ng before the real pilot started her in;
but we had to wait. When we did go in, and steamed along in front of the
old fort, we could see that it was gray and crumbling, and moss-covered
in places, and it was just like an oil-painting. The whole town, in
fact, was like an oil-painting to us.

The moment the stairs were put down, we scuffled ashore, and left the
steamer to go on to the Bahamas whenever she felt like it. We gave our
valises and trunk-checks to a negro man with a wagon, and told him to
take the baggage to a hotel that we could see from the wharf, and then
we started off for the fort. But on my way along the wharf I made up my
mind that, as the fort had been there for three hundred years, it would
probably stand a while longer, and that we had better go along with our
baggage, and see about getting a place to live in, for we were not going
to be in any hurry to leave St. Augustine.

We didn't go to any hotel at all. I had a letter of introduction to a
Mr. Cholott, and on our way up from the wharf, I heard some one call out
that name to a gentleman. So I remembered my letter, and went up and
gave it to him. He was a first-rate man, and when we told him where we
were going, we had quite a talk, and he said he would advise us to go to
a boarding-house. It would be cheaper, and if we were like most boys
that he knew, we'd like it better. He said that board could be had with
several families that he knew, and that some of the Minorcans took
boarders in the winter.

Of course, Rectus wanted to know, right away, what a Minorcan was. I
didn't think it was exactly the place to ask questions which probably
had long answers, but Mr. Cholott didn't seem to be in a hurry, and he
just started off and told us about the Minorcans. A chap called
Turnbull, more than a hundred years ago, brought over to Florida a lot
of the natives of the island of Minorca, in the Mediterranean, and began
a colony. But he was a mean sort of chap; he didn't care for anything
but making money out of the Minorcans, and it wasn't long before they
found it out, for he was really making slaves of them. So they just rose
up and rebelled, and left old Turnbull to run his colony by himself.
Served him right, too. They started off on their own accounts, and most
of them came to this town, where they settled, and have had a good time
ever since. There are a great many of them here now, descendants of the
original Minorcans, and they keep pretty much to