t
Angels. It soon became apparent that the steps would be many. The Dueros
having been, as Garda had said, "the old Spaniards" themselves, there
was no trouble in this case about the Spanish grants; theirs was a _bona
fide_ one. But there were other intricacies, and in studying them
Winthrop learned the history of the place almost back to the landing of
Ponce de Leon. The lands had been granted in the beginning by the crown
of Spain (of course over the heads of the unimportant natives) to
Admiral Juan de Duero in 1585. They had been regranted (over the heads
of the Dueros), seventy years later, by the crown of England, to an
English nobleman, who, without taking possession, had sold his grant,
and comfortably enjoyed the profits; the buyer meanwhile had crossed the
ocean only to lose his life by shipwreck off the low Florida coast, and
his descendants had, it appeared, sent an intermittent cry across from
England that they should assuredly come over, and take possession. They
never did, however; and the Dueros of course considered their claim as
merely so much unimportant insanity. Later, at the beginning of the
British occupation in 1763, the Dueros themselves had transferred part
of their domain to other owners. Then, upon the return of the Spaniards,
twenty years afterwards, they had calmly taken possession of the
property again, without going through the form of asking permission, the
new owners meanwhile having gone north, to cast their fortunes with the
raw young republic called the United States; the descendants of these
new owners had also at intervals sent up a cry, which echoed through the
title rather more clearly than the earlier one from England. The place
had been three times pillaged by buccaneers, who at one period were fond
of picnic-parties on Florida shores; it had been through several attacks
by Indians, in one of which the stone sugar-mill had been destroyed.
Since the long warm peninsula had come into the possession of the United
States these same lands had suffered several partitions (on paper) from
forced sales (also on paper), owing to unpaid taxes, the confusion
having been much increased by the late war. Tax claims in large numbers
lifted their heads, like a crop of quick-growing malodorous weeds, at
the first intimation that a _bona fide_ purchaser had appeared, a man
from the North who had the eccentricity of wishing, in the first place,
for such a worn-out piece of property as East Angels, an