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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.”