“Where west-winds with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassias balmy smells.”
We could now verify at our leisure what we had been wont to consider as the exaggerated statements of the early explorers of Florida regarding the beautiful forests—“trellised with vines and gay with blossoms”—and the fragrant odors that were wafted from them by the breeze even out to the ships passing along the coast, and “in such abundance that the entire orient could not produce so much.” “We stretched forth our hands,” writes Lescarbot, in his Historie de la Nouvelle France, “as if to grasp them, so palpable were they.” All carried away with them the same impression about the “douceur odoriferante de plusieurs bonnes choses”—the odoriferous sweetness of many good things—that was everywhere observable.
Nor were their accounts of this grateful feature of the country overdrawn. It is the same to-day as it was four centuries ago, when the European had just landed on these shores and found so many things—as novel as they were marvelous—to excite his delight and enthusiasm. It is something that is denied to us whose homes are in the North, and, to enjoy it in all its newness and freshness, we must perforce immigrate to tropical and subtropical climes.
But the foregoing is only one of the delectable features of this favored land. As we wander through the groves and gardens and sail on the placid waters of the rivers and lakes through the silent everglades or the dark and mysterious forests, we find at every turn something to charm the ear or delight the eyes. Everywhere we meet with new and beauteous form of animal and vegetable life and realize for the first time, perhaps, how diverse and multitudinous are the forms of animated nature.
If we are to credit Herrera, it was on account of its beautiful aspect, as well as on the day on which it was discovered, that the locality received the name it now bears. The historian says explicitly that Ponce de Leon and his companions “named it Florida because it appeared very delightful, having many pleasant groves, and it was all level; as also because they discovered it at Easter, which, as has been said, the Spaniards call Pascua de Flores or Florida.”[1]
In view of this clear and positive statement of Herrera, one is surprised to see that writers treating the subject ex professo have fallen into error regarding the origin of the name Florida. Thus Barnard Shipp writes: “The Peninsula of Florida was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon on Pascua Florida, Palm Sunday, in the year 1512,[2] and because of the day on which he discovered it, he gave it the name Florida.”[3]
All doubt, however, about the real origin of the name, about which there has been so much misunderstanding, is removed by the declaration of Peter Martyr, the father of American history. In his delightfully refreshing work, De Orbe Novo, which is not so well known as it should be, he asserts in language that does not admit of ambiguity, that Juan Ponce named the newly discovered territory Florida because it was discovered the day of the Resurrection, for the Spaniards call the day of the Resurrection Pascua de Flores.”[4]
When the French Huguenots some decades later attempted to colonize the country they called it “La Nouvelle France”—New France—a name they also subsequently gave to Canada.