Heading South Again

Heading back to the Keys for our winter visit we stopped in St. Augustine for a break before driving the final leg of the trip. We are at a small beachfront hotel with a balcony overlooking Vilano beach. The sunrise was a thing of beauty and now I'm watching a sailboat hoist its main and run with the wind. Eyes closed, I feel the deck tilt starboard, hear only the wind as it blows through the rigging and feel the sun on my face. A sail can almost always cure what ails you.

After a genuine home cooked breakfast, we walked the beach, watching the tide go out. The word is pompano are running; ever optimistic fisher persons were busy setting up their beach rods. One can only wonder if the pompano got the same word.

When I booked two days in St. Augustine it was with the goal of seeing some of the historic sites but the press of people and cars was too much. This tree-lined street near the Ponce de Leon park was the nicest thing I saw.

On the subject of Ponce de Leon, the fact is he never came near St. Augustine, despite all the claims to the contrary. A summary of his activities vis a vis Florida follows:

"Contrary to what our school books taught us, Ponce did not discover Florida. Florida probably was first sighted by Portuguese navigators, or perhaps by the Cabots sailing from England. Either way, it started appearing on maps as early as 1500. By 1510, its distinctive peninsular shape had emerged clearly on maps in Europe. By 1513, when Ponce de Leon first arrived, so many Europeans had visited Florida that some Indians greeted him in Spanish.

Ponce never went anywhere near St. Augustine, the city where he is said to have discovered the Fountain of Youth. He was not an old man. That tale was concocted by Washington Irving more than 300 years later. Ponce was after gold, but Florida had none to be found. He left and might never have returned but for the news that Cortes had found gold in Mexico. In 1521 Ponce - envious, vigorous, avaricious - made the fatal mistake of trying his Florida luck again.

On that second voyage, he achieved one real Florida first, albeit an inglorious one. In a skirmish with native inhabitants, Ponce fired the first shots in what would turn into a 300-year war of ethnic cleansing. More American soldiers would die trying to subdue Florida than in all the Indian battles in the West.

Ponce himself was struck by an arrow. The wound wasn't serious, but the Spaniards were as indifferent to sepsis as they were alert to heresy [and he died from the infection.]"

By T. D. ALLMAN, author of Finding Florida -- The True History of the State

Next post from the house on Bay Drive in the Saddlebunch Keys.