Chapter I: Introductory (1)

EASTER LAND

On a dark, cold day toward the close of January, 1907, the writer stood at a window in New York, observing some score of a mittened army removing the avalanche of snow that cumbered the streets after a half week of continuous storm. He was pondering a long vacation, musing where rest and recreation might be found, at once wholesome and instructive, amid scenes quite different from any afforded by his previous journeys. He was familiar with every place of interest in North America, from Canada to the Gulf, from Alaska to Yucatan. He had spent many years in Europe, had visited Asia, Africa, and the far-off isles of the Pacific. He cared not to revisit these, much less to go where he must entertain or be entertained. He sought rest, absolute rest and freedom, untrammeled by conventional life. For the present he would shun the society of his fellows for the serene solitude of the wilderness, or the companionship of mighty mountains and rivers. Not that he was a misanthrope or that he wished to become an anchoret. Far from it. Still less did he wish to spend his time in idleness. This for him would have been almost tantamount to solitary confinement. He dreamed of a land where he could spend most of the time in the open air close to Nature and in communion with her--where both mind and body could be always active and yet always free--free as the bird that comes and goes as it lists.

Whilst thus absorbed in thought, and casting an occasional glance at the laborers in the street battling against the Frost-King, whose work continued without intermission, the writer was awakened from his reverie by the dulcet notes evoked from a Steinway grand and the sweet, sympathetic voice of one who had just intoned the opening words of Goethe's matchless song as set to music by Liszt:--

"Knowest thou the land where the pale citron grows,
And the gold orange through dark foliage glows?
A soft wind flutters through the deep blue sky,
The myrtle blooms, and towers the laurel high,
Knowest thou it well?
O there with thee!
O that I might, my own beloved one, flee."

It was La Niña--the pet name of the young musician--that came as a special providence to clear up a question that seemed to be growing more difficult the longer it was pondered. The effect was magical, and all doubt and hesitation disappeared forthwith. La Niña, as if inspired, had, without in the least suspecting it, indicated the land of the heart's desire. Yes, the writer would leave, and leave at once, the region of cloud and frost and chilling blast, and seek the land of flowers and sunshine, the land of "soft wind" and "blue sky," "the land where the pale citron grows," where "the gold orange glows." It would not, however, be the land of which Mignon sang and which she so yearned to see again. Lovely, charming Italy, with its manifold attractions of every kind, must for once yield to the sun-land of another clime far away, and in another hemisphere.

A few days afterwards the writer, with a few friends, had taken his place in a through Pullman car bound for the Land of Easter--the land of Ponce de Leon. They found every berth in the car occupied by people like themselves hastening away from the rigors of winter and betaking themselves to where

"Trees bloom throughout the year, soft breezes blow,
And fragrant Flora wears a lasting smile."

Some were going for the rest and the amusement promised at several noted winter resorts. Others were in search of health that had been shattered by confinement or over-work. Some were going away for a few weeks only; others for the entire winter. Some were going no farther south than Florida, others purposed visiting some of the Antilles, and even, mayhap, the Spanish Main.

As for the writer, he had no fixed plan, and for this reason he had not even thought of making out an itinerary. He would go to Florida to take up again a line of travel that had been interrupted some decades before. He had always been interested in the lives and achievements of the early Spanish discoverers and conquistadores, and had, in days gone by, followed in the footsteps of Narvaez and de Soto, of Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado, Fray Marcos de Niza, and Hernando Cortes. And now that he had the opportunity, it occurred to him that he could do nothing better or more profitable than make a reality what had been a dream from boyhood. He would visit the islands and lands discovered by the immortal "Admiral of the ocean sea" and follow in the footsteps of the conquistadores in Tierra Firme. He would explore the lands first made known by Balboa, and Quesada, and Belalcazar and rendered famous by the prowess of the Almagros and the Pizarros. He would visit the homes of the Musicas, the Incas, and the Ayamaras, wander among the Cordilleras from the Caribbean Sea to Lake Titicaca and beyond, and follow in the wake of Diego de Ordaz and Alonzo de Herrera on the broad waters of the Orinoco and in that of Pedro de Orsua and Francisco de Orellana in the mighty flood of the Amazon.

A great undertaking apparently, and, considered in the light of certain reports published about tropical America, seemingly impossible. To say the least, such a journey, it was averred, implied difficulties and privations and dangers innumerable.

"Do you wish to spend the rest of your life in South America? It will require a lifetime to visit the regions you have mentioned. I have myself spent many years in traveling in tropical America, and knowing, as I do, the lack of facilities for travel, the countless unforeseen delays of every kind, and the mañana habit that obtains everywhere in the countries you would visit, I have no hesitation in stating that you are attempting the impossible, if you mean to accomplish all you have spoken of in the limited time you have allotted to yourself."

Such were the words addressed to the writer on the eve of his departure by a noted traveler and one who is considered an authority on all things South American. Not very encouraging, truly, especially to one who was seeking rest and recreation and who was anything but inclined to court hardships and dangers in foreign lands and among peoples that were reputed to be only half-civilized, where-ever they chanced to be above the aboriginal savage that still roams over so much of the territory on both sides of the equator.

But, as already stated, the writer had on leaving home no definite programme mapped out. He left that to shape itself according to events and circumstances. He departed on his journey with little more of a plan than the vague indications of a life-long dream. Still, confiding in Providence, he hoped that he would be able to realize this, as he had, in years gone by, realized other dreams that seemed even less likely ever to become actualities.

LA FLORIDA

Twenty-eight hours after leaving New York, with its snow and ice and arctic blasts, our party found itself wandering among the orange groves and promenading beneath the graceful palms of old, romantic St. Augustine. We could scarcely credit our senses, so complete was the change in our environment. A soft, balmy atmosphere, gentle zephyrs, sweet, feathered songsters without number, all joining in a chorus of welcome to the strangers from the North, made us think that we had been transported to the Hesperides or to the delights of the Elysian Fields. And when, after nightfall, we walked about the grounds and the courts of the famous hostelries that have been recently erected regardless of expense, and provided with every luxury that money and art can command--all brilliantly illuminated by thousands of electric lights of divers colors--it seemed as if we had, in very deed, suddenly, we knew not how, become denizens of fairyland. To find anything similar to the scene that here bursts upon the view of the delighted visitor one must go to Monte Carlo during the season when thousands are attracted thither from all parts of the world, or betake oneself to the Place de la Concorde when the gay French capital is en fête.

St. Augustine, with all its traditions and historic associations, is one of the most restful and interesting of places, especially in winter, and a place, too, where one might tarry for months with pleasure. Nothing can be more delightful than the drives in the pine-forests adjacent to the city,

"Where west-winds with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassias balmy smells."

We could now verify at our leisure what we had been wont to consider as the exaggerated statements of the early explorers of Florida regarding the beautiful forests--"trellised with vines and gay with blossoms"--and the fragrant odors that were wafted from them by the breeze even out to the ships passing along the coast, and "in such abundance that the entire orient could not produce so much." "We stretched forth our hands," writes Lescarbot, in his Historie de la Nouvelle France, "as if to grasp them, so palpable were they." All carried away with them the same impression about the "douceur odoriferante de plusieurs bonnes choses"--the odoriferous sweetness of many good things--that was everywhere observable.

Nor were their accounts of this grateful feature of the country overdrawn. It is the same to-day as it was four centuries ago, when the European had just landed on these shores and found so many things--as novel as they were marvelous--to excite his delight and enthusiasm. It is something that is denied to us whose homes are in the North, and, to enjoy it in all its newness and freshness, we must perforce immigrate to tropical and subtropical climes.

But the foregoing is only one of the delectable features of this favored land. As we wander through the groves and gardens and sail on the placid waters of the rivers and lakes through the silent everglades or the dark and mysterious forests, we find at every turn something to charm the ear or delight the eyes. Everywhere we meet with new and beauteous form of animal and vegetable life and realize for the first time, perhaps, how diverse and multitudinous are the forms of animated nature.

If we are to credit Herrera, it was on account of its beautiful aspect, as well as on the day on which it was discovered, that the locality received the name it now bears. The historian says explicitly that Ponce de Leon and his companions "named it Florida because it appeared very delightful, having many pleasant groves, and it was all level; as also because they discovered it at Easter, which, as has been said, the Spaniards call Pascua de Flores or Florida." [1]

In view of this clear and positive statement of Herrera, one is surprised to see that writers treating the subject ex professo have fallen into error regarding the origin of the name Florida. Thus Barnard Shipp writes: "The Peninsula of Florida was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon on Pascua Florida, Palm Sunday, in the year 1512, [2] and because of the day on which he discovered it, he gave it the name Florida." [3]

All doubt, however, about the real origin of the name, about which there has been so much misunderstanding, is removed by the declaration of Peter Martyr, the father of American history. In his delightfully refreshing work, De Orbe Novo, which is not so well known as it should be, he asserts in language that does not admit of ambiguity, that Juan Ponce named the newly discovered territory Florida because it was discovered the day of the Resurrection, for the Spaniards call the day of the Resurrection Pascua de Flores." [4]

When the French Huguenots some decades later attempted to colonize the country they called it "La Nouvelle France"--New France--a name they also subsequently gave to Canada.

More interesting, however, is the fact that the Spaniards first thought the peninsula to be an island and called it Isla Florida. Ponce de Leon in writing to Charles V calls it an island, and it is figured as such in the Turin map of the New World, circa 1523. But after they learned that it was the mainland, Florida was made to embrace the whole of North America except Mexico. Thus writes Herrera and Las Casas. The latter make it extend from what we now know as Cape Sable to "the land of Codfish" (Newfoundland), "otherwise known as Labrador, which is not very far from the island of England." The present boundaries of Florida, it may be remarked, were not determined until 1795, when they were fixed by treaty with Spain.

But what in more interesting than names and boundaries, and what will, perhaps, be more surprising to the readers of popular works on the subject, is the fact that Ponce de Leon, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, was not the discoverer of Florida, the fact that it was discovered nearly two decades before Ponce de Leon reached its shores, and the further and more unexpected fact that it was discovered by that much misrepresented and much abused navigator, Americus Vespucius.

Thanks to the researches of Varnhagen, Harrisse and others, these facts have been apparently demonstrated beyond doubt. In his work on the voyages of the brothers Cortereal, Harrisse has clearly proven that, between the end of the year 1500 and the summer of 1502, certain navigators, whose names and nationality are unknown, but who were presumably Spaniards, discovered, explored and named that part of the coast-line of the United States which extends from Pensacola Bay, along the Gulf of Mexico, to the Cape of Florida, and, turning it, runs northward along the Atlantic coast to about the mouth of the Chesapeake or the Hudson. [5] The maps of Juan de la Cosa--drawn in 1500--and the one made for Alberto Cantino in 1502--maps which have only recently received the attention due them--are overwhelming evidence of the truth of these conclusions.

According to M. Varnhagen, the one who furnished the data for these maps, if indeed, he did not construct the prototype from which they were both executed, was no other than Americus Vespucius, who from now on must receive different treatment from that which has hitherto been accorded him. By marshalling a brilliant array of facts, presented with masterly logic, Varnhagen, silences the detractors of the illustrious Florentine navigator, and disarms those objectors who have been unwilling to accept as true the statements contained in the celebrated Soderini letter regarding his first voyage to the New World in 1497 and 1498. He leaves no doubt on the reader's mind, that Vespucius, after visiting Honduras and Yucatan, sailed thence to and around Florida, and that, if he did not himself actually construct the original of the Cantino map, it was he that supplied the data from which both this map and that of Juan de la Cosa were rendered possible. [6] If some fortunate student of early Americana should eventually ferret out the Quattro Giornate--Four Journeys--of which Vespucius frequently makes mention, and in which he gives an account of all his voyages, he would render an incalculable service to the cause of truth, and would be able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of even the most exacting critic the extent and importance of the services rendered by the pilot major of Spain to the crown of Leon and Castile--services only second to those which distinguish Columbus himself.

FONS JUVENTUTIS

But whatever may be said about the discovery of the country, Ponce de Leon's name will always remain so closely linked with Florida that it will never be possible to dissociate the two. One may forget all about his enterprise as a navigator and may ignore his claims as a discoverer, but one can never become oblivious of that strange episode with which his name is inseparably connected--the romantic search for the Fountain of Youth.

For the historian, as for the psychologist, the subject possesses an abiding interest, and even the casual visitor to Florida finds himself unconsciously dreaming about the days long gone by when Spaniard and Indian were wandering through forest and everglade in search of the life-giving fountain about which they had heard such marvelous reports. And if his dreams do not consume all his time, he also finds himself speculating on the origin of such reports, or the basis of the legend which started Ponce de Leon and others on a search for what proved to be an ignis fatuus as extraordinary as was the mythical Eldorado a few years later.

The historian Gomara, referring to this episode in the life of Ponce de Leon, writes as follows: "The gouernour of the Islande of Boriquena, John Ponce de Leon, beinge discharged of his office and very ryche, furnysshed and sente foorth two carvels to seeke the Ilandes of Boyuca in the which the Indians affirmed to be a fontayne or spring whose water is of vertue to make owlde men younge."

"Whyle he trauayled syxe monethes with owtragious desyre among many Ilandes to fynde that he sought, and coulde fynde no token of any such fountayne, he entered into Bimini and discouered the lande of Florida in the yeare 1512 on Easter day which the Spanyardes caule the florisshing day of Pascha, wherby they named that lande Florida." [7]

Antonio de Herrera speaks not only of this Fountain of Youth but also of a river whose waters had likewise the marvelous property of restoring youth to old age. This river was also supposed to be in Florida. It was known as the Jordan and received quite as much attention from both Spaniards and Indians as did the Fountain of Youth.

Fonteneda, who spent seventeen years in the wilds of Florida, as a captive of the Indians, gives more explicit information about the subject than either Gomara or Herrera. "Juan Ponce de Leon," he says, "believing the reports of the Indians of Cuba and San Domingo to be true, made an expedition into Florida to discover the river Jordan. This he did, either because he wished to acquire renown, or, perhaps, because he hoped to become young again by bathing in its waters. Many years ago a number of Cuban Indians went in search of this river, and entered the province of Carlos, but Sequene, the father of Carlos, took them prisoners and settled them in a village, where their descendants are still living. The news that these people had left their own country to bathe in the river Jordan spread among all the kings and chiefs of Florida, and, an they were an ignorant people, they set out in search of this river, which was supposed to possess the powers of rejuvenating old men and women. So eager were they in their search, that they did not pass a river, a brook, a lake, or even a swamp, without bathing in it, and even to this day they have not ceased to look for it, but always without success. The natives of Cuba, braving the dangers of the sea, became the victims of their faith, and thus it happened that they came to Carlos, where they built a village. They came in such great numbers that, although many have died, there are still many living there, both old and young. While I was a prisoner in those parts I bathed in a great many rivers but never found the right one." [8]

The poet-historian, Juan de Castellanos, writing in mock heroic style, says that so great were the virtues of the Fountain of Youth, that by means of its waters old women were able to get rid of their wrinkles and gray hairs. "A few draughts of the water and a bath in the restoring fluid sufficed to restore strength to their enfeebled members, give beauty to their features, and impart to a faded complexion the glow of youth. And, considering the vanity of our times, I wonder how many old women would drag themselves to this saving wave, if the puerilities of which I speak were certainties. How rich and puissant would not be the king who should own such a fountain! What farms, jewels, and prized treasures would not men sell in order to become young again! And what cries of joy would not proceed from the women-folk--from the fair as well as from the homely! In what a variety of costumes and liveries would not all go to seek such favors! Certainly they would take greater pains than they would in making a visit to the Holy Land." [9]

What Castellanos said might be repeated to-day. If the Fountain of Youth or the river Jordan, such as Ponce de Leon, Ayllon and de Soto sought, now existed, Florida would be the most frequented and most thickly populated country on the face of the globe. Vichy, Homburg, Karlsbad and other similar resorts would at once be abandoned, and there would forthwith be a mad rush for the Land of Easter. The Fountain of Youth would be worth more to its possessor than the diamond mines of Kimberley, more than the combined interests of Standard Oil, more than all the stocks and bonds of the United States Steel Corporation. There would be countless numbers who, like Faust, would be ready to sell their souls for a single draught of the life-giving fountain, for a single plunge into the health- and strength-restoring river.

That the simple and ignorant Indians of Cuba and Haiti and adjacent islands should have credited the stories in circulation about the marvelous waters said to exist somewhere in Florida we can understand. The marvelous and the supernatural always appeal in a special manner to the superstitious and untutored savage. We are, however, disposed to smile at the credulity of the enlightened Spaniard who did not hesitate to sacrifice fortune and life in the quest of what could never be found outside of Utopia. But, viewing things in our present state of knowledge, it is easy to judge them rashly and do them a grave injustice. We must transport ourselves back to the times in which they lived and acted, and consider the strange and novel environment in which they suddenly found themselves. A new world had just been discovered--a world in which everything--plants, trees, animals, men--seemed different from what they were familiar with in their own land. And for a people who from their youth had eagerly listened to stories of knight-errantry, and who, by long association with their Moorish neighbors, were ready to accept as sober facts the wildest statements of oriental fable, a special allowance must be made. They had heard of the adventures of Marco Polo, and of the wonders of Cathay and Cipango, and their minds were full of the oft-told tales about the Fortunate Isles, and the Islands of the Blest--located somewhere in the broad Atlantic, and presumably in the region of the setting sun--and what more natural than that they should expect to find themselves some bright morning in a land of enchantment? The marvelous stories current about the voyages of St. Brendan and his companions, about the island in the Western sea inhabited by Enoch and Elias, about the Garden of Eden moved from the distant East to the more distant West, all contributed to prepare their minds for a ready acceptance of the most extravagant statements. Had not the great Admiral, Columbus, announced that he had located the site of the Terrestrial Paradise, when he sailed by the rushing water of the Orinoco, and had not his views been accepted by thousands of his wondering contemporaries?

Such being the case, is it astonishing that the early explorers should have seriously believed in what we are now so ready to denounce as absurd? The romantic world of the sixteenth century, when Pliny and the Physiologus and the Bestiaries, were accepted by students of nature as unquestioned authorities; when learned men spent their lives in search of the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone, and believed in the transmutation of the baser metals into gold, was quite different from our prosaic twentieth-century world, when nothing is accepted that cannot pass the ordeal of exact science.

Again, we must not imagine, as is so often done, that a Fons Juventutis, such as Ponce de Leon and his contemporaries sought for, was something unheard of in the history of our race. Stories of miraculously healing fountains have been current from early times and in divers parts of the world--in India, in Ethiopia, and in the isles of the Pacific.

The reader will recall what Sir John Mandeville says about a well of youth he found during his travels in India. It was, he declares, "a right faire and a clere well, that hath a full good and sweete savoure, and it smelleth of all maner of sortes of spyces, and also at eche houre of the daye it changeth his savor diversely, and whoso drinketh thries on the daye of that well, he is made hole of all maner of sickenesse that he hathe. I have sometime dronke of that well and me thinketh yet that I fare the better; some call it the well of youth, for they that drinke thereof seme to be yong alway, and live without great sicknesse, and they saye this, cometh from Paradise terrestre, for it is so vertuous." [10]

So writes Mandeville, but there is reason to believe that he cribbed this account of the Fountain of Youth from a medieval legend of Prester John, from which, on account of the interest that attaches to the subject, I select the following paragraph:--

"Item aboute this passage is a fonteyne or a conduyte so who of this watere drinked, IIJ. tymes he shall waxe yonge and also yf a man haue had a sykenes, XXX. yere and drynked of thys same water he shall therof be hole and sonde. And also as a man thereof drinked hym semeth that he had occupyed the beste mete and drinke of the worlde, and this same fonteyne is full of the grace of the holy goost, and who sowe in this same water wasshed his body he shall become yonge of XXX. yere." [11]

Whether these stories had their origin in folklore or not, they found their way into Europe at least two centuries before the voyage of Ponce de Leon to Florida. Mandeville's work appeared in French, Latin, and English, and such was its popularity, that Halliwell did not hesitate to declare that "of no book, with the exception of the Scriptures, can more MSS. be found at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century."

Such being the case, it would be strange indeed if the Spaniards were not familiar with stories so widely circulated, and stranger still if, on arriving in the New World, and learning from the Indians of the existence of a fountain of youth, and at no great distance away, they should not seek to locate it and test its virtues. Given the state of knowledge at the time, and the credence accorded to the accounts of similar fountains in the Old World, the much ridiculed expedition of Ponce de Leon followed as a natural consequence. It would have been more surprising if the expedition had not been made than that it was made.

The foregoing remarks on the Florida Fountain of Youth and river Jordan would be incomplete without a few words about the probable origin of the traditions concerning them. To attribute their origin to folklore simply may be true, but it explains nothing.

M. E. Beauvois, in a series of interesting articles--very plausible if not conclusive--on the subject, contends that all the traditions regarding the Fountain of Youth and the river Jordan, which proved so attractive to the Spaniards, are of Christian origin. He maintains that the Gaels, as early as 1380, "had established relations with the aborigines from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the tropical zone of North America, and that it is very probable that missionaries accompanied the merchants in their voyages to Florida and the Antilles." He argues that these missionaries baptized the indigenes in some river which, for that reason, they called the Jordan, or that they spoke to them of a river in their country, on which a Christian mission had been established, and that this fact gave rise to the formation of the tradition of a Jordan situated somewhere at the north of the Antilles.

It remains to show how this tradition came to be confounded with the story of the Fountain of Youth. This confusion was the more natural that the same idea is at the foundation of the two parallel traditions. The one has reference to the regeneration of the soul, the other to the rejuvenation of the body, both being effected by means of vivifying water. In the beginning, but one kind of water was known, that "which saved by its own proper virtue, the water of baptism, which is exclusively spiritual." Subsequently, however, the simple and superstitious Indian attributed to the waters of baptism properties which seemed to him preferable to those spoken of by the missionary--the properties, namely, "of curing diseases of the body, or of restoring youth to the decrepit and of indefinitely prolonging life. From that time the Fountain of Youth had a proper existence and began to play an important role in popular traditions."

How long the tradition of the beneficent waters of Florida existed--and Florida, it must be remembered, meant to the Spaniards of the sixteenth century all the Atlantic coast--M. Beauvois does not determine. It may have been only a few generations, or it may have been several centuries. It may even have dated back to about the year 1008, when Thorfinn Karlsefni was baptized in "Vinland the Good"--Massachusetts--the first Christian, so far as known, born on the American continent. Or it may have originated as far north as New Brunswick--"Great Ireland or Huitramannaland--which had been occupied by a Gaelic colony from the year 1000, or from an earlier date, until the end of the fourteenth century, and where, about the year 1000, the Papas, Columbite monks, the evangelizers of that region, had baptized the Icelander, Aré Mârsson, who had left his native island before his conversion to Christianity."

At all events, whatever conclusions may be reached as to the time when and the place where the tradition originated, it is manifest that "it could have been propagated in the New World only by Christians and as it was in existence before the arrival of the Spaniards, we must attribute its propagation to other Europeans, to those, for example, whose crosses the indigenes of Tennessee and Georgia had exhumed from their ancient burial places, or to those whom the inhabitants of Haiti had known either de visu or by hearsay." [12]

What is here said of the Christian origin of the Florida Fountain of Youth can likewise be predicated of the one mentioned in the legend of Prester John--whence, as we have seen, Mandeville got his story, for it is said, "this same fonteyne is full of the grace of the holy goost," an obvious allusion to the regenerating waters of baptism.

But it is time to resume the thread of our narrative, interrupted by a discussion unavoidably long, but pardonable, it is hoped, in view of its abiding interest and intimate connection with the early history of Florida. Besides, my purpose is not so much to give descriptions of the countries through which we shall pass--something which has in most instances been done before--as to give the impressions of their earliest explorers and to dwell, as briefly as may be, on topics relating to the various regions visited, that possess even for the most casual reader a perennial fascination and importance. In countries like those we shall visit, the impressions of the first explorers are often more interesting and instructive than those of the latest tourist or naturalist, for such impressions have about them a freshness and an originality--often a quaintness and a simplicity--that are entirely absent from modern works of travel. Another reason for so doing is that much of the ground, over which we shall travel, is practically the same to-day as when it first greeted the eyes of the conquistadores, and many of the towns and cities we shall visit, no less than the manners and customs of the people, differ but little from what they were in the time of Charles V and Philip II. Thus, regarding many things, the statements of the Spanish writers and missionaries of four centuries ago are still as true as if they had been penned but yesterday, and that, too, by the most accurate observer.

From St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States, the traveler has the choice of two routes to Havana. One is by way of Tampa Bay, called by De Soto the Bay of Espíritu Santo, and by some of the early geographers designated as the Bay of Ponce de Leon. What, however, is now known as Ponce de Leon Bay, is farther south and near the southernmost point of the peninsula. The other route is along the east coast of the state. At the time of our visit the railroad was in operation only as far as Miami, but was being rapidly pushed towards its terminus at Key West.

We chose the eastern route because we could in fancy follow more closely in the footsteps of the conquistadores and picture to ourselves, in the ocean, nearly always visible, that long procession of barks and brigantines which four centuries ago plowed the main, some moving northward, others southward--all manned by brawny, hardy mariners in search of gold and glory. Spaniards, like Ponce de Leon and Pedro Menendez; Italians, like Americus Vespucius and Verrazano; Englishmen, like Hawkins and Raleigh; Frenchmen, like Ribaut and Laudonniere, all passed along this coast--all bent on achieving distinction or extending the possessions of their respective sovereigns. Brave and gallant mariners these, men whose names are writ large on the pages of story and who occupy a conspicuous place in the records of the heroes of adventure.

From Miami we went by steamer to Key West, which will soon be accessible by rail from St. Augustine. The sea was as placid as an inland lakelet and the voyage to Havana was in every way ideal. We skirted along the Florida Keys--those countless coral islets that are to serve as piers for the railroad under construction, which is to form so important a link between Cuba and the United States. When completed the time consumed in going to the Pearl of the Antilles will not only be greatly lessened, but the former discomforts and terrors of the journey will be entirely eliminated. No longer will the traveler be obliged to encounter the hurricanes of the Bahamas or the heavy seas off Cape Hatteras. He will be able to take his seat in a Pullman car in New York and go, without change, through to Key West and thence to Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

How different was it when the small Spanish craft of four centuries ago navigated these waters on their way from Panama and Vera Cruz to the mother country! Then, as the reader will observe, by reference to the old maps of Florida, the keys or coral reefs along the coast were known as Los Mártires--the Martyrs--so named by Ponce de Leon on account of the number of shipwrecks that occurred here, and because of the number of lives that were lost on these treacherous shoals and also, as Herrera informs us, because of certain rock-formations in the vicinity that have the appearance of men in distress.

If we may credit the legends and traditions that have obtained in those parts, many a Spanish treasure-ship has been lost in threading its way through the uncharted shoals and islands of Los Mártires and the Bahamas, and many futile attempts have been made to recover at least a part of the treasure lost, but it was

"Lost in a way that made search vain."

And of the adventurous divers, who braved the dangers of current and wave, one can safely say in the words of Bret Harte

"Never a sign,
East or West, or under the line,
They saw of the missing galleon;
Never a sail or plank or chip,
They found of the long-lost treasure-ship,
Or enough to build a tale upon."

THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES

Early the morning following our departure from Miami we were aroused from our slumbers by the cry of a mariner, "Land ho! all hands ahoy!" We were on deck without delay, and there before us, under a sky of purest azure, we beheld the hills of Cuba, clad in a mantle of undying verdure. Its resplendent shores were arrayed in hues of glowing beauty and unimagined loveliness. Fragrant groves of orange and pomegranate, luxuriant forests white with clouds of bloom, formed a glorious setting to the refulgent waves that reflected the crimson splendors of the rising sun. Delicious zephyrs, fanning their balmy wings, bathed our brows with dewy freshness, sweet with perfume from ambrosial fruits and tropic flowers. Yes, we were in the Pearl of the Antilles, the "Sweet Isle of Flowers"; in Gan Eden--the Garden of Delight--that in the legends of long ago was reckoned among the Isles of the Blest.

The beautiful pictures before us, however, were but as a fleeting panorama. We had but little time to feast our eyes on them before we were in front of grim, frowning Morro Castle, that for three centuries and more has stood sentinel of the fair city at its feet. Adjoining the Castle are the Cabañas, a vast range of fortifications more than a mile in length, and nearly a thousand feet in breadth. Just opposite, on the other side of the harbor's entrance, is the Bateria de la Punta, and some distance farther beyond is the star-shaped Castle Atares. From a military standpoint Havana is well protected, and, with Morro Castle properly equipped with modern artillery, would be practically impregnable.

Few West Indian cities have greater historic interest than Havana. From the time it was first visited by Ocampo, four hundred years ago, until the raising of the flag of the Cuban Republic in 1904, it has been the witness of many stirring events that have effected the destinies of millions of people in various parts of the world. It was from Havana's port that Cortes, in 1519, sailed on his memorable voyage to Mexico. It was from this port that Pamphilio de Narvaez and Hernando de Soto started on their ill-starred expeditions to Florida. Time and again the city was harassed by Dutch, French and English pirates and Buccaneers. Oftentimes, too, the daring sea-rovers, who so long infested West Indian waters, levied tribute on the unfortunate inhabitants who were unable to defend themselves. Indeed, it was to defend the city from these marauders that the kings of Spain, in the middle of the sixteenth century, began the erection of those fortifications that, since their completion, have excited the admiration of all who have visited them.

Cuba was one of the islands Columbus discovered during his first voyage. But he thought he had discovered a continent--that he had reached the eastern extremity of Asia. He had set out from Spain to find a western route to the Indies, to offset the discoveries of Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama. To him Cuba was the land of the Great Khan, far-off Cathay, and Española, discovered shortly afterwards, was Cipango, Japan. Indeed, there is reason to believe that he died in the belief that Cuba, far from being an island, was a part of China, as mapped by Toscanelli and described by Marco Polo. We have no positive evidence that he was ever aware of the circumnavigation of the island by Pinzón and Solís in 1497, and he was dead two years before its insularity was again proved by Ocampo. He never dreamed that he had discovered a new world, nor did any of his contemporaries or immediate successors have any conclusive reason to infer that the lands discovered by the great Admiral in his third and fourth voyages were not a part of the Asiatic continent.

Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean did not supply such reasons, neither did the rounding of South America and the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan. Nor were the necessary proofs furnished by the explorations of Drake or Frobisher, Davis or Hudson or Baffin.

The final demonstration of the complete separation of America from Asia was a long process and was not given until the noted explorations of Vitus Behring in 1728, more than two centuries after Balboa from the summit of a peak in Darien first descried the placid waters of the great South Sea. [13]

We had desired to visit the northern and southern coasts of Cuba, and to feast our eyes on the beautiful scenes that had so captivated Columbus; to view the hundred harbors that indent its tortuous shores; to see the Queen's Gardens--now known as Los Cayos de las Doce Leguas--which the great navigator fancied to be the seven thousand spice islands of Marco Polo, but our time was too limited to permit the long and slow coasting that would be required. Besides, we preferred to study the interior of the country, and pass through the sugar and tobacco plantations for which the island is so famous.

Fortunately for the comfort of the traveler, there is now a through train from Havana to Santiago, so that one can make the entire five hundred and forty miles in twenty-four hours, and that, too, if one so elect, in a Pullman car.

Columbus, in writing of his first voyage to Rafael Sánchez and Luis de Santangel, says that all the countries he had discovered, but particularly Juana--the name he gave to Cuba--"are of surpassing excellence," and "exceedingly fertile." "All these islands" he continues, "are very beautiful and distinguished by a diversity of scenery; they are filled with a great variety of trees of immense height, and which I believe retain their foliage in all seasons; for when I saw them"--in November--"they were as verdant and luxuriant as they usually are in Spain in the month of May--some of them were blossoming, some bearing fruit, and all flourishing in the greatest perfection, according to their respective stages of growth, and the nature and quality of each." Again he writes, "The nightingale and a thousand other sorts of birds were singing in the month of November wherever I went. There are palm trees in these countries of six or eight sorts, which are surprising to see, on account of their diversity from ours, but, indeed, this is the case with respect to the other trees, as well as the fruits and weeds. Here are also honey, and fruits of a thousand sorts, and birds of every variety." [14]

The Admiral's delight and enthusiasm at all he saw knew no bounds, and in his diary he gives frequent expression to the pleasurable emotions he experienced. All was new to him, and all beautiful beyond words to describe. Trees and plants were as different from those in Spain as day is from night, and the verdure and bloom in November were as fresh and brilliant as in the month of May in Andalusia. [15] The great navigator had a poet's love of nature, and artist's eye for the beautiful. Indeed, it may be truthfully said that no one since his time has more correctly and more succinctly portrayed the salient features of these islands, and it may be questioned if any one has more deeply appreciated their beauty and splendor.

That which frequently arrests the attention of the traveler, on the way from Havana to Santiago, is the numerous sugar and tobacco plantations everywhere visible. Sugar cane, as is known, was not found by the Spaniards on their arrival in the New World, but was introduced there a short time after, most probably from the Madeira or Canary Islands.

Tobacco, however, is an American plant, and one of the things that most surprised the Europeans on first coming in contact with the Indians of the newly discovered islands was to find them smoking the dried leaves of this now favorite narcotic.

The first mention of tobacco is in Columbus' diary under date of November 6, 1492. Referring to two messengers he had sent out among the Indians, he writes, "The two Christians met on the road a great many people going to their villages, men and women with brands in their hands, made of herbs, for taking their customary smoke." [16] These, then, were the first cigars of which we have any record. The use of tobacco in pipes was apparently first observed in Florida by Captain John Hawkins during his voyage to the peninsula in 1566. Among many other interesting things he tells us about the inhabitants is that of their use and love of the pipe.

"The Floridians when they trauel haue a kinde of herbe dryed, which with a cane, and an earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together do sucke thoro the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they liue foure or five days without meat or drinke, and this all the Frenchmen vsed for this purpose; yet do they holde opinion withall, that it causeth water and flame to void from their stomachs." [17]

The early Italian traveler, Girolamo Benzoni, evidently did not share the views of the Floridians and Frenchmen regarding the value of tobacco. To him it was nothing less than an invention of Satan. Speaking of its evil effects, he says, "See what a pestiferous and wicked poison from the devil this must be." [18]

But it is the good Old Dominican, Père Labat, who has the most to say about the introduction and use of tobacco. His charming, gossipy account of men and things and his vagabunda loquacitas, have lost none of their fascination for the curious reader since they were first written nearly two centuries ago.

Among other things he does not hesitate to affirm that the Indians, "by introducing the use of tobacco among their pitiless conquerors, succeeded, in great measure, in avenging themselves for the unjust servitude to which they had been reduced." [19] According to the good father, tobacco proved to be a veritable apple of discord, because it gave rise to a protracted war of words among men of science. In this war a large number of ignoramuses as well as savants participated. And not the last to declare themselves in favor of or opposed to what they understood no better than the serious affairs of the day, in which they had been but too active, were the woman-folk.

Physicians discussed its properties, nature and virtues, as if it had been known all over the habitable world from the times of Galen, Hippocrates, and Æsculapius, and their opinions were as diverse, and as opposed to one another as are to-day the opinions of allopaths and homeopaths, osteopaths and psychopaths. They prescribed when and how it was to be taken and in what doses. They and the chemists of the time soon recognized in tobacco a valuable addition to their pharmacopoea. Nay, more, it was not long before it was proclaimed as a panacea for all the ills that poor suffering humanity is heir to.

Its ashes cured glanders; taken as a powder it cured rheumatism, headache, dropsy, and paralysis. It was a specific against melancholy and insanity; against the smallpox and the plague, against fever, asthma and liver troubles. It strengthened the memory and excited the imagination, and philosophers and men of science could be, it was averred, no better prepared to grapple with the most difficult of abstract problems than by having the nose primed with snuff.

The effects induced by chewing tobacco were said to be even more marvelous, for among other things it was claimed that by thus using it hunger and thirst were allayed or prevented. It removed bile, cured toothache and freed an over-charged brain from all kinds of deleterious humors. It strengthened and preserved the sight. Oil, extracted from tobacco, cured deafness, gout, sciatica, improved the circulation, and was a tonic for the nervous. In a word, it was the great panacea of which physicians and alchemists had so long dreamed, but had hitherto been unable to find.

Finally, however, a reaction came. Books were written against it, and kings and princes forbade its use. On the 26th of March, 1699, the question was seriously discussed before L'Ecole de Médecine whether the frequent use of tobacco shortened life--An ex tabaci usu frequenti vita summa brevior? And the conclusion was a demonstration that the frequent use of tobacco did shorten life. Ergo ex frequenti tabaci usu vita summa brevior. [20]

But notwithstanding the opinions of learned men and university faculties regarding the alleged deleterious properties of tobacco, and the denunciations hurled against the use of this invention of the Evil One, the smoking of cigars and pipes soon became a general habit the world over, and, it was at times difficult for the supply to meet the demand. How little Las Casas dreamed that this "vicious habit," as he called it, was soon to become universal, and that the time would come when young and old would regard the "fragrant weed," prepared in one way or another, not only as an indispensable luxury, but also as a prime necessity--for rich and poor alike, if life were to be worth living.

And how far was Columbus from imagining, when he saw the Indians taking "their customary smoke," that the leaves which they had so carefully rolled together for this purpose, would eventually prove to be one of the great staples of commerce, and one of the world's most valued sources of revenue. He crossed "the Sea of Darkness" to discover a direct route to the lands of spice and the Golden Chersonese in order to fill the coffers of the land of his adoption. He and his companions explored every island they met in their wanderings in quest of gold and pearls and precious stones and here, in the narcotic plant, that appeared to them as little more than a curiosity, there were treasures greater than those of "Ormus and Ind." In this very island of Cuba, of whose charms he has left us so glowing a picture, was in after years to be developed from the humble plant--Nicotiana Tabacum--one of Spain's most important industries--an industry that would, in the course of time, contribute more to the nation's exchequer than the combined output of the mines of Pasco and Potosí. Such was evidently the thought of the Cuban poet, Zequeira, when, in his much praised Horatian ode, A La Piña, he sings

"¡Salve, suelo felíz, donde prodiga
Madre naturaleza en abundancia
La ordorifeva planta fumigable!
¡Salve, felíz Habana!" [21]

Santiago, like Havana, is a historic city, and, from its foundation, nearly four centuries ago, until the memorable siege of 1898, it experienced many reverses at the hands of privateers and pirates. We lingered just long enough to see its chief attractions--there are not many--outside of the Morro--and to get a view of the now famous El Caney and San Juan Hill.