Every ship from the New World came
freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and
to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery,
of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened,
thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of
the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of
inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land and sea;
they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the
sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from
day to day new wonders were unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new
regions of gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than Oriental
wealth. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no
bounds. Nor is it surprising that amid such waking marvels the
imagination should run wild in romantic dreams; that between the
possible and the impossible the line of distinction should be but
faintly drawn, and that men should be found ready to stake life and
honor in pursuit of the most insane fantasies.
Such a man was the veteran cavalier Juan Ponce de Leon. Greedy of honors
and of riches, he embarked at Porto Rico with three brigantines, bent on
schemes of discovery.
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