J. A. Zahm

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?

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.

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,

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.

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

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

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

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.

The sun was sinking below the horizon when we boarded the steamer that was to take us to Haiti and Santo Domingo. As we passed under El Morro, that has so long and faithfully guarded the entrance to the placid harbor, and looked towards the setting sun where Cervera’s proud fleet was scattered, we could not but recall the prophetic words of Las Casas penned in his last will and testament. Speaking of the Indians, to whose care and protection he had devoted a long and fruitful life, the holy bishop writes: “As God is my witness that I never had earthly interest in view, I declare it to be my conviction and my faith—I believe it to be in accordance with the faith of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, which is our rule and guide—that by all the thefts, all the deaths, and all the confiscations of estates and other uncalculable riches, by the dethroning of rulers with unspeakable cruelty, the perfect and immaculate law of Jesus Christ and the natural law itself have been broken, the name of our Lord and His holy religion have been outraged, the spreading of the faith has been retarded, and irreparable harm done to these innocent people. Hence I believe that, unless it atones with much penance for these abominable and unspeakably wicked deeds, Spain will be visited by the wrath of God, because the whole nation has shared, more or less, in the bloody wealth that has been acquired by the slaughter and extermination of those people. But I fear that it will repent too late, or never. For God punishes with blindness the sins sometimes of the lowly, but especially and more frequently the sins of those who think themselves wise, and who presume to rule the world. We ourselves are eyewitnesses of this darkening of the understanding. It is now seventy years since we began to scandalize, to rob and to murder those peoples, but to this day we have not come to realize that so many scandals, so much injustice, so many thefts, so many massacres, so much slavery, and the depopulation of so many provinces, which have disgraced our holy religion, are sins or injustices at all.”22

Were the tragic scenes enacted in these waters and in the harbor of Manila the fulfillment of the prophecy? If we should be disposed to think so, let us not forget, in contemplating the humiliation and punishment of Spain, that we too have sinned as Spain sinned. And let us pray that the blood of the millions of Indians that have been exterminated in our own land may not call down the vengeance of Heaven on our children and our children’s children. Nations, like individuals, are punished where they have sinned.23

A short sail eastwards and we found ourselves crossing the Windward Passage. Not far from our port quarter was Cape Maisi, which Columbus, on his first voyage, named Cape Alpha and Omega, as being the easternmost extremity of Asia; Alpha, therefore, from his own point of view, and Omega from that of his Portuguese rivals. On his second voyage Columbus came down through this passage to satisfy himself that he had actually reached Mangi, the land of the Great Khan, and coasted along the island of Cuba, as he reckoned, for a thousand miles. But as fate would have it, he stopped short in his westward course within a few hours’ sail of the present Cape San Antonio, the westernmost promontory of the island. If he had only journeyed on a few miles further, he would have detected the insularity of what he considered a continent, and thus have anticipated the discoveries of Vespucius and Ocampo. And he would have done more. He would have reached the shores of Yucatan and Campeachy and had an opportunity of exploring the famous ruins of Chichen Itza and Uxmal. How different, too, it would have been, if, after discovering Guanahuani, he had directed the prow of the Santa Maria slightly to the northwest, when a short sail would have brought him to the coast of Florida! It is interesting to speculate not only how much his own life, but also how greatly the entire course of American history would have been affected by these slight changes in his course on these momentous occasions.

But during his four voyages among these mysterious islands the great navigator was as one groping his way in the Cretan labyrinth. On his return eastward from the Cape of Good Hope—the name he gave to the westernmost point of Cuba attained by him—he found, almost before he was aware of it, that he had actually circumnavigated what he had imagined to be Cipango, the great island of Japan. This surprised and puzzled him beyond expression. Evidently, either he was mistaken or the authorities on whom he had been relying were mistaken. If the island—EspaÑola—was not Cipango, what was it? He soon learned that gold mines existed in the interior of the country and that there was evidence of excavations that had been long abandoned.24 What more natural, then, than his conclusion that this was the far-famed Ophir whence King Solomon had obtained the gold used in the adornment of the temple of Jerusalem!

Whatever may be said of the Admiral’s theory, one thing is certain, and that is that the discovery of gold in EspaÑola25 was directly or indirectly the cause of untold misery to the aborigines, and eventually led up to the present unfortunate condition of this hapless island. It was, as the reader knows, the work in the mines that was the chief factor in the gradual decimation and the final extinction of the Indians in EspaÑola. When there were no longer Indians to do the work, negroes were imported from Africa, and thence dates that hideous period of cruel traffic in human beings which, for more than three centuries, was the blackest stain on the vaunted civilization of the Caucasian race. But in this, as in other similar cases, an avenging Nemesis has either already overtaken the offending nations or is giving them grave concern regarding the future. In the black republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo the slave has replaced the master, and there are already indications that the day of reckoning is approaching for the powers that are in control of the other islands of the West Indies. We saw evidences of this during our visit in Cuba, and are convinced that, if it were not for the strong arm of the United States, it would not be long before we should have another black republic at our doors. And what is said of Cuba may be said of all the islands of the Lesser Antilles from Trinidad to Puerto Rico. The race question is one that will have to be met sooner or later. The whites are decreasing in numbers and the blacks are rapidly increasing and becoming more insistent on what they claim to be their rights, especially to that of a greater representation in government affairs, and to a larger share of the emoluments of public office.

It was only a few years after the colonizing of EspaÑola when negro slavery was introduced into the island. The motive was, in some measure, a humane one—namely, to spare the Indians the arduous labor in the mines for which they were physically incapacitated. The African was much stronger and had much greater powers of endurance than the native. According to Herrera, “the negroes flourished so well in EspaÑola, that it was thought that if a negro was not hanged he would never die, for no one had ever seen one die of disease. Thus the negroes found, like the oranges, a soil in EspaÑola better suited to them than their own country, Guinea.”26

Monopolies of licenses were granted by the Spanish monarchs for the importation of negro slaves to the West Indies, first to their own subjects, and later on to certain Genoese and Germans, and finally, by a special asiento, or contract, the Spanish government conveyed to the English the “exclusive right to carry on the most nefarious of all trades between Africa and Spanish America.” The British engaged to transport annually to the Spanish Indies during a term of thirty years, four thousand and eight hundred of what, in trade language, were called “Indian pieces,” that is to say, negro slaves, paying a duty per head of thirty-three escudos and one-third.27 So great was the number of negroes imported into America from 1517, when Charles V first permitted the traffic, until 1807, when the slave trade was abolished by an act of the English Parliament, that it has been computed that their total number was not less than five or six millions. In one single year, 1768, it is said that the number torn from their homes and country and transported to Spain’s new colonies was no less than ninety-seven thousand.28

But the inevitable soon came to pass—much sooner than even the wisest statesman could have foreseen. The great Cardinal Ximenes, it is true, realized from the beginning the risk incurred by sending negroes to the Indies. He contended that it was wrong to send beyond the ocean people so “apt in war” as the blacks, who might at any time stir up a servile war against Spanish rule. He insisted that “the negroes, who were as malicious as they were strong, would no sooner perceive themselves to be more numerous in the New World than the Spaniards, than they would lay their heads together to put on their masters the chains they now carried.”29

The cardinal’s prediction soon came true. In all parts of the Indies—in the islands of the sea and on Tierra Firme—there were massacres and uprisings and “servile wars,” without number, and both the colonies and the mother country had often occasion to regret the introduction within their boundaries of so dangerous and warlike subjects. But it was too late to rectify the mistake. It was impossible to drive them out of the country, or to return them to the land whence they had been brought against their will. So rapidly had they increased in numbers that they now, in many places, constituted a great majority of the population. EspaÑola, to-day constituting the two republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo, was the first island of which they got supreme control. Which will be the next? The question is not an idle one. It is one frequently asked in the West Indies. The unrest and agitation of the blacks are much greater than we in the North imagine. Their ambition is greater and their political aspirations higher than those who have not been among them are prepared to admit. The situation is certainly not one that justifies supine indifference on the part of the governments now in control, nor is the difficulty one whose solution can be indefinitely postponed. Every lover of law and order must hope that some modus vivendi can be arrived at whereby, while all the legitimate claims of the negro are conceded, the world will he spared another “decline and fall” like that which has been witnessed in EspaÑola.

We called at several of the ports of Haiti and Santo Domingo but we found little to interest us outside of the capital of the latter republic. Santo Domingo is not only the oldest city in the New World—the early abandoned settlement of Isabella never deserved the name of city—but is, in many respects, the most interesting. Founded by Bartholomew Columbus in 1496, and named Santo Domingo after the patron saint of his father, Domenico, it was, for a while, the seat of the vice-royalty. It was to this place that Don Diego Colon, the son of the Admiral, brought his lovely bride, DoÑa Maria de Toledo, a daughter of one of the oldest and proudest families of Spain. Here he set up a vice-regal court that excited the envy of his enemies, and was by them made the basis of charges preferred against him that he meditated establishing a government independent of the mother country. Of the viceroy’s palace, Oviedo writes to Charles V, it “seemeth unto me so magnificall and princelyke that yowr maiestie maye bee as well lodged therin as in any of the mooste exquisite builded houses of Spayne.”30

From Santo Domingo radiated the lines of discovery and conquest that culminated in the achievements of Cortes, Balboa and Pizarro. Here Columbus was loaded with chains and imprisoned by Bobadilla. Here was established the first university of the New World. Here, within the walls of the Convent of San Domingo, prayed and labored that noble “Protector of the Indians,” Las Casas, and here he planned and began work on his monumental Historia de las Indias. Until the last assault by Drake in 1586, it was the centre of commercial activity in the Indies, for it was the chief port of call to and from Spain and the place where merchants, miners, and planters disposed of their commodities and amassed fortunes.

But Santo Domingo’s halcyon days were of short duration. Before the end of the sixteenth century the city began to decline. The theatre of activity, that had hitherto been confined to EspaÑola, was transferred to Cuba and Mexico, Panama and Peru, and to-day the once gay and prosperous capital exhibits but a shadow of its pristine glory.

Homenage Castle, the crumbling palace of Don Diego Columbus, and the few churches and monasteries that still, even in their neglected condition, attest the former importance of the place, present a pathetic picture, and tell, in mute but elegant language, of the reverses and evil days that have been the lot of America’s first city.

Besides the buildings just named we were especially interested in the Cathedral. It is a noble structure and its interior decorations compare favorably with similar edifices in Spain and Mexico. But there was one attraction there that had for us, as it must have for all Americans, a special interest, and which alone would well repay a pilgrimage to Santo Domingo—the last resting place of the one “who to Castile and Leon gave a new world.”

As the reader is aware, there has been a long and spirited controversy as to the location of los restos—the remains—of the illustrious discoverer. We have been shown his sepulchre in the Cathedral of Havana, and in that of Seville, yet it has been demonstrated beyond question that his ashes have never reposed in either of these places. Without entering into details, it may now be stated, as facts which no longer admit of any reasonable doubt, that after his death in 1506, the remains of Columbus were interred in the Franciscan monastery of Valladolid, whence, in 1508, they were transferred to the monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville. In 1541, at the request of “DoÑa Maria of Toledo, Vicereine of the Indies, wife that was of the Admiral Don Diego Columbus,” Charles V, by a special cedula, granted permission for the transfer of the remains of Christopher Columbus to EspaÑola, to be interred in the capilla mayor of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. Here they have since reposed, with the exception of the short time during which they were kept in the adjoining church, when the Cathedral was undergoing certain necessary repairs in 1877 and 1878. The supposed remains of the first Admiral, that were taken to Havana in 1795, and finally transferred to Seville in 1899, have been shown to be those of his son, Don Diego, who, together with Don Luis Columbus, the third Admiral, and the first Duke of Veragua, was also buried in the capilla mayor of the Cathedral, where the remains of Don Luis still lie near those of his illustrious grandfather.31

As our steamer moved out of the water of Santo Domingo our eyes remained fixed on the Cathedral, whose Spanish tiled roof reflected the vermilion rays of the setting sun, and afford shelter for one of the world’s greatest heroes and benefactors.

This place hides the remains of the illustrious Columbus, of him who, in the language of one of the many epitaphs devoted to his memory,

And then, as the last vestiges of this noble old temple vanished from our vision, we thought of the words of Humboldt, than whom no one was better qualified to pronounce a fitting eulogy on one of the world’s immortals.

“The majesty of great memories,” he declares, “seems concentrated in the name of Christopher Columbus. It is the originality of his vast conceptions, the compass and fertility of his genius, and the courage which bore out against the long series of misfortunes, which have exalted the Admiral high above all his contemporaries.”33

And we dreamed—or was it a telepathic intimation of a future reality?—when the precious remains, that have so long been guarded in this distant and rarely visited island, should be transferred for a third and a last time, but this time where they might be visited and venerated by millions instead of the few hundred that now find their way hither, and where they might occupy a noble sarcophagus, like that which beneath the dome of the Invalides, holds all that is mortal of the great Corsican, and in a temple worthy alike of the man and of the greatest nation in the world. There is one edifice in which all the nations of the hemisphere discovered by Columbus have a common interest, the splendid structure now being erected in Washington, for the special use and benefit of the North and South American Republics. Here in the capital of the nation, in the district named after the discoverer, in sight of the tomb of the “Father of his Country,” should the remains of “The Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” find an abiding place of sepulture commensurate with the magnitude of his achievements. Alongside and in connection with this Pan-American building, in the heart of what is to be “the City Beautiful,” and there alone, let there be erected a mausoleum that, as a monument of art, shall rank, as did those of Hadrian and Mausolus, amongst the world’s wonders, and be a fitting culmination of the architectural creations that have been planned for the great and growing capital of the New World, the world of Columbus.

From Santo Domingo we went to Puerto Rico. As is well known, this island was discovered by Columbus during his second voyage in 1493. Sixteen years later a settlement was founded here by Ponce de Leon. It was from here that he set forth in quest of the “Fountain of Youth,” and it is in San Juan, in the Church of Santo Domingo, that he was buried after a poisoned arrow from the bow of an Indian brave had terminated his existence during his second expedition to Florida. Over his tomb was inscribed the following epitaph:—

After sojourning a week in Puerto Rico, we called at the little Dutch island CuraÇao and spent the greater part of the day in the quaint little town of Willemstad. The harbor is perfectly landlocked and was at one time the favorite rendezvous for pirates and buccaneers. In strolling through its streets, we could easily fancy ourselves in some quiet section of Rotterdam or Amsterdam. The island is known for its much prized liqueur, CuraÇao, which, however, strange to say, is not made here but in Holland. CuraÇao supplies only the orange rind with which the liqueur is flavored. Willemstad is a popular resort for smugglers, who do an extensive business on the mainland, and the temporary home of a colony of exiled Venezuelan generals and colonels, who here eke out a precarious existence in the hope that one of their periodical revolutions may soon give them the eagerly desired opportunity of enjoying some of the spoils of office, that, for the time being, are monopolized by their enemies.

We arrived in the roadstead of La Guayra early in the morning, after our departure from CuraÇao, and our vessel was soon moored alongside a splendid breakwater, which extends out from the shore for more than a half mile, and gives this port a fairly good harbor, which even the largest ships may enter. We were now on the Spanish Main where we had our first view of the great continent of South America.

As the phrase, “The Spanish Main,” has been given many and different significations since it was first introduced, I shall employ it, in what was long its generally accepted meaning, as designating the southern part of the Caribbean Sea, and the coast line of what, on the early maps of South America, was known as Tierra Firme—the Firm Land—namely, that part of the present republics of Venezuela and Colombia on which the Spaniards effected their first settlements.

The first thing to attract our attention and that which impressed us most, was the apparently stupendous height of the mountains in the rear of the town. Before us were La Silla and Pico de Naiguata, sheer and precipitous, rising almost from the water’s edge and piercing the clouds at an altitude of more than eight thousand and two hundred feet. They are thus apparently higher than any of the peaks of the Rocky Mountain chain. The summits of the latter are attained only after traveling over a long and gradual incline, that is scarcely perceptible, and after scaling numerous foothills that conceal and dwarf the giants which tower behind and above them. Thus, while the summit of Pike’s Peak is more then fourteen thousand feet above sea level, it is less than seven thousand feet above the charming town of Manitou, that nestles at its feet. For this reason, and because the sides of the Colorado peak are not so steep as those behind La Guayra, La Silla and the Pico de Naiguata give an impression of height and majesty that is not experienced even when contemplating the loftiest monarchs of the Alps.

The distance from La Guayra to Caracas, in a straight line, is less than six miles; by rail it is twenty-three. There has been talk of connecting the capital and its port by a tunnel but under the existing conditions of the country it will be a long time before such an undertaking shall be realized.

From sea level to the summit of the range, the railroad is conspicuous for its heavy grade—about four per cent.—its sharp curves, its cuts and tunnels, but above all for the magnificent scenery everywhere visible. From the car window one may look over precipitous cliffs into yawning abysses far below the track on which the train slowly and carefully winds its way. On the beetling rocks above, in the dark and wild gorge below—what a wealth of vegetation, what luxuriance of growth, what a gorgeous display of vari-colored fruit and flower, of delicate fern and majestic palm!

As a feat of engineering the road is quite equal to any of the kind that may be seen in Europe or the United States; but for scenic beauty and splendor it is absolutely unrivaled. On the lofty flanks of the Rockies, and in the deep caÑons of the Fraser and Colorado rivers, where the shrill whistle of the locomotive startles the falcon and the eagle, one can have fully gratified one’s sense of the grand and the sublime in nature; but here it is beauty, grandeur, sublimity all combined. And what marvelous perspectives, what delightful exhibitions of color, what superb and ever-changing effects of light and shade—scenes that would be the despair of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, and as difficult to catch on canvas as the glories of the setting sun.

No where else in the wide world can one find such another picture as greets one’s vision when, rising into cloudland, one gets one’s last view of the Caribbean circling the mountain thousands of feet beneath the silent and awe-stricken spectator. It is matchless, unique—like Raphael’s Madonna di San Xysto, impossible to duplicate.

As we reached this point, the sea disclosed itself as a vast mirror resplendent under the aureate glow of the quivering beams of the departing lord of day. Fleecy clouds of every form and hue flitting over sea and land, by a peculiar optical illusion, magnified both objects and distances, and unfolded before the astonished beholder a panorama of constantly varying magnitude and of surpassing loveliness. On the foreground Nature shed her brightest green, and imparted to flower and foliage the flush of the rainbow. Of a truth,

Away and beyond was the boundless, glimmering sea, ravishing in its thousand tints, and in its harmonious dance of vanishing light and color.

So occupied were we in observing the beauties of the everchanging landscape, that, before we realized it, we were in Caracas. And so momentary was the twilight— a characteristic of the tropics—that the transition from daylight to darkness was almost startling. We found an unexpected compensation, however, in the friendly glow of the electric lights which illumine the street and plazas of Venezuela’s capital.

We spent a month in and about Caracas, finding every hour enjoyable. It is, in many respects, a beautiful city and located near the base of the mountains La Silla, the saddle—from its fancied resemblance to an army saddle—and El Cerro de Avila, in a charming valley from one to three miles wide and about ten miles long. The valley was at one time, seemingly, the bed of a lake, and its soil is, consequently, exceedingly fertile, and admirably adapted to cultivation of the farm and garden produce of both tropical and temperate climates.

A friend, who had traveled much, once told us that he regarded Taormina, in Sicily, as the best and most beautiful winter resort in the world. We are familiar with both places, and can say, in all candor, that we prefer Caracas. True, Taormina is one of the beauty spots of the world, but one expects to find more than beauty in a winter resort. Some years before our visit to Caracas we were in Taormina, and during the same time of the winter as marked our visit to Caracas, and we found it so cold that, during our entire stay, we were obliged to have our rooms heated by steam. In the latter place we could leave the doors and windows of our room open day and night, and enjoyed, during all the time we tarried there, the name soft, balmy, fragrant air, and the same equable temperature. The mean temperature we found to be about 70° F., the thermometer seldom rising above 75° F. and rarely falling below 65° F. The only place where we over had a like experience was on the slope of a mountain in one of the Hawaiian Islands, where the temperature is so constant that the native language has no word to express the idea of weather—what we call “weather” being always the same.

Considering the many natural beauties of the valley of Caracas, its rich, tropical vegetation, its matchless climate, its soft, balmy atmosphere, the rippling brooks and purling rivulets that everywhere gladden the landscape, we can understand how an early Spanish historian, Oviedo y BaÑos,35 was in his enthusiasm led to declare this location of the capital of Venezuela to be that of the home of perpetual spring—nay, more, that of a terrestrial paradise. If he could revisit these scenes to-day, he would find but little change in their general physical aspect, but he would see at once that the serpent’s trailing has cast a blight over its former beauty, and that the people, as a whole, have sadly degenerated since his time. Then, as he tells us, the stranger that had spent two months in this Eden would never wish to leave it. Alas, that one cannot say this now!36

After a month’s sojourn in Caracas we felt the Spiritus movendi again upon us, urging us onward, we knew not whither. We were under the spell of what the Germans so aptly call the Wanderlust and it did not make much difference what direction we took so long as the road we traveled enabled us to enjoy new scenes and visit peoples whose manners and customs were different from our own.

Having thoroughly rested and recuperated the strength we so much needed, we felt that we should like to take a trip to the Orinoco, in order that we might have an opportunity of studying the fauna and flora of its wonderful valley and of meeting some of the many Indian tribes that rove through its forests. In spite of all our efforts, however, we could find no one who could give us any satisfactory information about the best means of reaching the river or the time that would be required to make the journey. We consulted government officials and merchants that had business relations along the Orinoco, but their information was vague and contradictory.

We purposed going first to San Fernando de Apure, on an affluent of the Orinoco, and thence by water to Ciudad Bolivar and the Port-of-Spain. We were told that there were steamers plying between San Fernando and Ciudad Bolivar—the chief city on the Orinoco—during the wet season, our summer, but not during the dry season, our winter. That meant that if we went to San Fernando we should be obliged to use a canoe to reach Ciudad Bolivar, and this implied a long, tiresome, and somewhat dangerous voyage under a burning sun and in what we were assured was a malarious region. The time necessary to reach the river on horseback varied, according to our informants, from one to two weeks. One well known general, it was stated, had by an extraordinary tour de force made the trip the preceding year in four days. Some assured us we could go by carriage the entire distance. Others were equally positive that there was nothing more than a trail connecting the points we wished to visit, and that mules would be better than horses for such a journey. Outside of one or two small towns, there were no hotels along the route. But this did not matter. We had our camping outfit with us, and rather preferred to live in our tent to risking our night’s rest in such uninviting posadas—lodging houses—as we should meet with in the way.

Finding that we could not get in Caracas the information we desired, we resolved to go to Victoria, an interesting town southwest of the capital, and accessible by rail in a few hours. But our success in Victoria was no better than it had been in Caracas. In spite of all our efforts we could elicit no information that would warrant us in starting on so long a journey as that to the Orinoco, and one that might involve many hardships and dangers without adequate compensation.

Yet, notwithstanding our ill success so far, we did not for a moment think of abandoning our contemplated trip to the valley of the Orinoco. Far from it. The more we thought of it the more fascinating the project became. Now that we had gone so far, we were determined to see the famous river at all hazards. If we could not reach it by one route we would go by another. We accordingly concluded to continue our journey by rail to Puerto Cabello, and thence go by steamer to Trinidad. Once there, we felt reasonably sure we should find some means of attaining our goal—the grassy plains and vast forests of the Orinoco basin. As proved by subsequent events, it was for us a most fortunate occurrence that we did not adhere to our original plan of reaching the Orinoco by San Fernando de Apure, as our change of programme enabled us to see far more of South America and under more favorable auspices, than we had before deemed possible.

Instead of going directly to Puerto Cabello, we spent a week at the quiet old city of Valencia, Nueva Valencia del Rey, as it was originally called, and which, according to the Valencianos, should be the capital of the republic. It was begun in 1555, by Alonzo Diaz Moreno, twelve years before Santiago de Leon de Caracas—the original name of the capital—was founded by Diego de Losada. As a matter of fact, Valencia was designated as the capital of Venezuela at the time of the revolt against Spain, and congress was actually in session there at the time Caracas was destroyed by an earthquake in 1812. Five years after its foundation, Valencia was captured by the infamous Lopez de Aguirre and his sanguinary band, who treated its inhabitants with the greatest atrocity. Near by, on the plains of Carabobo, was fought the decisive victory which resulted in Venezuelan independence.37

As a port of entry, Puerto Cabello is incomparably superior to La Guayra, and has one of the finest harbors on the Caribbean. The climate, however, is far from salubrious. Situated, as it is, in low, marshy ground, surrounded by countless pools of stagnant water, it is not surprising to find that malarial fevers are prevalent here, and that El vÓmito—yellow fever—is a frequent visitant. The “nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks” can here count more fetid effluvia and putrefactive ferments than in any place we had so far seen in Venezuela.

A most delightful voyage was ours from Puerto Cabello to the Port-of-Spain, the capital of Trinidad. The sea was as placid as an inland lake on a windless day, and the air as balmy as in a morning of June. The coast of the mainland was nearly always in sight, and at times the peaks of the Coast Range rose far above the fleecy clouds that encircled their lofty flanks. The days were beautiful but the nights were glorious. All our youthful dreams about the delights of sailing on southern seas, amid emerald isles, and under bright starlit skies, where soft spice-scented zephyrs blow, were here realized. The serenity and transparency of the azure vault of heaven, with its countless shooting stars, had their counterpart in the smooth, unruffled Caribbean, to whose water millions of NoctilucÆ imparted a phosphorescent glow which rivaled that of molten gold. We were at last in the favored home of the chambered nautilus, happily, dreamily gliding along on an even keel

Yes, we were skirting along the Pearl Coast,38 celebrated in legend and story—darkened by deeds of barbarous cruelty and resplendent in records of heroic achievement. I shall not tell of our second visit to La Guayra and of the day we spent at Macuto or describe the present conditions of the historic old towns of Barcelona, Cumana and Carupano, which lay on our course. Much might be said of all these places, distinguished, since their foundation, both in peace and war.

I cannot, however, pass this part of the Pearl Coast without recalling the fact that it was near Cumana that the earliest settlements in Venezuela were effected and that here it was that one of the first—if not the first—permanent colonies on the mainland of the New World was established. Columbus, during his fourth voyage, attempted to make a settlement in Veragua, that might serve as a base of future operations, but the attempt resulted in complete failure. Similar efforts had been made by Alonso de Ojeda and others, but without lasting results. Panama was not founded until 1516 or 1517. Nombre de Dios, it is true, was founded somewhat earlier, but in the beginning was little more than a blockhouse. But here, as early in 1514, on the Rio Manzanares, then the River Cumana, only “a cross-bow-shot” from the shore, the zealous Sons of St. Francis had erected a monastery, and a short time subsequently the Dominicans established another monastery, not far distant, at Santa Fe de Chiribichi. Here they gathered the simple children of the forest around them, and soon had the beginnings of flourishing missions.39 The trusting and unspoiled Indians welcomed these apostles of the gospel of peace and love, and soon learned to regard them as friends and fathers. So peaceful did all this land become under the influence of the benign teaching of the gentle friars, that, according to Oviedo and Las Casas, a Christian trader could go alone anywhere without ever being molested.40

It was to the Pearl Coast that Las Casas came, after he found, by sad experience, that his efforts in behalf of the Indians in Cuba, EspaÑola and Puerto Rico were frustrated by influences he was unable to control. It was here, aided by Franciscans and Dominicans, who had preceded him by only a few years, that he purposed laying the corner stone of that vast Indian commonwealth, for which he had secured letters patent from Charles V.

For this great experiment in colonization, the greatest the world has ever known, he had received a grant of land extending from Paria to Santa Marta, and from the Caribbean Sea to Peru. In his colossal undertaking he planned to have the coÖperation of an order of knights—the Knights of the Golden Spur—specially created to aid him in the work of civilizing and christianizing the Indians. It was his dream to bring within the fold of the Church all the Indians of Central and South America, and to establish for their behoof and benefit an ideal Christian state such as a century and a half later was realized in the fertile basins of the Parana and Paraguay.41

If the noble philanthropist had been properly supported by the rich and the powerful, the entire course of subsequent events in South America would have been altered, and the historian would have been spared the task of penning those dark annals of injustice and iniquity which, for long centuries, were such a foul blot on humanity. But from the time he set foot on the Pearl Coast, in pursuance of his noble plan, he found himself beset by untold difficulties, and his designs thwarted at every turn, and that, too, by his own countrymen. Blinded by lust of gold and pleasure, they left nothing undone to insure the failure of his project, and in the end succeeded in their nefarious purpose.

Abandoned by those on whose coÖperation he fully relied, he was, in its very inception, forced to relinquish his heroic enterprise, and return to EspaÑola. Discomfited and heartsick, but not crushed, he sought an asylum in the monastery of Santo Domingo. There for eight years he devoted himself to prayer and study, and, true Christian athlete that he was, he was always preparing himself for a final struggle in a new arena. When his enemies least expected it, he came forth from his retirement, and, clad in the habit of a Dominican, proclaimed himself again the champion of the downtrodden Indian. And from that moment until the day of his death, at the advanced age of ninety-two, whether as a simple monk or as the bishop of Chiapa,42 his voice was always raised in behalf of the children of the forest, and against their enslavement by cruel, soulless seekers after fortune.43

He was, if not the first, the world’s greatest abolitionist, and if there are still many millions of red men in the New World to-day who have escaped the bond of servitude, it is mainly due to their illustrious protector, BartolomÉ de Las Casas.44

Within sight of the land where Las Casas went to lay the first foundation-stone of his ideal commonwealth is a group of islands which had a special claim on our attention—islands which, during four centuries, have been the scene of many a romance and have been stained, no one can tell how often, by the blood of tragedy.

These islands are Coche, Cubagua and Margarita. They were discovered by Columbus during his third voyage, and the larger of the two was called Margarita—pearl—from the number and beauty of the pearls found in the waters that wash its shore. Even before he had left the Gulf of Paria, between Trinidad and the mainland, he had observed that the aborigines of Tierra Firme were decked with bracelets and necklaces of pearl, and soon discovered, to his great satisfaction, that these much-prized gems could be obtained in great abundance, and that many of them were of extraordinary size and beauty. Peter Martyr, as translated by Eden, tells us, “Many of these pearls were as bygge as hasellnuttes, and oriente (as we caule it), that is lyke unto them of the Easte partes.”45 During the first third of the sixteenth century the value of the pearls sent to Europe was equal to nearly one-half of the output of all the mines in America.46 In one year—1587—after the pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Panama had been discovered, nearly seven hundred pounds weight of pearls was sent to the markets of Europe, some of them rivaling in beauty of sheen and perfection of form the rarest gems ever found in the waters of Persia or Ceylon. It was from these fisheries of the New World that Philip II obtained the famous pearl, weighing two hundred and fifty carats, of the size and shape of a pigeon’s egg, mentioned by the early chroniclers.

So great was the commercial activity among these little islands, especially in Cubagua, that the Spaniards built a town there, which they called New Cadiz, although the site chosen was without water, and so sterile that the Indians had never lived on it. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the pearl fishery in these parts diminished rapidly, and in the early part of the century following, the industry, according to Laet, had died out altogether, and the islands of Coche and Cubagua fell into oblivion. But while it lasted, sad to say, it meant untold misery for the thousands of Indian and Negro slaves who were forced, at the sacrifice of their health and often of their lives, to enrich their cruel masters by work that was almost as fatal as that in the mines of EspaÑola.

For more than two hundred years the pearl fisheries in the waters around these islands were practically abandoned. Even during the last century comparatively little work was done to develop an industry that, during the sixteenth century, contributed so much to the coffers of Spain. About the year 1900, however, a French company secured a concession from Venezuela to fish in the neighborhood of these islands. According to agreement, it is to pay the government ten per cent. royalty, and to employ divers and diving apparatus so as to select only the larger oysters and avoid the destruction of those that are immature.

From the estimates available, about $600,000 worth of pearls are annually sent to the Paris market from Margarita. While a large proportion of them are cracked and of poor color, there are, nevertheless, many of the finest orient, and these find ready purchasers. As for ourselves, we saw few of large size, and none of great value. Even in Caracas, where we made diligent inquiry about them, we did not find a single one from these waters that would attract attention for either size or lustre.47

The weather could not have been more delightful than it was during our all too brief cruise among these islands around which at one time, as has been truly remarked, “all the wonder, all the pity and all the greed of the age had concentrated itself.” They are now shorn of all their former glory, and there is little to indicate their pristine importance. They are practically deserted, with the exception of Margarita, which, on account of the arid and unproductive soil, is but sparsely inhabited. And yet, as they lay clustered there on the calm bosom of the Caribbean, without a ripple to disturb its mirror-like surface, they possessed a certain undefinable beauty that defied analysis. Besides, there was still hovering over and around them the glamour of days long past, when they were visited for the first time by the great Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and later on, by Cristobal Guerra and Alonzo NiÑo, and by Francisco Orellana, after his memorable voyage down the Amazon.

The sun was sloping down to his ocean bed—the air was glimmering with a mellow light, as we drifted from these waters over which Merlin seemed to wave his enchanting wand. As the orb of day touched the distant horizon, and sank into the crimson mist that floated above the placid sea, it assumed strange oval and pear-shaped figures that grew larger in their waning splendor. The rainbow hues that steeped in molten lustre the receding shores seemed to float on clouds from spirit-land.

A scene it was to swell the tamest bosom, a fairy realm where Fancy would

Below us, beneath the dark depths of the crystal sea, illumined by the lamps of the sea-nymphs, were living flower beds of coral, the blooms and the palms of the ocean recesses, where the pearl lies hid, and caves where the gem is sleeping, the gardens, fair and bewildering in their richness and beauty, of Nereus and Amphitrite. It was indeed such a scene as the poet has painted for us in these charming verses:—

1 Dec. 1, Lib. IX, Cap. 10.?

2 1513 is the date given by Garcilaso de la Vega, and Peschel, in his Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 521, has proved that this is the date that should be accepted.?

3 The History of Hernando de Soto and Florida; or Record of the Events of Fifty-six Years, from 1512 to 1568, p. 111, 78 and passim, Philadelphia, 1881.?

4 “Floridamque appelaverat quia Resurectionis die eam insulam repererint; vocat Hispanus pascha floridum resurectionis diem.” Dec. IV, Cap. 5.?

5 Les Cortereal et leur Voyage au Nouveau Monde, pp. 111, 151.?

6 Le Premier Voyage de Amerigo Vespucci, par F. A. de Varnhagan, Vienne, 1869, p. 34.?

7 Historia General de las Indias, Tom. XXII de Autores EspaÑoles, Madrid, M. Rivadeneyra, Editor, 1877—I have reproduced the passage in the quaint translation of Richard Eden, as given in The first three books on America, p. 345, edited by Edward Arber, Westminster, 1895.?

8 ColecciÓn de documentos inÉditos del archivo de Indias, Tom. V, pp. 536, 537.?

9 Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias, in the Biblioteca de Autores EspaÑoles, Tom. IV, p. 69, Collection Rivadeneyra, Madrid, 1850.

In spite, however, of the scepticism of Martyr and of the ridicule of Castellanos and the denunciation of Oviedo, the quest for the Fountain of Youth was, according to Herrera, continued until the end of the sixteenth century, and probably longer.?

10 The Voiage and Travayle of Sir John Maundeville Knight, chap. LII.?

11 Richard Eden, op, cit., p. 34.?

12 For an illuminating discussion of this subject, with citation of authorities, see M. Beauvois’ article, La Fontaine de Jouvence et le Jourdain dans les Traditions des Antilles et de la Floride, Le MusÉon, Tom. III, No. 3.?

13 “By projecting our modern knowledge into the past,” to employ a favorite phrase of John Fiske, many, even among recent writers, speak as if the early explorers knew for a certainty that the land discovered by Columbus was actually distinct from Asia. None of them, however, go to the extreme of Lope de Vega, who, in one of his dramas, El Nuevo Mundo Descubierto, makes the Genoese mariner, in a talk with his brother Bartholomew, ask why is it, that I, “a poor pilot, broken in fortune, yearn to add to this world another and one so remote?”—

?

14 Writings of Columbus, edited by P. L. Ford, New York, 1892.?

15 Relaciones y Cartas de Cristobal ColÓn in the Biblioteca ClÁsica, Tom. CLXIV, Madrid, 1892.?

16 Relaciones y Cartas, ut sup., pp. 57, 58.?

17 Hakluyt’s Early Voyage, Vol. III, p. 615, London, 1810. The introduction of tobacco into England is by some attributed to Hawkins rather than to Lord Raleigh, who is generally supposed to have introduced it.?

18 “Vedete che pestifero e maluagio ueleno del diaulo e questo.” La Historia del Mondo Nuovo, p. 54, Venezia, 1555.?

19 Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de L’AmÉrique, Vol. II, p. 120, par Jean Baptiste Labat, À la Haye, 1724.?

20 Even royalty took part in the controversy. In A Counterblaste to Tobacco King James concludes his argument against the use of the weed as follows:—

“A custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.” The Works of the Most High and Mightie Prince James, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., p. 222, London, 1616.?

21 “Hail, happy soil, whence Mother Nature lavishes in abundance the odoriferous, smokable plant! Hail, happy Havana.”?

22 Vida y Escritos de Don Fray BartolomÉ de las Casas, Obispo de Chiapa, por Don Antonio Maria FabiÉ, Tom. I, pp. 235, 236, Madrid, 1879.?

23 Fray BartolemÉ de las Casas, Sus Tiempos y Su Apostolado, por Carlos Gutierres, pp. 351, 352, 368, 369, Madrid, 1878.?

24 Étude sur les Rapports de L’AmÉrique et de L’Ancien Continent avant Christophe Colomb, par Paul Gaffarel. p. 124 et seq., Paris, 1869.?

25 The diminutive of EspaÑa, and signifying little Spain. Also known by the Latinized name Hispaniola, and as Isabella, in honor of the illustrious patron of the discoverer. Haiti is an Indian word meaning “craggy land,” or “land of mountains.”?

26 Historia de las Indias, Dec. II, Lib. 3, Cap. 14.?

27 Southey’s History of Brazil, Vol. III, Chap. XXXIII.?

28 Sir Clements R. Markham in his introduction to Hawkins’ Voyages, says, speaking of this subject, “It is not therefore John Hawkins alone who can justly be blamed for the slave trade, but the whole English people during 250 years, who must all divide the blame with him.”?

29 The Spanish Conquest in America, by Sir Arthur Helps, Vol. I, p. 350, London and New York, 1900. See also Girolamo Benzoni, Historia del Mondo Nuovo, p. 65, Venezia, 1565, in which he says many Spaniards of EspaÑola predicted that the island would surely, within a short time, fall into the hands of the blacks. “Vi sono molti Spagnuoli que tengono per cosa certa que quest’ Isola in breue tempo sara posseduta da questi Mori.”?

30 Eden’s First Three English Books on America, p. 240.?

31 For a complete discussion of this subject, see Christopher Columbus, His Life, His Works, His Remains, pp. 507–613, by J. B. Thatcher, New York, 1904. According to this author, very small portions of the precious ashes of the great discoverer exist in the Vatican, in the University of Pavia, where Columbus was a student, in The Municipal Hall of Genoa, in the Lenox Library, New York, and in the possession of four different private individuals whom he names.?

32 “To Earth he gave immense riches, to Heaven souls innumerable.”?

33 Histoire de la GÉographie du Nouveau Continent, par Alexander de Humboldt, Vol. V, pp. 177, 178, Paris, 1839.?

34 “This narrow space is a sepulchre of the man who was a Lion in name and much more one in deed.”?

35 Historia de la Conquista y poblaciÓn de la Provincia de Venezuela, Tom. II, p. 36, Madrid, 1885.?

36 The Romans declare that those who cast a coin into the fountain of Trevi are sure to return to the Eternal City. The Caraquenians have a similar saying, viz., that he who drinks of the water of the Catuche, a stream flowing through the city, will return to Caracas. El que bebe de Catuche vuelve Á Caracas.?

37 Historia de las Indias, Dec. II, Lib. 3, Cap. 14.?

38 The Pearl Coast extends from Coro to the Gulf of Paria, a distance of more than five hundred miles.?

39 Padre A. Caulin, Historia coro-grafica, natural y evangelica de la Nueva Andalucia, Madrid, 1779, and Conversion en Piritu de Indios Cumanogotos y Palenques, por el P. Fr. Matias Ruiz Blanco O. S. F. seguido de Los Franciscanos en las Indias, por Fr. Francisco Alvarez de Vilanueva, O. S. F., Madrid, 1892.?

40 Even Captain John Hawkins, “an atrocious slave dealer,” is forced to pay his tribute of praise to the gentle and peaceful character of the Indians of this part of Venezuela, for of them he writes: “The people bee surely gentle and tractable, and such as desire to liue peaceablie, or else had it been vnpossible for the Spaniards to haue conquered them as they did, and the more to liue now peaceable, they being many in number, and the Spaniards of few.” Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 28.?

41 F. A. MacNutt’s Bartholomew de las Casas, His Life, His Apostolate and His Writings, Chaps. VIII, XI, XII, New York, 1909.?

42 Antonio de Remesal, Historia de la Provincia de Son Vicente de Chyapa, 1619.?

43 In his last will he writes “Inasmuch as the goodness and the mercy of God, whose unworthy minister I am, called me to be the protector of the inhabitants of the countries, which we call the Indies, who were once the lords of those lands and kingdoms, ... I have labored in the court of the Kings of Castile, going and coming from the Indies to Castile and from Castile to the Indies many times for about fifty years—i. e., from the year 1540, for the love of God alone and through compassion seeing those great multitudes of rational men perish, who originally were approachable, humble, meek and simple, and well fitted to receive the Catholic faith and practice all manner of Christian virtues.” FabiÉ, op. cit., Tom. I, pp. 234, 235.?

44 “In contemplating such a life,” writes Fiske, “as that of Las Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which is in some respects the most beautiful and sublime in the annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and then in the course of the centuries God’s providence brings such a life into this world, the memory of it must be cherished by mankind as one of its most precious and sacred possessions. For the thoughts, the words, the deeds of such a man, there is no death. The sphere of their influence goes on widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit, from age to age.”—The Discovery of America, Vol. II, p. 482.?

45 Dec. 1, Book 8. The same writer informs us that the sailors of Pedro Alonzo NiÑo, on leaving Curiana to return to Spain, “had three score and XVI poundes weight (after VIII vnces to the pownde) of perles, which they bought for exchange of owre thynges, amountinge to the value of fyve shyllinges.”?

46 Of these gems of the ocean, “tears by Naiads wept,” one could then repeat, as well as now, the words of Pliny, “The richest merchandise of all, and the most soveraigne comoditie throughout the whole world, are these perles.”—Naturalis Historia, Lib. IX, Cap. 35.?

47 The Venezuelan pearl-oyster—Margaritifera Radiata—is related to the Ceylon species, Margaritifera vulgaris, and ranges in color from white to bronze and, sometimes, black. It is slightly larger than the Ceylonese gem, and is occasionally of excellent quality.

About three hundred and fifty boats, each manned by five or six men, are now engaged in the pearl fishery of Venezuela. Most of them are from the ports of Cumana, Juan Griego and Carupano.

The reader who is interested in the pearls of Margarita and of the Pearl Coast, may consult with profit the very elaborate work, The Book of the Pearl, by George F. Kunz and Chas. H. Stevenson, New York, 1908, and The Pearl, by W. R. Castelle, Philadelphia and London, 1907.?