“The lawn, carefully kept and green as one of Kentucky’s own, has a miniature fort with mounted cannon and a flagstaff that floats the country’s colors by day, and sports a crescent of electric fire at night. The fountains, the flowers, and tropic fruits growing here as if ’twas their natural home, serve as ornaments. A dainty little boat-house at the bottom of the lawn is headquarters for all sorts of boats for rowing or sailing, as well as for naphtha and steam launches. The view from the cars comprises all this, as also from the bridge that spans the river from the hotel to the town. The intending guest need not leave the train here; after a short stop it will cross the river and come right to the galleries of the west entrance and stop under the shadow of the great hotel at Tampa Bay. “If in the ecstacy of a first impression I likened this to a palace of Spain that Ponce de Leon might have dreamed of, I had no retraction to make when the second day of my visit came and I saw it with modern surroundings of railway and steamer--it is a palace still, and more of that than the hotel, and in its appointments more like a gentleman’s residence on a scale exaggerated to positive magnificence--totally unlike any other, and it is no disparagement to any to say it is the most unique in the world--I was about to say of its kind--it has no kind; there is none other in similarity with it, and taken all in all is the finest in the world. “I say this not without thought of what it means--the Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine may have cost more dollars to build, decorate, and furnish, and the name and fame of the Ponce de Leon has gone to the four quarters, and ’tis not intended to compare invidiously. Here at Tampa Bay, the surroundings take one back through the centuries even before De Soto came, and this may have been the very spot where he landed. “The horseshoe arches of the Moorish curve are everywhere, from the grand galleries to the rotunda doors, in the salon entrances and to the grand banquet hall, for it is nothing less, and every minaret is crescent crested, and passing under them leads to some old picture, antique, or cabinet that ornamented some palace hall before the land on which this one stands had been discovered,--and herein is the argument that this is the only one in the world. The others boast of their ‘especially made’ appointments, while these were made before the land was discovered.