312 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
of perpetual and unfading verdure. It was reported and believed 
by Juan Ponce de Leon and other bold navigators, that upon one 
of them existed water medicated and endowed by nature with 
most wonderful potency. In tangled wood or rocky cavern, bub- 
bled in the shadows or sparkled in the sunlight, that old dream 
of the ages—the fountain of perpetual youth; and men toiled, 
suffered, sickened and died in the vain search for the wonderful 
waters of immortality. It is indeed fortunate for the world, con- 
sidering the infamous character of many of those Spanish adven- 
turers, that this pleasing dream had no basis of fact upon which 
to rest. 
It has not been considered very strange, in an age which teemed 
with marvels of fact which far transcended in interest, novelty 
and importance, the wildest conceptions of the imagination, that 
men of intelligence implicitly believed in the existence of 
‘*A bright floral isle, 
The jewel of a smooth and silver sea, 
With springs in which perennial summers smile, 
A power of causing immortality ;” 
and that some were willing to risk their money and their lives in 
efforts to discover it. But the thread of life upon which these 
dreamers were suspended, continued to weaken as it shortened, 
and they soon found, as a practical fact, that the rejuvenating 
spring is situated upon the other side of the dark turbid waters 
of the river of death. 
