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| FLORIDA'S BUILDING - There could be no more
striking change at the Exposition than when the visitor left the
great halls of New York or Pennsylvania, where the click of the
telegraph and the sound of piano sonata or orchestral symphony fell
on his ear, and turning a corner, entered the reproduction of Fort
Marion, which was the headquarters of Florida. Luxury and crude
nature here so nearly jostled each other that each must have felt
offended by the other's presence. Fort San Juan de Pinos, at San
Augustine (not Fort Marion) was first built in 1565, over three
hundred and twenty-five years ago. The foundations of the new fort,
as it now stands, were laid in 1620, the year that the pilgrims
landed in Massachusetts. It took a century and a half of toil by
captives, slaves, convicts and exiles to complete the heavy walls,
bastions, curtains and towers of the defense. Fort Marion knew its
bloodies days centuries before the Civil War, and did not enter
prominently in the strife of 1861, but when the Apaches were at last
stopped from their bloody work in Arizona, the worst of those savages
were immured within these gloomy walls, to ruminate on their folly
and impatiently plan escape. The engraving shows the plentitude of
tropical plants and trees that decked this southern lodge, and the
exterior offers a fair idea of the inner parts, where many beautiful
things were shown. The dimensions were one hundred and thirty-seven
by one hundred and thirty-seven feet, and the cost of this
instructive reproduction was $20,000. |
