose in the twilight, and the harvesters continued their labors into the night. * " Philip, or Pometacom, was now at Mount Hope, and Wetamoo had taken up her residence on the high shores of Pocasset. The hills of Pocasset were in full view of Mount Hope; and between lay the quiet, sheltered waters of the bay.

Philip had cherished a strong friendship for Wetamoo, who was the widow of his brother Alexander. " Night after night the harvesters had noticed canoes crossing and recross ing the bay, moving like shadows silently to and fro. The moon waned ; the nights became dark and cloudy ; the movement across the water went on ; the boats carried torches now, and the dark bay became picturesque as the mysterious lines of light were drawn across it. " From time to time a great fire would blaze up near the high rocks at Mount Hope, burn a few hours, and then fade. "It was whispered about among the English that Philip was holding war dances, and that Wetamoo and her warriors were attending them ; yet Philip had just concluded a treaty of peace with the English, and Wetamoo professed to be a friend to the Colony.

" War came on the following summer, stealthily at first. Englishmen were found murdered mysteriously in the towns near Mount Hope. Then came the killing of the people in Swansea as they were going home from church, about which all the histories of the Colonies tell ; then the open war. "Philip flashed like a meteor from place to place, murdering the people and burning their houses. No one could tell where he would next appear, or who would be his next victim. Every colonist during the year 1675, wherever he might be, lived in terror of lurking foes. There were dreadful cruelties every where, and towns and farm-houses vanished in smoke. " Wetamoo joined Philip. She had some six hundred warriors. Philip had made her believe that the English had poisoned her husband Alexander, who was also his brother, and who had succeeded the good Massasoit.

Alexander had died suddenly while returning from Plymouth on the Taunton River. The mysterious lights on the bay were now explained. " Before Wetamoo joined Philip, one of her captains had sent word to my grandmother that as she had been a friend to the Indians, she should be protected. "' I have only one fear,' said my grandmother often, during that year of terror, — ' Warmmesley.' " Warmmesley-Squammaney had gone away with Philip's braves under Wetamoo. He was one of Wetamoo's captains. Wetamoo herself had joined Philip, like a true warrior-queen. " The sultry August of 1676 brought' a sense of relief to the Colonies. The warriors of Philip were defeated on every hand. His wife and son were captured ; and broken-hearted he returned to Mount Hope — the burial-ground of his race for unknown generations — to die.

Wetamoo, too, became a fugitive, and was drowned in attempting to cross to the lovely hills of Pocasset on a raft. " The war ended. Where was Warmmesley-Squammaney ? No one knew. Annawon, Philip's great captain, had been captured, and nearly all the principal leaders of the war were executed ; but old Squammaney had mysteriously disappeared. " Peace came. October flamed, as Octobers flame, and November faded, as Novembers fade, and the snows of December fell. The Colonies were full of joy and thanksgivings. " ' I am thankful for one thing more than all others,' said my grandmother on Thanksgiving Day ; ' and that is that I am now sure that old Squammaney is gone where he will never trouble us again. I shall never forget his evil eye as he said, "I will pay you ! " It has troubled me night and day.' " That fall, when my grandmother was dipping candles, she chanced to re call the old custom of the English town from which she had come, of making a powder-candie for Christmas.