When Ponce de Leon visited and conquered Porto Rico he heard of the elixir of life. It may not have been among the springs of that island, but the natives had a faith in it and some of them referred it to the Bahamas. Their possible reason for this was to persuade the white men to go there and look for it, for they were not popular in Porto Rico, and this was the more to be regretted in Ponce’s case, because he was far from popular at home. At the court of Ferdinand and Isabella was a page who was handsome, spirited, and saucy. One of the daughters of the royal pair, wearied with the forms and ceremonies of her state, which, in the most punctilious court in Europe, were especially trying, found means to converse with this well-appearing, quick-witted scamp. A tattling courtier, recalling a faux pas of the last queen, and desiring no more scandals, reported that the princess had been seen to smile on the youngster. No guilt was proven upon him, but handsome pages were ill-chosen company for young women of blue blood.
Ponce de Leon was the page, and he was sent to the New World to discover something to the advantage of his own modesty, and incidentally to accumulate for shipment anything that might be useful to the Spanish treasury. He landed in Boriquen, as Porto Rico was then called, and began a general subjugation and slaughter of the natives. Some were slain in battle, but thousands were carried away and made to work in mines and on distant plantations, as slaves, until their health was destroyed, and they, too, were no longer an obstacle to Spanish control, though the lack of their hands was a hindrance to Spanish enterprise. Ponce took his share of the gold and treasure he had forced these unfortunates to supply, and went back to Spain with it. Sea air had spoiled his complexion, fighting had roughened his manners, slave-driving had made his voice coarse. Possibly, also, his princess had recovered from her disappointment. Maybe she had been married off to some nobody of Portugal, or France, or Austria, for state reasons, and had entered on the usual loveless life of royalty. Or she may have beguiled her maidenly solitude by drinking much wine of Oporto, Madeira, and Xeres with her dinner, thereby acquiring that amplitude of girth, that ruddiness of countenance, and that polish of nose, which add so little to romance. At all events, we hear nothing more of the affair.
In the course of years Ponce took to himself the gout, rheumatism, dyspepsia, and a few such matters, and he scolded his dresser more than usual because his clothes did not fit at the waist as they had done, once. He parted his hair with a towel, and it was grizzled where it curled about his neck and temples. Then he recalled the tales the Boriqueños had told of the bright waters that gushed from the earth amid banks of flowers,—waters so sweet that who drank would drink again, and with every draught would throw off years and pain until at last he was a youth once more,—a youth with hot blood, sparkling eyes, lithe muscles; a youth who saw the world full of beauty and adventure. Ah, to be once more as he was when the princess beamed on him; to throw away his cares, his ails, his conscience, his regrets; to sing and dance, to ruffle it with other cavaliers, to dice, to drink, to feast, to win the smiles of ladies! It was a joy worth trying to attain.
He sailed once more, an older, sober man. He discovered Florida, bathed in its springs, drank from its flower-edged streams, but to no avail. Bimini, the place of the living waters, evaded him. Boriquen, renamed Porto Rico, could offer no more. But, though his living presence passed, the first building on the island—the White House, near San Juan—remains, and he left his name in the town that was first among the Antillean cities to raise the flag of a republic that should wave over the continent he had helped to discover and colonize:—the city of Ponce.
Water Caves
As in most of the Spanish American countries, so in Porto Rico, ghosts are common,—so common that in some towns the people hardly turn to look at them; and if on a wild night in the hurricane season they hear them gibbering at their doors, they patter an ave or throw a piece of harness at the disturbance, and sleep again. Ponce, for instance, has a number of these spooks, such as the man who searches for his hidden money, and the child with a snowy face that knocks on the panes, then stares fixedly in, with corpse eyes, at the windows. Best known among these supernatural citizens are two lovers who “spoon” on dark nights, and are faintly outlined on the landscape as figures of quivering, smoky blue. Their favorite haunt is their death-place, eight miles from Ponce, in a hollow among limestone hills, now environed by a coffee plantation. Here are found three basins—results of erosion, most likely—that are described as natural bath-tubs. The middle and largest of these pools is partly filled with silt, probably occluding the entrance to a cavern which formerly opened into it, a fathom or so below the water-surface. This cave was the hiding-place of a native woman whose father had discovered her love for one of Ponce de Leon’s soldiers. He forbade her to have anything to do with the enemies of his country, enlarged on their rapacity, cruelty, and treachery, and tried to create in her a sense of shame that she should have chosen a Spaniard, instead of a Boriqueno chief, for a lover. There were no locksmiths in the Antilles for love to laugh at, but there were spears and knives to fear, and the young couple, who seemed to be inspired by genuine affection, met at this lonely spot to do their courting. On the least suspicion of a hostile approach, the maid could slip into the water, enter the cave, and wait for an hour or a day, until the intruder had retired. However it happened nobody could tell,—or would,—but the Spaniard was found drowned one morning in that pool. He may have been found waiting there, by the angry parent, thrown in, on general principles, and held to the bottom by his steel arms and armor; or he may have been trying to find the cave in which his charmer had secreted herself, and while so engaged may have bumped his head against the rocky wall and stunned himself, or he may have been a poor swimmer and lost his wits and his wind. At all events, drowned he was, and the dusky virgin who loved him, seeing his form at the bottom of the water, sang her sorrow chant, dived in, and, holding to his body, perished wilfully at his side. Their love endures, and that is why their luminous shadows sit at the brink of the pool, with locked arms and meeting lips, to the disgust of voting women and confirmed bachelors.
This legend, with variants, is found in many parts of the world. There are two or three instances of it in the Hawaiian islands, and a tradition pertaining to Hayti is worth quoting here, as it refers to the same period and illustrates the same enmity between the white and native races. Near the city of San Domingo is, or was, a “water cave,” so named because the entrance to it was several feet below the lake whose shore it undermines. When the young half-breed, Diaz, returned from Spain to his native island of Hispaniola in 1520, his mother, Zameaca, queen of the Ozamas, had disappeared, possibly killed outright by the Spaniards, or more slowly killed by enslavement at the mines in vainly trying to satisfy the rapacity of the white race for gold. Diaz, though partly of Spanish blood, was allied in his sympathies to the Indians. Hence, they planned to make him ruler. Their conspiracy was quelled for the time being, with such brutality that those natives who escaped death hated their tyrants with a deeper hatred than ever, and fixed them the more strongly in their resolution to be avenged. The leading chiefs and warriors of the Ozamas took refuge in the water cave, spying on their enemies and going about to make converts among the islanders at night. It was not long before the watchful Spaniards discovered that mischief was afoot, and there were reasons for believing that the chiefs had their hiding place not many miles from town. By following various suspects into the country, and noticing the time and way of their return, they became convinced that the leaders of the rebellion were somewhere near the lake.
A young woman, a slave in the family of the Spanish governor, was so often absent on mysterious errands that the authorities at last fixed on her as the one most likely to betray her countrymen. She was won to their purpose through her vanity. Her mistress had a comb of elaborate and curious workmanship, and to have one like it was the principal object in her existence. The governor told her that she should have this priceless treasure itself if she would tell him where the chiefs were meeting. To this act of treachery she finally agreed on condition that her lover, who was one of the chiefs, should be pardoned. That evening she carried bread and fruit to the lake, and sitting on the bank sang loudly for some minutes. The Spanish soldiers, who were watching from the shrubbery, were astonished to see a man rise like a seal from the water, swim to the shore, take the parcel from the girl’s hands, exchange a few words with her, and disappear again beneath the surface. The song was a signal for one of the men to come out and receive the food, and it was heard through a crevice in the cave roof. Next day the girl sang again, and the whole company left the cave. They had no sooner gained the shore than the Spaniards sprang from the shrubbery and surrounded them. As they were led away to death, one of the chiefs levelled his finger at the girl and said, “I am going to a land of peace. You will never find the way to it.” Her lover cast her off with bitter reproaches. Then, as the murderous volley pealed across the fields, and the rebellion was ended, her heart broke. She still sits at the lakeside in the evening, weeping over her comb.