A little before nine o’clock we had entered the little harbor of Key West, and were moored in its still waters.  It was a bright moonlight evening, and we rambled two or three hours about the town and the island.  The hull of a dismasted vessel lay close by our landing-place; it had no name on bow or stern, and had just been found abandoned at sea, and brought in by the wreckers; its cargo, consisting of logwood, had been taken out and lay in piles on the wharf.  This town has principally grown up since the Florida war.  The habitations have a comfortable appearance; some of them are quite neat, but the sterility of the place is attested by the want of gardens.  In some of the inclosures before the houses, however, there were tropical shrubs in flower, and here the cocoanut-tree was growing, and other trees of the palm kind, which rustled with a sharp dry sound in the fresh wind from the sea.  They were the first palms I had seen growing in the open air, and they gave a tropical aspect to the place.

We fell in with a man who had lived thirteen years at Key West.  He told us that its three thousand inhabitants had four places of worship—­an Episcopal, a Catholic, a Methodist, and a Baptist church; and the drinking-houses which we saw open, with such an elaborate display of bottles and decanters, were not resorted to by the people of the place, but were the haunt of English and American sailors, whom the disasters, or the regular voyages of their vessels had brought hither.  He gave us an account of the hurricane of September, 1846, which overflowed and laid waste the island.

“Here where we stand,” said he, “the water was four feet deep at least.  I saved my family in a boat, and carried them to a higher part of the island.  Two houses which I owned were swept away by the flood, and I was ruined.  Most of the houses were unroofed by the wind; every vessel belonging to the place was lost; dismasted hulks were floating about, and nobody knew to whom they belonged, and dead bodies of men and women lay scattered along the beach.  It was the worst hurricane ever known at Key West; before it came, we used to have a hurricane regularly once in two years, but we have had none since.”

A bell was rung about this time, and we asked the reason.  “It is to signify that the negroes must be at their homes,” answered the man.  We inquired if there were many blacks in the place.  “Till lately,” he replied, “there were about eighty, but since the United States government has begun to build the fort yonder, their number has increased.  Several broken-down planters, who have no employment for their slaves, have sent them to Key West to be employed by the government.  We do not want them here, and wish that the government would leave them on the hands of their masters.”