Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SPANIARDS IK FLORIDA, IT CHAPTER III. THE SPANIARDS TAKE POSSESSION OF FLORIDA. As the Spaniards had been the first nation to attempt the discovery of the New World, so they were the most enterprising and adventurous in their endeavours to conquer and colonize its extensive and fertile countries. The history of their warlike achievements in Mexico and Pern presents examples of the most heroic bravery and perseverance, darkened by many shadows of avarice and injustice. The whole nation seems to have been fired with the spirit of foreign adventure, and the New World was the grand theatre Tor its display. Previous to the expeditions of Cortes and Pizarro, Florida had been discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon. This adventurer had accompanied Columbus in his second yoyage; and afterwards had been successively appointed governor of the eastern province of Hispaniola, and of Porto Rico. When he had been displaced from the government of the latter island, in consequence of the paramount claims of Columbus's family, he fitted out an expedition with the romantic design of searching for a country in which, according to information received from the Caribs, there was a fountain whose waters imparted to those who bathed in them the gift of perpetual youth. Having sailed about among the Bahamas and touched at several of them, in pursuit of this fairy land, he at length, (March 27, 1512,) came in sight of the continent. As this discovery was made on Easter Sunday, which the Spaniards call Pascua Florida, the land was called Florida. Its verdant forests and magnificent flowering aloes may have afforded another reason for assigning it this name. It was not till the 8th of April that he was able to effect a landing in the latitude of thirty degrees and eight minutes, a little to the...
Synopsis
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.