1512.]

PONCE DE LEON DISCOVERS FLORIDA.

147 its forests bubbled up a fountain of which whosoever drank should receive the priceless gift of perpetual youth. The rumor of Legend of gold was enough to tempt Spanish cupidity; but that was of Youth. as nothing to Ponce de Leon, already rich but already old, to the promise of being young again.

the Fountain

To find this new marvel of the New World, Juan Ponce de Leon started from Porto Rico with three ships, in March, 1512. As was fitting in a quest for a fountain of immortality, the adventurers floated over that summer sea as men intent on pleasure, to whom time was long and burdened with no serious duties; they sailed from island to island, touching here and there as fancy led them, seeking the safest and pleasantest coves, where the shades were deepest in the noonday sun and the waters coolest, where the fruits were sweetest, the Indians most friendly and their women loveliest. After a month of such idle dalliance they crossed the Bahama Channel, and, on the 27th of March, which happened to be Easter Sunday and which the Spaniards call Pascua de Flores,2 they saw and passed an island on the opposite coast. Two or three days later Ponce de Leon. Discovery landed on the main, near the point now called Fernandina.3 of Florida. Taking possession of it in the name of Spain he named it 1512. Florida, because the land was first seen on the Pascua de Flores, and because it was fair to look upon, covered with pleasant groves and carpeted with flowers.

March 27,

For more than thirty days they sailed along the coast on both sides of the Peninsula, and among the Bahama Islands, sometimes trafficking, more often fighting with the Indians, who were bold and fierce, but seeking always for the wonderful fountain. Whether it was on the mainland, or, as some of the Indians said, on the Island of Bimini, of

1 Dr. J. G. Kohl (Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. i., Second Series, p. 240) says March 3, 1513, and that Peschel, in his Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, has proved that the year 1512, to which this voyage of De Leon is usually assigned, is incorrect. March 3, 1512, old style, would be 1513, new style, and Bancroft accordingly gives the date 151. Dr. Kohl leaves it doubtful whether he means 151, or 151.

2 Herrera, Hildreth, Irving, and some other writers, erroneously state that Pascua de Flores is Palm Sunday. La Pascua de las Flores is La Pascua de la Resurrection, or Easter Sunday.

Peter Martyr says (Decade V., chap. 1) "that parte of the lande which Johannes Pontius first touched, from the north side of the Fernandina."

the Bahama group,1 the restoring waters were never found; though those who sought them drank of every spring and bathed in every stream their eager and hungry eyes could spy in the deep shadows of the woods.

Death of

Leon claimed, nevertheless, great merit with the king for finding a land so fair and promising, and he was made its Adelantado, on condition that he would colonize it. In 1521, this first governor of territory within the limits of the present United States, returned to the province assigned to him, but, in a fight with Indians who opposed his landing, he received from an arrow a wound from which no healing waters could wash the poison. He retired then to Cuba, thankful, perhaps, at last, that "eloquent, just, and mightie death" Juan Ponce could release him from the burden of old age, doubly de Leon. weighted now by the calamity of poverty, for the remnant of his riches was spent in his last expedition.2 Other Spanish navigators followed this gay old cavalier, but the object of their search was gold, not youth. Don Diego Velasquez, one of the earlier adventurers in Hispaniola, who had conquered Cuba, and become its governor, ambitious, energetic, and intelligent, sent several expeditions into the Gulf of Mexico, wisely, for his purpose, directing them to its southern rather than to its northern coasts. It was the road to Mexico, which Cortez soon found; but that Florida was visited by two of the other captains of Velasquez was almost by accident rather than by design. Hernandez de Cordova touched there on his return from a the Gulf of cruise along the coast of Yucatan, in 1517, and John de GriMexico. jalva did the same thing the next year. In 1516, Diego Miruelo is said to have made a voyage on his own account to Florida, and to have brought back some gold. In 1518, also, Francis Garay, the governor of Jamaica, landed on that shore, was attacked by the natives, and lost most of his men.3 But he returned the next year,

Voyages in

1 In Peter Martyr's Map of 1511, Florida is laid down as Isla de Beimeni.

2 "Whether the old fable of the Fountain of youth was derived by the Indians from the Spaniards, or was of indigenous growth, it is impossible to decide. It was undoubtedly firmly believed in among the other marvels of the New World. "The Dene, Aiglianus the Senator, and Licentiatus Figuera, sent to Hispaniola to be President of the Senate, . . . . these three agree," says Peter Martyr, “that they had heard of the fountaine restoringe strength, and that they partly belieued the reportes; but they sawe it not, nor proued it by experience, because the inhabitants of that Terra Florida haue sharpe nayles, and are eager defenders of their rights." But the Dene related that an Indian, "grieuously oppressed with old age, moued with the fame of that fountaine, and allured through the loue longer of lyfe, went from his natiue ilande neere vnto the country of Florida to drinke of the desired fountaine, . . and hauinge well drunke and washed himselfe for many dayes with the appointed remedies, by them who kept the bath, hee is reported to haue brought home a manly strength, and to haue vsed all manly exercises, and that hee married againe, and begatt children." Aiglianus is De Ayllon, who visited Florida after De Leon.

....

8 Peter Martyr, Decade V., chap. 1.

1520.]

KIDNAPPING INDIANS.

149

and was the first thorough explorer of the Gulf coast of the United States. He made its entire circuit, and drew a chart by which he showed that" it bendeth like a bow," and that a line stretched from the shore of Yucatan to the point at which Ponce de Leon first touched, would "make the string of the bow." Florida, he found, was not an island, as De Leon had supposed, "but by huge, crooked windings and turninges to bee joyned to this maine continent of Tenustitan" (Yucatan). He came, also, "vpon a riuer, flowing into the Ocan with a broade mouth; and from his ships discryed many villages couered with reedes ;" and this was the first discovery of the Mississippi, the Rio del Espirito Santo, the River of the Holy Ghost.1 But he thought the coast, which he spent about eight months in exploring, "to be very litle hospitable, because he sawe tokens and signes of small store of golde, and that not pure.

192

northernmost point touched by the But northward from that

Explorations

lantic coast.

Fernandina was as yet the Spaniards on the Atlantic coast. place was a country known as Chicora, and somewhere up the Atwithin it was supposed to be the sacred river of Jordan, whose waters possessed a healing power akin to, if not the same, as those of the Fountain of Youth.3 To this land of Chicora Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon either sent or led an expedition of two ships in 1520 from Hispaniola, and the river now known as the Combahee, in South Carolina, he named the Jordan. It does not appear that he went anywhere else than to the mouth of this river, though he was sent in search of a passage that would lead to India. But the real purpose was slaves. The people of the Jordan, unlike those farther south, gave the strangers a kindly welcome. They crowded aboard the ships, the like of which they had never seen before, as eager, as curious, and as confiding as children. The very ease of kidnapping these simple and unsuspicious savages might have Indians for suggested it. The hoisting of the sails, the weighing of the anchors, gave them no alarm; imperceptibly to them the vessels stole away, on an even keel, without apparent motion, and not till they were so far from the shore that to return was impossible, did the poor creatures understand the cruel treachery of which they were the victims. They were to be sold as slaves for the gold mines and plantations of the Islands. But of the two vessels one foundered at sea, and all on board perished; on the other, but few lived to reach Hispaniola, 1 Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi, p. viii.

2 Peter Martyr.

Kidnapping

slaves.

Compare, however, Herrera, Decade I., lib. ix., chap. 5; Narrative of Fontanedo in Ternaux-Compans, and note by the editor, and J. G. Kohl, in Maine Hist. Socy. Coll., p. 248. Dr. Kohl says that the river was named Jordan for the captain of one of Ayllon's ships. 4 Bancroft, Hist. U. S., vol. 1.