Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

Whether these stories had their origin in folklore or not, they found their way into Europe at least two centuries before the voyage of Ponce de Leon to Florida. Mandeville’s work appeared in French, Latin, and English, and such was its popularity, that Halliwell did not hesitate to declare that “of no book, with the exception of the Scriptures, can more MSS. be found at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century.”

Such being the case, it would be strange indeed if the Spaniards were not familiar with stories so widely circulated, and stranger still if, on arriving in the New World, and learning from the Indians of the existence of a fountain of youth, and at no great distance away, they should not seek to locate it and test its virtues. Given the state of knowledge at the time, and the credence accorded to the accounts of similar fountains in the Old World, the much ridiculed expedition of Ponce de Leon followed as a natural consequence. It would have been more surprising if the expedition had not been made than that it was made.

The foregoing remarks on the Florida Fountain of Youth and river Jordan would be incomplete without a few words about the probable origin of the traditions concerning them. To attribute their origin to folklore simply may be true, but it explains nothing.

M. E. Beauvois, in a series of interesting articles—very plausible if not conclusive—on the subject, contends that all the traditions regarding the Fountain of Youth and the river Jordan, which proved so attractive to the Spaniards, are of Christian origin. He maintains that the Gaels, as early as 1380, “had established relations with the aborigines from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the tropical zone of North America, and that it is very probable that missionaries accompanied the merchants in their voyages to Florida and the Antilles.” He argues that these missionaries baptized the indigenes in some river which, for that reason, they called the Jordan, or that they spoke to them of a river in their country, on which a Christian mission had been established, and that this fact gave rise to the formation of the tradition of a Jordan situated somewhere at the north of the Antilles.

It remains to show how this tradition came to be confounded with the story of the Fountain of Youth. This confusion was the more natural that the same idea is at the foundation of the two parallel traditions. The one has reference to the regeneration of the soul, the other to the rejuvenation of the body, both being effected by means of vivifying water. In the beginning, but one kind of water was known, that “which saved by its own proper virtue, the water of baptism, which is exclusively spiritual.” Subsequently, however, the simple and superstitious Indian attributed to the waters of baptism properties which seemed to him preferable to those spoken of by the missionary—the properties, namely, “of curing diseases of the body, or of restoring youth to the decrepit and of indefinitely prolonging life. From that time the Fountain of Youth had a proper existence and began to play an important role in popular traditions.”

How long the tradition of the beneficent waters of Florida existed—and Florida, it must be remembered, meant to the Spaniards of the sixteenth century all the Atlantic coast—M. Beauvois does not determine. It may have been only a few generations, or it may have been several centuries. It may even have dated back to about the year 1008, when Thorfinn Karlsefni was baptized in “Vinland the Good”—Massachusetts—the first Christian, so far as known, born on the American continent. Or it may have originated as far north as New Brunswick—“Great Ireland or Huitramannaland—which had been occupied by a Gaelic colony from the year 1000, or from an earlier date, until the end of the fourteenth century, and where, about the year 1000, the Papas, Columbite monks, the evangelizers of that region, had baptized the Icelander, Aré Mârsson, who had left his native island before his conversion to Christianity.”

At all events, whatever conclusions may be reached as to the time when and the place where the tradition originated, it is manifest that “it could have been propagated in the New World only by Christians and as it was in existence before the arrival of the Spaniards, we must attribute its propagation to other Europeans, to those, for example, whose crosses the indigenes of Tennessee and Georgia had exhumed from their ancient burial places, or to those whom the inhabitants of Haiti had known either de visu or by hearsay.”[12]

What is here said of the Christian origin of the Florida Fountain of Youth can likewise be predicated of the one mentioned in the legend of Prester John—whence, as we have seen, Mandeville got his story, for it is said, “this same fonteyne is full of the grace of the holy goost,” an obvious allusion to the regenerating waters of baptism.

But it is time to resume the thread of our narrative, interrupted by a discussion unavoidably long, but pardonable, it is hoped, in view of its abiding interest and intimate connection with the early history of Florida. Besides, my purpose is not so much to give descriptions of the countries through which we shall pass—something which has in most instances been done before—as to give the impressions of their earliest explorers and to dwell, as briefly as may be, on topics relating to the various regions visited, that possess even for the most casual reader a perennial fascination and importance. In countries like those we shall visit, the impressions of the first explorers are often more interesting and instructive than those of the latest tourist or naturalist, for such impressions have about them a freshness and an originality—often a quaintness and a simplicity—that are entirely absent from modern works of travel. Another reason for so doing is that much of the ground, over which we shall travel, is practically the same to-day as when it first greeted the eyes of the conquistadores, and many of the towns and cities we shall visit, no less than the manners and customs of the people, differ but little from what they were in the time of Charles V and Philip II. Thus, regarding many things, the statements of the Spanish writers and missionaries of four centuries ago are still as true as if they had been penned but yesterday, and that, too, by the most accurate observer.

From St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States, the traveler has the choice of two routes to Havana. One is by way of Tampa Bay, called by De Soto the Bay of Espíritu Santo, and by some of the early geographers designated as the Bay of Ponce de Leon. What, however, is now known as Ponce de Leon Bay, is farther south and near the southernmost point of the peninsula. The other route is along the east coast of the state. At the time of our visit the railroad was in operation only as far as Miami, but was being rapidly pushed towards its terminus at Key West.