CHAPTER XXIV.....355

Pensacola musings--Its early settlement and capacious harbor--Origin of the name--The soil contains clay for brick and pottery--Casa Blanca--The city conquered by the Spaniards--Causes for its not competing with other Gulf cities--Description of Fort Barrancas--It is supposed to contain a dungeon--Fort Pickens--Fort St. Michael and Fort St. Bernard--Ten dollars offered for the scalps of colonists--General movements of General Andrew Jackson--Governor Callavea in the calaboose--Description of the old plaza--Present appearance of Pensacola--It contains no fabled fountains--A plank walk on which sailors reel like drunken elephants--Prosperity of the place dependent on the demand for lumber--Commotion on the arrival of a ship--Resinous wood and its light accompaniments--The Indians hated to leave it--Ferdinand Park and its rural scenery--The market-house--The singing fishermen--The proud fishermen with their big fish--An ox-horn announces the sales--Fresh-water wells--Drawers of water lose their vocation--Porpoises--Tropical fruit-culture not very successful here--The washing bayou and its water-nymphs--Florida hunters--The fleet-footed fawn a past record--The yellow-fever visitor--Perdido, or Lost Bay--Escambia Bay--The alligator: her nest, and her young--Churches--Free schools--Catholic schools--Episcopal school, and its founder, Mrs. Dr. Scott.