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ABOUT TAMPA AND FLORIDA
HRISTOPHER Columbus did not “dis
cover America.” That is, North Amer
ica. He never saw that continent. That
fact does not render less important the
discoveries he did make, and it should
not detract from the glory justly due
him; but other men are entitled to
the credit of discoveries upon the
C
J northern main. Norsemen, who secured
a foothold on the shore of Greenland and coasted
southward perhaps as far as the Delaware capes;
men such as Lief and Eric the Red, whose explora
tions long antedated the first voyage of the famous
Genoese. Men like the Cabots, Sebastian and
John. Men of whom the ambitious De Leon was
a type. I purpose to concern myself, briefly, with
discoveries made by the last named adventurer,
and one or two others of his stamp.
Juan Ponce de Leon, a follower of Columbus on
his second voyage, and, later adelantado, or governor
general of Puerto Rico, set sail from that island,
with three small vessels, in March, 1513, upon a
most romantic adventure. Being, by birth, of one
of the Romance peoples, he was naturally of a ro
mantic temperament. He had heard that in a land
somewhere to the northwestward, there was the
“Fountain of Perpetual Youth,” and that also,
in the same direction, dwelt El Dorado, “The Gold
en.” One who should bathe in that fountain would
remain, thereafter, forever young; one who might
reach the land of i 1 the golden ’ ’ prince could gather
wealth by the ton from the auriferous sands. Such
inducements were irresistible to one of his disposi
tion. So he sailed, attended by a devoted following
of kindred spirits.
On Easter Sunday, of 1513, he discovered land,
at a point not far northward from the later site
of St. Augustine. Yielding to a romantic religious
impulse, he named his new discovery, Florida, be
cause he made his landfall on the day called in
his church calendar, Pascua Florida (which means,
in Spanish, “Flowery Easter”). De Leon failed
to find either the fountain or the gold; returned
to Hispaniola and relitted; sailed a second time
for the new land; was wounded by a poisoned arrow,
in a skirmish with Indians, on the west coast, and
later died of the venom. But the name he had
given the new country was retained.
In 1527, Panfilo de Narvarez landed a large force
of men on the west coast of Florida, probably in
the vicinity of what is now the town of Clearwater;
marched northward and westward to the neighbor
hood of the present St. Marks, where his worn out
and discouraged followers built boats in which
they embarked in search of succor; were wrecked
somewhere on the coast of Mexico; and only four
survivors of the original body ultimately found
safety.
On the 25th of May, 1539, Hernando de Soto, a
former follower of Pizarro, in Peru, accompanied
by a band of probably a thousand men, three hun
dred and fifty of them mounted, with about twenty
officers and perhaps two dozen priests, discovered
and entered a beautiful bay on the west coast of
the peninsula, which, under an impulse of religious
romanticism, he named, Bahia del Espiritu Santo,
i. e.: “Holy Spirit Bay.” That was the lovely
sheet of water now known as Tampa Bay. Landing
on the west side of the bay, De Soto marched off
with his command to the northward, (probably in
search of El Dorado) as far as the southwestern
spurs of the Blue Ridge mountains, whence he
turned due westward and penetrated the wilderness
to a point beyond the Mississippi river. There
something over three years later, he died and his
body found a grave beneath the waters of that
mighty stream.
Still no serious attempt appears to have been
made to colonize the country.
Later Don Tristan de Luna landed with about
a thousand men, in Pensacola Bay—which he named
Santa Maria—but after an expedition through the
country, northward, as far as the present Tennes-
The Golden Age for September 13, 1906.
see, he abandoned his original purpose of coloniza
tion and sailed back to Mexico.
The first real settlement was made by French
Huguenots, either at St. Augustine or near the
mouth of the St. Johns river—which stream they
named the May. That was in 1564, and thus there
is sprung the question as to which, the French
settlement on the east coast of Florida, or the Span
ish settlement of Santa Fe, in (the present) New
Mexico, is “the oldest in the United States.” The
town of St. Augustine received its name from
Menendez, who, conducting an expedition to drive
the French out of Florida, reached that point on
the 29th of August, the birthday of the saint thus
honored.
After the practical extermination of the French
occupants by Menendez, Florida remained for a long
time in undisputed possession of the Spaniards.
But their colonial policy was not conducive to pros
perity, and, although new settlements were made
at various points, there was no great influx of im
migrants until after the cession of the region to
England, in 1703.
At that time Florida, in addition to its present
territory, embraced all the coast region of Ala
bama, Mississippi and a part of Louisiana.
After the Revolutionary War, England ceded back
to Spain all that portion of Florida which had not
been in the meantime given up to France. Then,
m 1821, the United States purchased the tract from
Spam, at the price of $5,000,000, and it became an
organized territory, ultimately admitted into the
Union as a state, in 1845.
Almost the entire body of the state of Florida,
especially the peninsula portion, has been formed
by the two geological processes of upheaval and
coralline accretion. Fringe reefs are in course of
construction today, off the shores of the peninsula,
and the countless billions of coral polyps are con
stantly, slowly, but surely, adding increment to
the land.
If the islands along the sea boundaries of both
Georgia and Florida be left out of the count of
square miles, the latter is the largest state in the
Union east of the Mississippi river. Between the
northern limit and the southeasternmost key, are
included seven degrees of latitude!
Along the coast of Florida are to be seen many
low, narrow islands, or islets, of sandy or coral
formation; only one of them, Amelia Island, upon
which the town of Fernandina is situated, being
of any considerable size. The numerous islets, es
pecially to the southward and southwestward, are
called “Keys”—from the Spanish, “cayo,” which
means a low islet.
The basic rock of almost the entire state is cal
careous, either shell conglomerate, marly, or phos
phatic. Rocks of that description are readily solu
ble in water tinctured with vegetable extracts. As
a natural consequence there are hundreds of sub
terranean water courses in Florida. Many of those
streams burst out as great springs here and there,
all over the country, thus presenting to the eye
some of the most attractive features of this mar
velous region. Several of these fountains, such
as the Waukulla, Green Cove and Silver Spring, are
very large, hundreds of feet in diameter, from sixty
to over one hundred feet in depth, and large
steamers navigate the streams which flow out of
them. All of them, large and small, are as clear
as the sky, minute objects may be distinctly per
ceived upon their bottoms, and the fins of fishes
swimming in the depths are colored with all the
prismatic hues of the rainbow.
Numbers of the subterranean creeks and rivers,
however, do not appear in the interior of the coun
try at all, but break forth through the bottom of
the gulf miles away from the shore, thus boiling
up as large, fresh water fountains in the midst of
the sea.
“Sponging” vessels sometimes fly to and cast
anchor within the circumference of those springs,
for protection in the sudden squalls so common in
By ROBERT H. HARRIS.
this quarter of the world—as the salt waves will
not “comb up” and break over or near the “boil.”
Most of the surface of Florida is comparatively
level and low, but in many sections the lands are
“rolling,” sometimes broken, and there are points
where the altitude is as much as three hundred
feet above the sea.
There are many streams in the state, everal of
which are navigable, and more than twelve hun
dred lakes, some of which are quite large and
deep.
The indigenous growth ranges from the flora of
tlie tropics to that of the temperate regions. Sev
eral varieties of pines and many species of hard
woods, cedar, juniper, cypress, orange, lemon, cab
bage palm, etc.; while many beautiful orders,
genera and species have been naturalized—such,
for example, as the cocoanut, the royal and the date
palm, etc.
Fruit-bearing trees, shrubs and vines abound.
Peaches, apples and berries of many varieties do
well in most sections of the state; pears, pomegran
ates, figs, grapes, oranges (of course), lemons; $
and limes, guavas, pineapples, etc., are ,«pm
mon; and in the extreme southern portion, bananas, «
plantains, mangoes, avocado (miscalled “alligator 7 ’)
pears, sapodillas and other strictly fruits S
are produced in profusion. *
All kinds of vegetables and melons thrive'iii.ihear
ly every part of the state, as do, likewise, most Os
the farm products, except certain varieties of small
grain.
Game of all Southern species is abundant, and a
great many kinds of excellent food fishes literally
swarm in the waters, fresh and salt.
Next week I propose to say something about the
towns and their inhabitants, as well as the rural
population; but especially, to speak of the city
of Tampa and its surroundings.
All Gone.
The editor of a paper in Richmond tells of the
assignment given to a young woman in the employ
of that journal to cover the wedding of the daugh
ter of a well-known citizen.
The “society editor” was prevented by sickness
from attending the ceremony and so was obliged
to make the best she could of a second-hand ac
count of the festivities.
Early in the morning after the wedding the young
woman repaired to the home of the bride’s parents.
To the darky who opened the door she said:
“I have called to get some of the details of the
wedding.”
An expression of intense regret came to the dusky
countenance of the servant.
“Ise awful sorry Miss!” she exclaimed, “but
dey is all gone. You oughter come last night. De
company eat up every scrap.”—Harper’s Weekly.
A Question in Point.
It was an English election meeting, and an ex
cited man shouted to the candidate:
“Don’t beat about the bush; answer my question,
‘Yes, or no.’ ”
The candidate replied: “But, my dear sir, there
are some questions which cannot be answered by
‘yes, or no.’
The interrupter replied rudely, with the single
exclamation, “Bosh!”
“Very well,” replied the speaker, “I will prove
what I say. Now, sir, the question I will put to
you in this: Have you left off beating your wife?”
Andrew Lang once wrote to Israel Zangwill to
ask him if he would take part in a certain enter
tainment for the benefit of charity. He received
the following reply:
“If A. Lang will,
I. Zang will.”
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