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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.