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Updated: May 23, 2025
Infirmities must have been already creeping on him at fifty years of age, or he would scarcely have felt the need of trying this fountain. Ponce de Leon equipped three vessels at his own expense, and set out from St. Germain in Porto Rico on the 1st of March, 1512. He went first to the Lucayan Islands, which he searched in vain, and then to the Bahamas.
This island, which he discovered and named St. Salvador, lies about a thousand leagues from the Canaries. Presently after he likewise discovered the Lucayan islands, together with those of Cuba and Hispaniola, now called St. Domingo.
After cruising among these Lucayan Islands, or Bahamas, for some time, he reached Cuba on the 28th of the same month. His Lucayan interpreters were understood by the natives of Cuba, notwithstanding they spoke a different dialect. They were also understood at Hayti, which was reached on the 6th of December; but here the Cuban interpreter was found to be more useful.
A favorite theory is, that the Ygneris were ancient inhabitants of the West Indian Islands, distinct from the Caribs, who made their way from Florida by the Lucayan Islands, leaving Hayti to the right, and reaching South America by that fringe of islands that stretches from Porto Rico to Trinidad, through which the great current is strained into the Caribbean Sea.
Once having tasted native blood, like their own dogs, the hunting mania possessed them, till two millions of Haytians alone had perished. The population had become so reduced as early as 1508 that they were obliged to organize great Indian chases on the main-land, and a Coolie trade sprang up in the Lucayan Islands, to keep the Haytian mines and plantations supplied with hands.
How blackened now its history, and how inapposite its name! Obliquely we run past the Lucayan Isles, looking out almost as anxiously as he did for the "promised land." But how opposite our situations!
The Spaniards, who had long been fasting, satisfied their appetites on the food, and then set out to explore the country. On their way they saw a party of Indians, collected on the top of a rock, looking down upon them with astonishment. Though most of the natives ran off, one remained, whose apprehensions were quickly dispelled by the friendly way the young Lucayan interpreter spoke to him.
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