A pensive mood comes over one voyaging among the scenes of the New
World's early play-ground. To us while on this canoe voyage of pleasant
recollection the fancied experience of navigators gone before was
intensely thrilling.
Sailing among islands clothed in eternal green, the same that Columbus
beheld with marvellous anticipations, and the venerable Las Casas had
looked upon with pious wonder, brought us, in the mind's eye, near the
old discoverers; and a feeling that we should come suddenly upon their
ships around some near headland took deep hold upon our thoughts as we
drew in with the shores. All was there to please the imagination and
dream over in the same balmy, sleepy atmosphere, where Juan Ponce de
Leon would fain have tarried young, but found death rapid, working side
by side with ever springing life. To live long in this clime one must
obey great Nature's laws. So stout Juan and millions since have found,
and so always it will be.
All was there to testify as of yore, all except the first owners of the
land; they alas! the poor Caribbees, together with their camp fires, had
been extinguished long years before.
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