"He went back to Spain once more, where, with great difficulty, he obtained an audience with the King, and was very coldly received. He soon dropped out of sight, and the closing years of his life were passed in utter obscurity in Seville."
"Very much like the closing years of the life of Columbus," Frank remarked.
PONCE DE LEON.
"Yes," added the Doctor, "and you may continue the parallel further among American discoverers and conquerors. Americus Vespucius, or Amerigo Vespucci, died in poverty; Balboa and Sir Walter Raleigh were beheaded; Pizarro was assassinated; Magellan was killed in battle; and De Soto never lived to know the value of his discovery of the Mississippi. Hendrick Hudson was forced into an open boat at sea by a band of mutineers, and never heard of afterwards; and Captain John Smith died in retirement after having passed some time in a French prison. Ponce de Leon, who went to Florida to find the fabled fountain of youth, was mortally wounded in a fight with the natives of that country, and his followers were forced into a disastrous retreat."
Absorbed with the train of thought aroused by Doctor Bronson's remark, the youths silently accompanied that gentleman on the return trip to the city. Frank concluded that he would never lead an expedition for the discovery of a new world, and Fred decided that he did not care to make a name in history by the conquest of a country that had done him no harm.
