12 miles above green Cove on the left bank is
Boarding with Mr. T. F. Bridier. This is the station where passengers to St. Augustine land. It is much to be regretted that there is no hotel here, and only poor and insufficient accommodations in the house owned by the stage company. Usually but one line of stages runs to St. Augustine, and they are often densely crowded, and most uncomfortable. A second line was put on in Jan., 1869. The usual fare to St. Augustine is $3.00; distance 18 miles. By competition it has been reduced to $1.00.
the road leads through an open pine country with an undergrowth of palmettoes. Here and there a clump of cypress, with a tangled mass of briars and vines around their trunks, diversifies the scene. The soil is miserably poor, and hardly a dozen houses are passed in the whole distance. Deep white sand obstructs the stage, and not so rarely as one wishes the wheels strike a pine or palmetto root with a most unpleasant effect upon the passengers, especially if they are invalids. After 3½ hours of this torture, the stage is checked by the Sebastian river, over which a miserable ferry boat conveys the exhausted tourist who at length finds himself in St. Augustine.
_Hotels_: Florida House (dear and poor,) Magnolia House, fine piazza (grounds recently fitted up.) About $4.00 per day, _slight_ reduction by the month.
_Boarding Houses_: Mrs. Abbot, Mrs. Fatio, Mrs. Gardner, Mrs. Brava, Miss Dummitt. Charges, $15.00 to $20.00 per week. As a rule, the tables of the boarding houses are better kept than those of the hotels. Families can rent houses by the month, and sometimes furnished rooms, and thus live much cheaper. Apply to B. E. Carr, J. L. Phillips, or John Long.
_Billiard Saloon_, at Delot’s Restaurant.
_Post Office_ on the Plaza, mail tri-weekly. Telegraph office near the market house on the Plaza.
_Newspaper_--_St. Augustine Examiner_, weekly. _Reading Room_ at the editor’s office, 25 cts. a week.
_Military Music_--On the Plaza every other night.
_Churches_--Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist chapel opposite the Magnolia House, Colored Baptist.
_Bathing-House_, on Bay Street, white flag for ladies, red flag for gentlemen, on alternate days. Season ticket $5.00.