Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

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.” 13