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For the greater part of the year there scarcely falls a drop of rain on the thirsty soil of Andalusia. The ramblas, or dry channels of the torrents, remain deep and arid gashes and clefts in the sides of the mountains; the perennial streams shrink up to mere threads of water, which, trickling down the bottoms of the deep barrancas, or ravines, scarce feed and keep alive the rivers of the valleys.
The dread canons, the deep barrancas, the broken banks of streams, and the clay-cut channels of the arroyos, all testified that we were in a land of sudden floods. Away to the east, towards the head waters of the river, we could see that the storm was raging in its full fury. The mountains in that direction were no longer visible.
"Yes, sir, he did; Captain Folkner never slept a wink when he did not have Fort Pickens on his stomach for a nightmare," replied Dave, with a chuckle. "But Fort Pickens is all of four miles from the entrance to the channel of the sound." "He was in mortal terror of the guns, all the same." "How was it in regard to Fort Barrancas and Fort McRae?"
After much manoeuvring, the State forces of Florida induced Slemmer to retire from Barrancas to Pickens, then garrisoned by one ordnance sergeant, and at the mercy of a corporal's guard in a rowboat. Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, was in a similar condition before Anderson retired to it with his company.
Mile after mile we thundered along at a brisk rate of speed. Sometimes we dodged in and out among the mesquite bushes, alternately separating and coming together again; sometimes we swept over grassy plains apparently of illimitable extent, sometimes we skipped and hopped and buck-jumped through and over little gullies, barrancas, and other sorts of malpais but always without drawing rein.
Some months before this period, when Florida enforced her assumed right to control all points within her limits, a small company of United States artillery, under Lieutenant Slemmer, was stationed at Barrancas, where it was helpless.
Jackson waited until three thousand Tennessee militia, for whom he had urgently sent, arrived at Mobile, under the command of General Coffee, one of his efficient coadjutors in the Creek War, and Colonel Butler, and then promptly and successfully stormed Pensacola, driving out the British, who blew up Fort Barrancas and escaped to their ships.
Black unstrained coffee and tortillas of yellow hue gradually put strength enough in my legs to enable them to push me on through bottomless rocky barrancas, and at length, beyond the hamlet of Santa Maria, up one of the highest climbs of the trip to the long crest of a ridge thick with whispering pines and with splendid views of the "Great Depths," dense in woodland, on either side as far as the eye could reach.
We had plenty to do to avoid getting our necks broken, or our teeth knocked out, as we struggled along, up and down barrancas, through marshes and thickets, over rocks and fallen trees, and through mimosas and bushes laced and twined together with thorns and creeping plants all of which would have been beautiful in a picture, but was most infernally unpoetical in reality. "Vamos!
"You may depend upon it that we shall be under the guns of Fort Barrancas, or farther up the bay, before daylight," replied the actual commander. "What am I to do, Mr. Galvinne?" asked Corny. "Nothing at all; you can turn in as soon as you like and sleep through the whole, for there will be nothing at all to disturb you.
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