After a month’s sail in a north-westerly direction, De Leon came in sight of a country, “covered with flowers and verdure,” and, as it happened to be Easter Sunday, he named the new land Pasena de Flores, or Pasqua Florida, that being the Spanish name for the festival so inseparably connected with floral decorations. On the 2d April the explorers landed at the point now called Fernandina, considerably further north than the modern boundary between Florida and Georgia――the term Florida having been at first loosely applied to all the districts on the north-east of the Gulf of Mexico. Owing to the hostility of the natives, De Leon and his men were, however, soon compelled to return to their ships, but they spent some time in cruising up and down both sides of the peninsula, making flying visits in-shore, in hope of extricating information from the Indians as to the position of the coveted Fountain of Youth. In this quest their failure was complete; but when at last compelled to return to Puerto Rico, they were rewarded for their long wanderings by the discovery of the Bahamas on their voyage back. Illustration: A BAYOU IN FLORIDA. As usual in such cases, De Leon received the appointment of Adelantado of the country he had visited, weighted, however, with the condition that he should colonize it. With this end in view, and perhaps also with a hope of yet renewing his strength at the magic well, he returned to Florida in 1521, only to fall a victim in a struggle with some Indians who opposed his landing, and greeted their would-be governor with a shower of poisoned arrows. Between the first and last visit of De Leon to Florida, several heroes of Central American discovery touched on the coast of the newly-found district, on their way to and from Mexico; and in 1518, Francis Garay, for some time Governor of Jamaica, cruised along the whole of the shores of North America bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, passing the mouths of the Mississippi, called by the Indians the Miche Sepe, or Father of Waters, and by the Spaniards the Rio del Espirito Santo, or the River of the Holy Ghost. Refraining from landing on account of the “little hospitable” appearance of the country, Garay contented himself with drawing a map of the coast-line, which he very accurately describes as “bending like a bow,” adding that a line drawn from the most southerly point of Florida to the northernmost headland of Yucatan “would make the string of the bow.”