The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-02-28

yard is the machine shop and foundry
erected during the war for the east coast
where many of the wounded from the
Maine were brought, occupies the next sec
ton of the shore. Then come in succession
the first sand battery, Fort Taylor, the sec
ond sand battery, the first martello tower
and the second martello tower.
THESE latter are as picturesque In their
uselessness as Fort TAYLOR has been The
Martello tower is the form of fertilization
that chronologically succeeded the familiar
round tower of the irish coast. These two
at Key West were begun in 1861 and the
masonry laid by the hundreds of men en-
ployed on them will last for centuries. But
they were never finished, no gun was ever
mounted in them and they are of absolutely
no value as modern Notifications. The two
sand batteries which flank Fort Taylor
were begun in 1870 and like their neigh
bors never wereS finished. One mounted
three Parrot rifles and the other half a
dozen, but after being abandoned in their
incomplete condition for many years, they
were dismantled a year ago. Altogether the
fortifications of Key West are unique.
DRY TORTUGAS.
At the Dry Tortugas the record has its
points of similarity, though the tale is not
such an involved one. The Dry Tortugas is
a group of coral and sand islets sixty-fve
miles west and little north of Key West.
There are half a dozen keys within the
twenty miles directly west of Key West,
and then comes an interruption Of several
reef upon which Rebecca Shoals lighthouse
stands and last of all, westward in the gulf,
are the Dry Tortugas. Four of the little
islets show above the water within radius
of TWO or three miles and three of them are
utilized by the government. On one is the
Dry IortugaS lighthouse, one of the finest
Lights in American waters. On another is
the isolation hospital used for nurses and
SICK when ship laden with yellow fever or
cholera or smallpox comes into quarantine.
And on the largest of all stands Fort JEFF
ferson, another monument to the laborS OF
Jefferson Davis.
Garden key on which Fort Jefferson
stands, is entirely encircled by the walls OF
the fort, except for little sand spit that
has washed up on one side and a larger
one opposite, OH which have been built the
disinfecting plant and two or three houses
for Quarantined sailors who are not sick.
Around the fort is a moat and against the
sea wall which surrounds 1t the sea beats
on every side except when the SAND spltSs
to have spent SIS 100000 TO construct this
fort and 1t was never finished. Its case
mates surround parade ground OF several
acres, now grown up with cocoanut trees.
In the classmates are hundreds Of guns.
mounted and unmOunted and thousands OF
cases of ammunition, guns and ammunition
alike obsolete, like their neighbors at Key
West. The officers quarters are falling TO
decay and the barbette is crumbling Dur
ing the civil war hundreds of federal troops
were quartered in the fort and hundreds
of political and military prisoners We're sent
to be held in saIe keeping. DR.. Mudd was
sent to this prison after his CONVICTION of
completely in the aSSaS sination or Lincoln,
and was pardOned as a reward for his work
as a physician when the epidemic of yellow
fever began to sweep away prisoners and
soldiers.
Not long after the war the fort was
abandoned, and for years no one but the
ordnance sergeant, who acted as custodian,
and the few men who were retained to keep
it in order lived in the remote place. Then
a lighthouse was built within the walls,
and the family Of the lightkeeper was added
to Tortugan society A few years ago the
War Department loaned to the Treasury
Department the outlying sand spit, to be
used as a national quarantine station, ana
a surgeon of the Marine Hospital Service
was sent there to take charge of that duty.
With his family he lives in one of the Off
GERS houses inside the fortress. The ord
nance sergeants family home is next door.
The lightkeeper lives at another corner of
the quadrangle, and the two or three men
who work fer the various authorities live
in any they like of dozen big houses. This
comprises the population. A schooner
brings mail once a month from Key West,
and except for vessels in quarantine, that
is the extent of communication with the
rest of the world. The rendezvous of the
squadron there for its maneuvers few
weeks ago and the attending excitement
that has been centering there ever since,
with vessels passing back and forth between
the Dry Tortugas and Key West almost
every day must have materially changed
things in the old fort and been a revelation
to the children, whose peculiar home is not
without it's pleasures even in solitude in the
tropics.