“I wonder if in his dreams that night, when his ship came in to Tampa Bay, this grand old Grandee was back in his castles in Spain, and sported in fantastic fandango with the dark-browed Señorita of fair Castile. Was his dream a prophetic vision that it seemed to be an Alhambra just there under the lee of his ship, or did some grander palace with Moorish minarets and silvered domes, glistening with more silvery brightness under the rays of a tropic moon, topped with golden crescents that could only come from the Orient to ornament its towers high above the pines, seem to be here in this far-off land--a dream passing all realization. And what a disappointing awakening awaited this ancient cavalier who sought the waters that would make him young again, for when the morning came, and the sun shone brightly, the knight must have trod the deck with restless impatience; the vision of last night carried him back to lordly Spain, the awakening brought him here again, and only a lofty pine stood in the place of the tallest tower, the swaying top was not a silver dome, and the mournful moaning in its boughs fell not as sweetly on his ear as the tinkling tingle of guitars and his dream-made mandolins. And I am sure, in haste he left a spot so disappointing, and perhaps to the tune of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away,’ marched to find the great Mississippi. “I say, perhaps old De Soto dreamed all this when he landed here at Tampa, and if he did, behold ’t was prophecy--for the swaying pines have toppled and in their places have risen higher the golden crescents of the Orient, and the silvered domes and Moorish minarets that ornament a palace, and here at Tampa Bay the Spaniard’s dream has been realized two hundred years after. “The tourist of to-day does not approach from the direction of his illustrious predecessor, but has the decided advantage, whether the coming be by night or day. If by day, the grandly magnificent picture comes suddenly upon the view as the train makes a turn and stops between the little town and the river. The foreground is the river, the middle distance, green sloping lawns dotted with flowers, around whose beds are winding walks that circle fountains and lead through groves of palms and oranges to the pines beyond, the same great pines that De Soto walked under in the struggle to get off his ‘sea legs.’ In the brightness of a semi-tropic sun the domes and crescents glisten intensely, and the massive pile grows to immensity. The broad galleries extend all along the front, the roof commencing above the third-story windows, slopes gently, so as not to obstruct the view, and at its outer edge drops in huge ornaments, in arched and hanging pendants ending in brackets at every column, and at the walls; the grateful shade inviting as on a summer’s day.