Hey, I've drank from there! Now explain my grey hair!
Founding of St. Augustine
Don Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in America with Columbus on his second voyage, 1493. Leon and his fellows, not Columbus, completed Spain's claim to the New World. Made governor of Puerto Rico in 1510 and later deposed, Ponce de Leon, at his own expense, equipped an expedition to the North in 1513. A few years previous, Amerigo Vespucci had discovered and claimed the South American continent for Spain and John Cabot the northern continent for England. Two of the mightiest nations in the world stood opposed for proprietorship of half the globe. Ponce De Leon heard Indians tell of Bimini, a fabulous island in the North. Historians do not unanimously honor at full value the beautifully romantic story that Ponce was seeking to find the fountain of youth. Yet it was not incredible to men of that day - when the very existence of a New World was hardly believable to those who had not seen it with their own eyes - that those who had touched these shores should believe in greater magic in this strange realm. And certainly there is no legend more appropriate to the beginning of America than that this new land should offer men a vision of eternal youth. Indeed it has! With his able navigator, Anton Alaminos, Ponce sailed and chared the ocean's main artery, the Gulf Stream, shaping the destiny of oceanic transport for all time to come.
We went there after you left Florida - was the Ampitheater over it then, and stage with depiction of it?
The guide gave that story of it.
And had they then uncovered, cleaning the area by the spring, the actual cross made of stones by him there?!!
Awesome to contemplate it being laid in 1513 to claim it for God!
Speaking of drinking the water, I did, and then went down to the statue by the bay.
Another older couple were returning from there, and the husband quipped to his wife, "See - she drank the water and it transformed her into Miss St. Augustine!"
It works!!
LOL