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Updated: June 15, 2025
Longchamps day arrived, and conspicuous among the splendid equipages on the grand avenue, Tom Thumb's beautiful little carriage, with four ponies and liveried and powdered coachman and footman, rode along in the line of carriages bearing the ambassadors to the Court of France. The air was fairly rent with cheers for "le General Tom Ponce."
But, except for scarcity of fish, the scene is very little altered, and one is a boy again, in heart, beneath the elms of Yair, or by the Gullets at Ashiesteil. However bad the sport, it keeps you young, or makes you young again, and you need not follow Ponce de Leon to the western wilderness, when, in any river you knew of yore, you can find the Fountain of Youth.
To the royal contractors or commissaries he wrote in 1514: "While two forts are being constructed, one in Puerto Rico and the other in San German, where, in case of rebellion, our treasure will be secure, you will give arms and ammunition to Ponce de Leon for our account, with an artilleryman, that he may have them in his house, which is to do duty as a fortress."
No guilt was proven upon him, but handsome pages were ill-chosen company for young women of blue blood. Ponce de Leon was the page, and he was sent to the New World to discover something to the advantage of his own modesty, and incidentally to accumulate for shipment anything that might be useful to the Spanish treasury.
Ponce de Leon, an aged Spanish governor of Porto Rico, who was seeking the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, discovered not the long-sought fountain, but a peninsula decked with such a profusion of flowers that he named the country Florida. From that time until years after it was ceded to the United States Florida was repeatedly baptized in blood.
I believe that, since the Silver Spring affair, he regarded Rectus and me as something in the nature of patent girl-catchers, to be hung over the side of the vessel in bad weather. We were sorry to leave St. Augustine, but we had thoroughly done up the old place, and had seen everything, I think, except the Spring of Ponce de Leon, on the other side of the St. Sebastian River.
On July 29, Ponce was formally given over to the Americans, without the firing of a single shot. The populace received the troops and saluted the flag with enthusiasm. When General Miles entered the city he was welcomed by the mayor, cheered to the echo by the citizens and serenaded by a band of music.
To which M. Ponce will probably answer that as he pays the terrible sum of £100 rent a year for his 2.7 acres of land, and £100 for manure bought in the barracks, he is obliged to exploit. He would no doubt answer, "Being exploited, I exploit in my turn." His installation has also cost him £1,200, of which certainly more than half went as tribute to the idle barons of industry.
Having ranged backwards and forwards till the 23d of September, and refitted the ships, Juan Ponce resolved to send one of them to take a view of the island of Bimini, which the Indians reported to contain much wealth, and to have a spring which made old people young again. Juan Perez de Ortubia was appointed captain of that ship, and Antonio de Alaminos pilot.
The first settlement on this island was made in 1508, on the north coast, at the distance of more than a league from the present port of San Juan, the space between being swampy. Ponce called it Capárra.
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