The Life of Henry Bradley Plant / Founder and President of the Plant System of Railroads and Steamships and Also of the Southern Express Company

by G. Hutchinson Smyth

AT TAMPA BAY.

“Was it not some old reportorial ruse played upon the credulity of the ancients that made the story of Aladdin’s wonderful lamp to live in literature and come down to us through the ages to make us listen with open ears, gape with open mouth, and wonder with open eyes at the wonders of it—and I wonder if that ancient reporter could prove in any way the foundation of his story of the lamp and the rubbing of it. Aye, there’s the rub—I think he couldn’t prove it. He might show the lamp, but no palace would rise up at his rubbing, however hard. But, to-day, the vision may be produced and the palace reared, and yet no lamp to rub. I would lead to a land where balmy breezes blow and sigh among the pines, and make the feathery palm trees wave as nodding plumes. Coming out from under these, on a night when the moon is bright, to the banks of a beautiful river with banks fringed with ferns, look across its waters where the moon and stars are reflected and so many, many lights that are on the river’s other shore, there the palace is, a brighter than Aladdin’s, and more beautiful. That’s Tampa Bay. That your coming under these pines and palms may be in a palace car, produces no disillusion,—there’s a palace at Tampa Bay.

“It might have been, in the long centuries agone, when his ship floated lazily and his barges glided noiselessly over the waters to the fern-fringed banks of Tampa’s river, that that ancient and original tourist, on the same mission bent as those of to-day, in search of the fount of perpetual youth, might have looked, disheartened, on the tangled forest and heard the moaning of the winds through the pines that brought no tidings of a land of life.

“I wonder if in his dreams that night, when his ship came in to Tampa Bay, this grand old Grandee was back in his castles in Spain, and sported in fantastic fandango with the dark-browed Señorita of fair Castile. Was his dream a prophetic vision that it seemed to be an Alhambra just there under the lee of his ship, or did some grander palace with Moorish minarets and silvered domes, glistening with more silvery brightness under the rays of a tropic moon, topped with golden crescents that could only come from the Orient to ornament its towers high above the pines, seem to be here in this far-off land—a dream passing all realization. And what a disappointing awakening awaited this ancient cavalier who sought the waters that would make him young again, for when the morning came, and the sun shone brightly, the knight must have trod the deck with restless impatience; the vision of last night carried him back to lordly Spain, the awakening brought him here again, and only a lofty pine stood in the place of the tallest tower, the swaying top was not a silver dome, and the mournful moaning in its boughs fell not as sweetly on his ear as the tinkling tingle of guitars and his dream-made mandolins. And I am sure, in haste he left a spot so disappointing, and perhaps to the tune of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away,’ marched to find the great Mississippi.

“I say, perhaps old De Soto dreamed all this when he landed here at Tampa, and if he did, behold ’t was prophecy—for the swaying pines have toppled and in their places have risen higher the golden crescents of the Orient, and the silvered domes and Moorish minarets that ornament a palace, and here at Tampa Bay the Spaniard’s dream has been realized two hundred years after.

“The tourist of to-day does not approach from the direction of his illustrious predecessor, but has the decided advantage, whether the coming be by night or day. If by day, the grandly magnificent picture comes suddenly upon the view as the train makes a turn and stops between the little town and the river. The foreground is the river, the middle distance, green sloping lawns dotted with flowers, around whose beds are winding walks that circle fountains and lead through groves of palms and oranges to the pines beyond, the same great pines that De Soto walked under in the struggle to get off his ‘sea legs.’ In the brightness of a semi-tropic sun the domes and crescents glisten intensely, and the massive pile grows to immensity. The broad galleries extend all along the front, the roof commencing above the third-story windows, slopes gently, so as not to obstruct the view, and at its outer edge drops in huge ornaments, in arched and hanging pendants ending in brackets at every column, and at the walls; the grateful shade inviting as on a summer’s day.

“The lawn, carefully kept and green as one of Kentucky’s own, has a miniature fort with mounted cannon and a flagstaff that floats the country’s colors by day, and sports a crescent of electric fire at night. The fountains, the flowers, and tropic fruits growing here as if ’twas their natural home, serve as ornaments. A dainty little boat-house at the bottom of the lawn is headquarters for all sorts of boats for rowing or sailing, as well as for naphtha and steam launches. The view from the cars comprises all this, as also from the bridge that spans the river from the hotel to the town. The intending guest need not leave the train here; after a short stop it will cross the river and come right to the galleries of the west entrance and stop under the shadow of the great hotel at Tampa Bay.

“If in the ecstacy of a first impression I likened this to a palace of Spain that Ponce de Leon might have dreamed of, I had no retraction to make when the second day of my visit came and I saw it with modern surroundings of railway and steamer—it is a palace still, and more of that than the hotel, and in its appointments more like a gentleman’s residence on a scale exaggerated to positive magnificence—totally unlike any other, and it is no disparagement to any to say it is the most unique in the world—I was about to say of its kind—it has no kind; there is none other in similarity with it, and taken all in all is the finest in the world.

“I say this not without thought of what it means—the Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine may have cost more dollars to build, decorate, and furnish, and the name and fame of the Ponce de Leon has gone to the four quarters, and ’tis not intended to compare invidiously. Here at Tampa Bay, the surroundings take one back through the centuries even before De Soto came, and this may have been the very spot where he landed.

“The horseshoe arches of the Moorish curve are everywhere, from the grand galleries to the rotunda doors, in the salon entrances and to the grand banquet hall, for it is nothing less, and every minaret is crescent crested, and passing under them leads to some old picture, antique, or cabinet that ornamented some palace hall before the land on which this one stands had been discovered,—and herein is the argument that this is the only one in the world. The others boast of their ‘especially made’ appointments, while these were made before the land was discovered.