University of Virginia Library

PONCE DE LEON.

The lover of Spanish story must remember Ponce
de Leon; nor is he likely very soon to be forgotten by
the American reader. His history, the renown of his
achievements, as well in old as in new Spain, have
wrought for him the magic of a name in both countries,
and made him too familiar to all memories at all
conversant with the stirring and busy period in which
he lived, to permit of that oblivion, in his case, which
has obscured so many of his contemporaries. Washington
Irving in his “Companions,” &c. has given a
very pleasant and interesting sketch of his life, the perusal
of which, will compensate the idle hour which it
employs. As a knight of romance, we find him fulfilling,
to the card, all the dues and duties of the code and
court of chivalry, in its most elevated era; a service,
for which indeed, we are free to acknowledge, he was
peculiarly fitted. He was brave and daring to a proverb,
strong in person, fiery in spirit, true to his affections,
earnest in his devotions, a lover of valorous deeds,
for valour's sake, and fond of the sex as became a disciple
of the school of gallantry in the time of black-letter
romance. It may not be important to dwell

longer upon this head, for, I take it, these things are
quite as well known to other people as to myself.

The wars of Grenada had now for some time been
over—the Moors expelled for ever the delicious country
in which their elysium had, perhaps, been quite too much
placed, and but for the strife and wild adventure which
followed the unveilment of the new world to European
eyes, the whole kingdom of Spain had fallen into a
most unseemly, and at that period, unnatural and unbecoming
quiet. The hum and hurry of war had ceased
to keep awake the cities; and the spirit-stirring blast
of the trumpet gave way at nightfall to the gentle and
more delicate and seductive notes of the guitar—

Knighthood, if not positively unfashionable, began to
be somewhat cumbersome, at least; and if the coat of
mail did here and there continue to be worn by the
warrior, more solicitous of former than of present
times, it was not unfrequently concealed by the vestment
of gorgeous and embroidered silk. In fact, the
entire nation, even at the moment of its greatest glory
and true regeneration, had begun to adopt that peculiar
languor of habit, the consequence of a sudden flood of
prosperous enterprise, which, in after times, when a
superabundant wealth provided them with the means
of a boundless and luxurious indulgence, has made
them a very by-word and a mockery among the nations.
This condition of the national character was not then
perceptible, however; certainly not to themselves, and
perhaps not to the surrounding powers; and the repose

in which the nation lay, had become particularly irksome
to those brave adventurers who looked to carve out their
fortunes with their weapons. “The world was their oyster,”
and with them the speech of ancient Pistol must
have been of favourite and frequent application. Peace
was not only inglorious but unprofitable; and the discovery
of America was a godsend quite as necessary
to the kingdom of old Spain, in ridding it of the excess
and idle population, made by the sudden termination of
its protracted warfare, as in extending its dominions
and enriching its treasures.

Though fully as renowned as any of the brave spirits
of his age and country, for every accomplishment of
arms, and every requisite of adventure, Ponce de Leon
did not, however, at this time, take part in the new
crusade, for the conquest of the Indian regions. There
were, indeed, sundry good and sufficient reasons why
such a step should be unnecessary, and might have
been imprudent. Ponce was now getting rather old—
he had been fighting the good fight for his king and his
faith, from boyhood up, against the infidels, and quite
long enough to render unquestionable his loyalty to
both. Beyond all this, however—and although we
shame to say it of so brave a knight, yet the truth had
better than not be known—Ponce had of late suffered
some strange sensations of weakness, in regard to a
certain capricious damsel, the daughter and only heir
of a neighbouring Castellan—or, as it now runs, Castilian—a
knight of the noblest stock, who could, without
any interregnum, trace his genealogical tree, in all
its branches, beyond the flood. Some may find, also,
a sufficiently good reason for the supineness of our

hero, in the fact of his being now well to do in the
world. He had been any thing but a loser in the wars;
had been at the sacking of not a few among the Moorish
towns; and the spoils thus acquired had been well
employed, and with no sparing hand, to enrich and
adorn a couple of fine castles on the marches, which
the liberality and favour of the queen had committed to
his keeping. These perhaps, were each and all of
them strong enough, as reasons why he should not any
more adventure his life for gain or glory. But his
amour, his new passion, the rod which swallowed up
all others, had got completely the better of the knight's
understanding; and he did nothing but think, talk, and
dream, from morning till night, and night till morning,
of the beautiful but capricious Leonora D'Alvarado.
It was a “gone case” with Don Ponce; and he now
had more barbers and friseurs in his pay than he ever
knew in his young days, or should have known in his
old. But all in vain—the loves of our knight were unfortunate—the
course of true love did not run smoothly
with him. Leonora was quite too young, beautiful,
and wealthy, not to be most fashionable, and most fashionably
capricious and coquettish. She laughed at the
old knight—made merry with his awkwardnesses, ridiculed
his gallantries, which, indeed, did not sit over well
upon him; and with much hardness of heart, denied him
her attention whenever he sought to be very manifest
with his. She was a gay and wild creature; and with so
much grace and winningness did she play the despot,
that, while the old knight absolutely shrunk and trembled
beneath her tyranny, he loved still more the despot,
and became still more deeply the victim of the
despotism. It was, as we have already remarked, a
gone, and we regret to add, a hopeless case, with our
hero. Nor was it with him alone, we do her the justice
to say, that the wanton baggage so toyed and trifled.
She had a thousand admirers, all of whom she treated
and trampled upon in like manner—feeling, and never
hesitating to make use of her power, without pause or
mercy, till some cut their own throats, or the throats
of one another, while she, who made all the mischief,
cut each of them in turn. No sooner, however, did
one array leave the field, than another came into it:
such were her attractions—destined, however, to experience
like treatment, and be driven away in turn by
other victims. She was indifferent to the fate so hourly
experienced; and many are the epithets of indignation
and despairing love which they bestowed upon her;
song, sonnet, sigh, and serenade, alike failed to find in
her bosom a single accessible or pregnable point, and
knight after knight came and saw, and went away in
his chains.

Don Ponce was not one of those who so readily despair.
He had sat down too often before the Moorish
castles, from one year's end to the other, not to have
acquired certain valuable lessons of patience, which
stood him in stead in the present strait; and, looking
upon the conquest of the lady in question, and with
much correctness of analogy, as not unlike those to
which, in the Moorish wars, he had been so well accustomed,
he concluded that though he might be able
to do nothing by sudden storm, he certainly could not
altogether fail of success in the course of a regular
blockade. The indefatigable patience and perseverance

of the besieger, he well knew, not unfrequently
wore out both these qualities in the besieged; so he
sat down before the fair fortress, and regularly commenced
his approaches. Never kept besieging army
so excellent a watch. Ponce was, and had been at all
times, an exellent general; the Moors had taught him
the nature of strategy, and he taught his retainers.
They knew their duty, and did it. Not a messenger
entered the castle of the beleaguered damsel that was
not overhauled. He permitted no succour to be thrown
into the walls, and the unfortunate waving of a handkerchief
from any of the lattices, did not fail to bring out
the whole array of the beleaguering force, ready to put
to death any auxiliar, or arrest any supplies that might
have been going to the succour of the besieged. At
length all his outworks having been completed, his
own courage roused to the sticking point, the preparations
for a final attack made perfect, and believing
that his antagonist would now be willing to listen to
reason, our knight sounded a parley, and the fair defender
of the fair fortress readily, and without pause or
seeming apprehension of any kind, gave him the desired
interview. Nothing, of course, could have been more
delightfully pleasant or pacific. The knight, as had
been his wont, on all great and trying occasions, appeared
in full armour; and the damsel, conscious of
her true strength and the legitimate weapons of her
sex, wore, Venus-like, her own graces, set off, and exquisitely
developed, by the voluptuous freedom of the
Moorish habit. As there was now no necessity for any
further delay, the preliminaries having been well passed
on both sides, our hero began. Half dignity, half despair,
he made a desperate exposition of his case. He
described his love, its inveteracy and great irritability,
in moving language; now in prose, now in verse, and
all in the spirit of that artificial period when love wore
wings and worshipped sunbeams, and chivalry carried
a lyre in one hand and a lance in the other, ready, in
the event of a failure on the part of either, to supply its
place with a more faithful auxiliar—and it was not unfrequently
the case, that the fair but fickle damsel,
having bidden defiance to the persuasive melodies of
the former, was borne away triumphantly by the discords
and terrors of the last. Don Ponce was terribly
eloquent on the present occasion. Never amorous
knight more so. He narrated all his endeavours at
her attainment; his labours more numerous and magnificent
than those of Hercules; he detailed at length,
and with no little glow in the way of colouring, his various
visitations by day, long watchings by night in the
perilous weather; described the curious presents, procured
at infinite trouble and expense, solely for her
gratification; the thousand and one new songs made
purposely in her honour, and at his instance, by the
most celebrated minstrels, several dozen of whom he
kept in pay solely for the purpose. He then proceeded
to describe the honours of his state, his great wealth,
substance, dignity, and so forth; and, with all due
modesty, he referred to the noise and notoriety of his
deeds of arms, and the fame, name, and glory which he
had thereby acquired. He dwelt with peculiar force
and emphasis upon the nature of the establishment,
which, upon marriage, he designed her; and, with
much, and in the eye of the maiden, tedious minuteness,
entered upon an enumeration at large of the manifold
sources of delight and comfort which such an event
would necessarily occasion. Having, by this time, exhausted
all his materiel of speechification, he wisely
determined upon coming to the point, and in a fine
string of verse, prepared for the occasion, and rounding
off his speech admirably, as the distich is made to
do the scene in the old English drama, he concluded
by making her the offer of his hand, heart, and substance,
little expecting that, after all said and done,
such a young maiden should still have the hardihood to
refuse. But so she did; looking archly in his face for
a few seconds, she placed her slender and beautiful
fingers upon the few small specks of grisly hair that
still condescended to adorn his temples, and laughingly
exclaimed—

“Why, bless me, Don Ponce, at your years! how
can you talk of such a thing! You are quite bald, and
so wrinkled, that it's wonderful to me how you can
possibly think of any thing but your prayers.”

This was answer enough, a' God's name; and boiling
with indignation, yet baking with undiminished ardour
and love, the worthy knight hurried home to his
castle, immersed and buried in the utmost despair and
tribulation.

The indifference, not to say ill treatment of Donna
Leonora, was not enough however to efface from the
mind of our hero the many and deep impressions which
it had imbibed in favour of that capricious beauty. The
very sportiveness of her rejection, while it necessarily
increased, could not fail, by the seductiveness of her
peculiar manner, in lightening, its severity; at least it

gave an added charm to her loveliness in the grace of
its expression. He now thought more of the coquettish
creature than ever; and the apprehensions, indeed, the
now seeming certainty, of her loss, threw him into a
fever, which was, of course, duly and professionally
heightened by the great number of his attending physicians.

The Sangrado principle was at work upon him, and,
but that the fates had determined he should be preserved
for better things, he had ceased to join in the
good cheer of his table, and gone, not to eat, but to be
eaten! It was on the fourth or fifth day of his malady,
history is doubtful which, that in a moment of interval
from pain, his lacquey brought intelligence of one below,
in the guise of a mariner, who desired sight of his
highness, and the royal representative in those parts,
the most mighty, and valorous, and wise, Don Ponce
de Leon, chief of unnumbered titles, and doer of unnumbered
deeds, &c. &c. Though not surprised by
the application, for Don Ponce was an officer of the
king, the knight felt some strange anxieties to see the
stranger, for which he could not precisely account, and
did not hesitate, accordingly, to command his appearance.
The new comer was a Portuguese mariner,
seeking permission from the knight as the king's sub in
that section, to make recruits for properly manning his
caraval, from the dominions of the knight. He proposed,
as was greatly the fashion at that time, to make
certain new discoveries on the western continent—the
new world which Columbus a little while before, with
unexampled generosity, “gave to Castile and Leon,”
and which, with still greater generosity, they accepted

at his hands. In addition, however, to the lands, and
savages, and gold, the articles commonly enumerated
among the promises of these adventurers, our Portuguese,
reviving an old tradition of his people, pledged
himself to the discovery of the far-famed fountain, to
the waters of which was ascribed the faculty of conferring
perpetual youth upon those who drank of them.
It had long been a prime article in the fancies of the
Portuguese, that such a fountain existed somewhere in
the Indian seas, and the singular success attending the
enterprise of Columbus, at its time of conception regarded
as so visionary, now inspired a large degree of
credence in every story, however monstrous or extravagant.
Our mariner spoke with singular confidence
as to the localities of this fountain, and so very
accurately did he describe the features of the spot in
which it was to be found, with such a lavish degree of
poetical illustration, not to say poetical justice, that, on
a sudden, Don Ponce, to the surprise of all about him,
who before thought him on his last legs, found himself
perfectly restored. He leaped from his couch, embraced
the tarry Portuguese with most unqualified affection;
and three or four of his attending physicians
happening, most unfortunately for them, at that moment
to make their appearance, he gave orders to trundle
them from the walls of his castle, in company with
all the pills, potions, and purges, by which they were
usually accompanied; an order, we need not add, almost
as soon executed as given. Congratulating himself,
with unalloyed pleasure, upon his new acquisition,
our hero, to the surprise of every body, determined upon
a voyage of discovery, in proper person, to the newly-found
continent.

“I will find these glorious waters, this fountain of
youth; I will surprise, I will win this proud lady; I will
get rid of this ill-favoured complexion, these trenches,
this miserable apology for hair.”

Such were the broken exclamations of Don Ponce.

“Where's Don Ponce going?” asked the impertinent.

“What's that to you?” said the knight; and having
made a visit, to take leave, he left the sight of the sneering
beauty, entered his vessel, and the sails, under a
favouring breeze, loomed out gloriously and auspiciously
in a balmy atmosphere, as they bore the old
veteran, but young lover, in search of the heretofore
hidden fountain of perpetual youth.

Years had now rolled away, and the world very well
knows, or it ought to know, how Don Ponce de Leon,
after many mishaps, disasters, and delays, discovered
the object of his want and search somewhere in the
fertile wildernesses of Florida. It answered all his
expectations, and had the desired effect upon his person.
He grew, upon drinking from it, straightway
comely and strong in person and buoyant in mind:
and, though tolerably well supplied with the latter
characteristic, already excessively warm and ardent in
his temper and affections, his joints grew more supple
than ever, and he could feel his blood articulating in
his veins perpetually, the then new and popular, but
now old and unpopular areyto of “Oh, 'tis love, 'tis
love,' &c. The stream, however which caused all
this change in the moral and animal man, was quite a

small one; and its virtues, having soon made themselves
manifest, it only served to supply the first
comers, and was dry to all succeeding. A single
draught was quite enough for all his purposes; and
perfectly satisfied with the measure of success which
attended his adventure, Don Ponce began again to
direct his attention to his native country. He thought
of his broad, bright fields, and of his vineyards, and
his retainers, and his castles, and then he thought of
Donna Leonora, and her fields, and her retainers, and
her castles, and all her other charms, personal and
contingent; and so thinking, he commenced his return.
But this was no easy matter. He had to fight
his way through troops of naked Indians, and wild
woods, and wicked briars, and swamps that left him
half naked; now losing his way, and almost despairing
to find it again; now exposed to perils from savage
men, and to temptations from savage women; such, indeed,
as frequently led his chivalry into singular adventures,
and nameless and paralysing difficulties.
But he surmounted them all; as how, in reference to
his new acquisitions, could he do less? He had taken,
as it were, a bond of fate for life. The gray hairs had
fallen from his brow, and been succeeded by others of
a less equivocal complexion, and in less limited quantity.
The wrinkles had left his cheek, the dimness
his eye; his step was no longer enfeebled and uncertain,
he felt himself quite as young as when, in the
vigour of his boyhood, he had wrestled with a romping
maid of Andalusia, and was not overthrown.

He stood once more, after an interval of many years,
upon the deck of his caraval; and, as he proceeded

over the mighty waste of waters that lay between him
and the land of his nativity, his thoughts grew more
than ever active and lively; his spirit more anxiously
aroused as to the condition in which he should find all
things upon his return. His chief apprehension, however
grew out of his affair of the heart. Should the fair
Leonora have become the bride of another—and was
all his personal beauty to be left upon his hands?
This was a damning difficulty, and all in vain did he
seek to wrestle with and avoid the reflection. It grew
but the stronger as he approached the shore; and when,
at his castle's entrance, he put the question to an old
retainer, and hastily demanded to know that which his
heart yet trembled to receive, how was he rejoiced to
learn that all was safe, all as when he left, and the capricious
damsel quite as accessible as ever. He paused at
his castle, such was his impatience, but to arrange his
habit before intruding upon her.

“If,” said he, “my gray hairs, my wrinkled face,
my infirm gait, were really her objections before, she
can no longer entertain them. I will wed-her on the
spot—she cannot, she dare not, she will not resist
me!”

Surely not, Don Ponce, surely not; we always think
well of the man who thinks well of himself. Cæsar
never struck into a path so perfectly sublime, as when
he said, “Veni, vidi, vici; say so too, Don, and the
thing 's settled.

Thus manfully determined, our hero appeared in
the halls of his neighbour Castellan, the father of the
lady, and, with a view of present prospects, so likely
to be that of the knight. Their meeting was hearty,

though it took the old gentleman some time to understand
how Don Ponce could get young while he himself
got old. The grateful mystery of his transformation
once explained, however, and matters were all well. He
did not waste more time upon the father, than a proper
courtesy actually called for; but, after the first
proprieties, hurried, with all a lover's agony of impatience,
to the bower in which he had been taught to
believe his mistress awaited him. What a moment of
delightful anticipation—what funds of love in store—
what raptures and felicitations at hand! He was on
the threshold—he was in the presence. There she
stood—the same sylphlike form, the same figure of
consummated symmetry. But why veiled? He rushed
valiantly forward, fell upon one knee before her, and,
oh, unlooked for condescension, she sunk into his
arms? He did not hesitate for a moment, but tearing
away the thick folds of the envious veil, he proceeded
to impress upon her lips, the kiss, so long treasured
with a perfect fidelity—when he beheld, not the Leonora
he had left—not the beauty of her girlhood—not
the creature of exquisite delicacy and youthful fragrance,
that queened it over a thousand hearts—but a
superannuated and withered damsel, of wrinkled face,
starched features, and lips to which kisses of any kind
appeared to have been strangers for a marvellously
long season. Don Ponce had never remembered that
the term of years employed by him in gaining, was
spent by her in losing, both youth and beauty. Nor,
in this error was our knight alone. To all of us, no
changes are so surprising, none, certainly, so ungraeious
and painful, as those of the young, and delicate,
and gentle, under the hand of time and human circumstances.
Fifteen years had done much for our
hero, but much more for our heroine. He could not
believe his eyes.

“Nay, lady, there is some mistake here, surely,”
said he, releasing himself partly from his burden. “I
came to see the beautiful Donna Leonora D' Alvarado.”

“And I am she, most noble knight—the same Donna
Leonora to whom your heart was so perfectly devoted,”
simpered out the now gracious coquette.

“I must see Don Guzman,” said he, “I must learn
the facts in this matter;” and flying out of the presence
of his goddess with even more rapidity than he had
flown into it, he appeared before the sire of the ancient
beauty.

“Don Ponce, where are you going?” said the old
man.

“Home, Don Guzman,” said the young one.

“Why this hurry—does my daughter refuse? If
she does, Don Ponce, be assured that in your favour
I shall constrain her inclinations,” warmly urged Don
Guzman.

“Not for the world!” was the reply of our hero,
“not for the world; and hark ye Don Guzman, the
truth may as well be said now as ever. I no longer find
your daughter as I left her. I am quite too young for
her, I perceive. Pray permit me to send for her use
and your own, a bottle of water, which I took from a
certain fountain in India. I can assure you that it
will do you great good—you both stand very much in
need of it.”

Tradition does not say, whether the water thus furnished

had any effect upon the fair Leonora. One
old chronicle insinuates that she brought her action
for a breach of promise against the young knight, but
failed to recover. This point is apocryphal, however.
He, we know, returned to America, and, after losing
an eye, in a fight with the Indians, and experiencing
many other vicissitudes, died of chagrin, from many
disappointments, as well in concerns of ambition as in
those of love; “without,” says the legend, from which
we borrow our narrative, “losing a single beauty of
that youth, so marvellously vouchsafed him, by Providence,
in the discovery of that wondrous fountain in
the wildernesses of Florida.”