Certain it is that long before these romantic tales had given rise to the expeditions of De Leon, Narvaez, and De Soto, many natives of the Lucayos, of Cuba, even of Yucatan and Honduras,[150] had set out in search of this mystic fount. Many were lost, while some lived to arrive on the Floridian coast, where finding it impossible either to proceed or return, they formed small villages, “whose race,” adds Barcia,[151] writing in 1722, “is still in existence” (cuia generacion aun dura). This statement, which the cautious investigator Navarrete confirms,[152] seems less improbable when we reflect that in after times it was no uncommon incident for the natives of Cuba to cross the Gulf of Florida in their open boats to escape the slavery of the Spaniards,[153] that the Lucayans had frequent communication with the mainland,[154] that the tribes of South Florida, as early as 1695, carried on a considerable trade with Havana,[155] that the later Indians on the Suwannee would on their trading excursions not only descend this river in their large cypress canoes, but proceed “quite to the point of Florida, and sometimes cross the Gulph, extending their navigations to the Bahama islands and even to Cuba,”[156] and finally that nothing was more common to such a seafaring nation as the Caribs than a voyage of this length.[157] Another remarkable myth, which certainly points for its explanation to an early and familiar intercourse between the islands and the mainland, is the singular geognostic tradition prevalent among the Lucayans, preserved by Peter of Anghiera, to the effect that this archipelago was originally united to the continent by firm land.[158] Doubtless it was on such grounds that the Spaniards concluded that they owed their original settlement to migrations from the Floridian peninsula.