The search for the mythical islands with their “wells of life” and “trees” or “plants of life” is referred to in the [[119]]stories of many lands and even in history, especially the history of exploration, for the world-wide search for the Earthly Paradise appears to have exercised decided influence in stimulating maritime enterprise in mediæval as well as prehistoric times. Columbus searched for the island paradise in which the “well” and “tree” were to be found. He sailed westward so as to approach the paradise “eastward in Eden”,[11] through “the back door” as it were, and wrote: “The saintly theologians and philosophers were right when they fixed the site of the terrestrial paradise in the extreme Orient, because it is a most temperate clime; and the lands which I have just discovered are the limits of the Orient.” In another letter he says: “I am convinced that there lies the terrestrial paradise”.[12]
As Ellis reminds us, “the expedition which led to the discovery of Florida was undertaken not so much from a desire to explore unknown countries”, as to find a “celebrated fountain, described in a tradition prevailing among the inhabitants of Puerto Rico, as existing in Binini, one of the Lucayo Islands. It was said to possess such restorative powers as to renew youth and the vigour of every person who bathed in its waters. It was in search of this fountain, which was the chief object of their expedition, that Ponce de Leon ranged through the Lucayo Islands and ultimately reached the shores of Florida.”
Ellis refers to this voyage because he found that the mythical island and well were believed in by the Polynesians. He refers, in this connection, to the “Hawaiian account of the voyage of Kamapiikai to the land where [[120]]the inhabitants enjoyed perpetual health and youthful beauty, where the wai ora (life-giving fountain) removed every internal malady, and every external deformity or paralysed decrepitude, from all those who were plunged beneath its salutary waters”. Ellis anticipates the views of modern ethnologists when dealing with the existence of the same beliefs among widely-separated peoples. He says: “A tabular view of a number of words in the Malayan, Asiatic, or the Madagasse, the American, and the Polynesian languages, would probably show that, at some remote period, either the inhabitants of these distant parts of the world maintained frequent intercourse with each other, or that colonies from some one of them originally peopled, in part or altogether, the others”. He adds, “Either part of the present inhabitants of the South Sea Islands came originally from America, or tribes of the Polynesians have, at some remote period, found their way to the (American) continent”.[13]
W. D. Westervelt, in his Legends of Old Honolulu, heads his old Hawaiian story “The Water of Life of Ka-ne”, which he himself has collected, with the following extract from the Maori legend of New Zealand:
When the moon dies, she goes to the living water of Ka-ne, to the water which can restore all life, even the moon to the path in the sky.
In the Hawaiian form of the legend the hero, who found the water so that his sick father, the king, might be cured, met with a dwarf who instructed him where to go and what to do.
A russet dwarf similarly figures in the Gaelic story of Diarmaid’s search for the cup and the water of life so that the daughter of the King of Land-under-Waves [[121]]might be cured of her sickness. This dwarf takes the Gaelic hero across a ferry and instructs him how to find the cup and the water.[14]
The Polynesians’ ghosts went westward. In their Paradise was a bread-fruit tree. “This tree had two branches, one towards the east and one towards the west, both of which were used by the ghosts. One was for leaping into eternal darkness into Po-pau-ole, the other was a meeting-place with the helpful gods.”[15] Turner tells that “some of the South Sea Islanders have a tradition of a river in their imaginary world of spirits, called the ‘water of life’. It was supposed that if the aged, when they died, went and bathed there, they became young and returned to earth to live another life over again.”[16] Yudhishthira, one of the heroes of the Aryo-Indian epic the Mahábhárata, becomes immortal after bathing in the celestial Ganges.[17] In the Æneid, the hero sees souls in Paradise drinking of the water of Lethe so that they may forget the past and be reborn among men.
Sir John de Mandeville, the fourteenth-century traveller and compiler of traveller’s stories, located the fountain of life at the base of a great mountain in Ceylon. This “fayr well … hathe odour and savour of all spices; and at every hour of the day, he chaungethe his odour and his savour dyversely. And whoso drinkethe 3 times fasting of that watre of that welle, he is hool (whole) of alle maner (of) sykenesse that he hathe. And they that duellen (dwell) there and drynken often of that welle, thei nevere hau (have) sykenesse, and thei semen [[122]](seem) alle weys yonge.” Sir John says that he drank of the water on three or four occasions and fared the better for it. Some men called it the “Welle of Youthe”. They had often drunk from it and seemed “alle weys yongly (youthful)” and lived without sickness. “And men seyn that that welle comethe out of Paradys, and therefore it is so vertuous.” The “tree of life” is always situated near the “well of life” in mediæval literature. At Heliopolis in Egypt a well and tree are connected by Coptic Christians and Mohammedans with Christ. When Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt they rested under this tree, according to Egyptian belief, and the clothes of the holy child were washed in the well. Heliopolis, the Biblical On, is “the city of the sun”, and the Arabs still call the well the “spring of the sun”. According to ancient Egyptian belief the sun-god Ra washed his face in it every morning. The tree, a sycamore, was the mother-goddess.
That European ideas regarding a floating island or islands were of Egyptian origin and closely connected with the solar cult, is suggested by the classical legend regarding Delos, one of the Cyclades. It was fabled to have been raised to the surface of the sea at the command of Poseidon, so that the persecuted goddess Latona, who was pursued from land to land by a python, as the Egyptian Isis was pursued by Set, might give birth there to Apollo. On Delos the image of Apollo was in the shape of a dragon, and delivered oracles. It was unlawful for any person to die on Delos, and those of its inhabitants who fell sick were transported to another island.