By W.A. Watson
The happiest moments of my life were spent in the school room, studying history—the record of past events.
And how my heart and soul did burn when I read, studied and pondered over the magic voyage of the most famous expeditions that ever set sail for unknown waters and land. I say waters and land because Ponce De Leon, the intrepid Spanish explorer, had a vision of the “Fountain of Youth” in which any aged person could bathe, and come back to youth, and live forever, so to speak.
Tradition and many winged legends have it that he landed and set his feet upon the flowers and Garden of Eden right here on St. Andrews Bay, Florida.
This bay is a part of the waters jutting out into the channel from the Great Lakes of Mexico.
After my arrival here when I would lie down on my bed to rest I could hear the mighty roar of something—like the noise of many waters, angry and playing hide and seek along the coast banks of sunny Florida—so I asked “What could all this mean?” and to my surprise I was told that what I heard was the wild waves of the Gulf of Mexico at play.
Oh, how my heart did burn and yearn to go down and thrust my poor and feeble hands into this water, and to look with mine eyes upon the mighty deep of Blue Waters lashing at play with white caps that were sailing to and fro through the spaces that never seem to end.
It was then and there that my childhood dreams were realized and brought back to my mind when I was a school boy in my teens.
It was then that I realized for what Ponce De Leon had sought out but my only regret I have for this epistle of past history is that he could have been successful and have found the true “Fountain of Youth” but the Great God who rules the universe today, tomorrow and forever, blinded this Spanish explorer’s eyes and His wisdom sent an angel form on high to watch, so that these waters might not be troubled, and this old man like Peter at Rome had to undergo the trial (of disappointment) and suffer an untimely death at the hands of a tribe of natives, a penalty for trespassing upon the Flower Garden and sailing upon unknown waters.
To think of all of this is to make one feel uncanny and almost brings to their minds of magic thought—the Garden of Eden, the Paradise of which was created for the first man of the human race.
On the other hand to look upon the Gulf of Mexico it makes us feel in an earthly way what John saw spiritually on the Isle of Patmos.
The beauty of what I have seen can never be described or told to others for I feel that the great Spirit keeps two all-seeing eyes upon me and would not let me write the sentiments of my heart, so the memory of the sight fades from mine eyes when I try to explain what I have seen in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the nearby St. Andrews Bay—the tradition of the long sought Fountain of Youth, which could not be found—this links up history so to speak with our very own “Lost Colony of North Carolina,” which is a mystery until this very day.
From page 3 of the Watauga Democrat, Boone, N.C., Thursday, Dec. 13, 1923
No comments:
Post a Comment