Ponce de Leon, one of the companions of Columbus, and first governor of Porto Rico, a small island sixty miles east of Haiti, sailed on a voyage of discovery among the Bahamas, in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth. It was generally believed in Porto Rico, and the story had great credence in Old Spain, that the waters of a clear spring, bubbling up in the midst of a vast forest, upon an island among the Bahamas, possessed the singular property of restoring age and ugliness to youth and beauty, and perpetuating the lives of those who should bathe in its stream. De Leon was an old man, and, impressed with the truth of this legend, he sought that wonderful fountain. After cruising for a while among the Bahamas, he landed upon the peninsula of Florida, in the harbor of St. Augustine. It was on Palm Sunday when he debarked. That day is called by the Spaniards _Pasqua de Flores_, and, partly from that circumstance, and partly on account of the great profusion of flowers which, at that early season of the year, were blooming on every side, 1520 {xxx}Ponce de Leon gave the country (which he supposed to be a large island like Cuba) the name of Florida. He took formal possession in the name of the Spanish monarch; but, feeling unauthorized to proceed to making conquests without a royal commission, he sailed for Spain to obtain one, after failing in his search after the Fountain of Youth. He had plunged into every stream, however turbid, with the vain expectation of rising from it young and blooming; but, according to Oviedo, instead of returning to vigorous youth, he arrived at a second childhood within a few years. He was afterward appointed Governor of Florida, and was killed while on an expedition against the natives. While Ponce de Leon was in Europe, where he remained several years, some wealthy gentlemen of Haiti fitted out two vessels to explore the Bahamas. The squadron was commanded by Lucas Vasquez d'Aillon or Allyon, a Spanish navigator. Their vessels were driven northward by a hurricane, and came near being stranded upon the low coasts. They finally made land in St. Helen's Sound, near the mouth of the Combahee River, in South Carolina, about half way between Charleston and Savannah. D'Aillon called the river Jordan, and the country Chicora. He carried off several natives, whom he enticed on board his ships, with the intention of selling them as slaves in Haiti. A storm destroyed one of the vessels, and the captured Indians in the other voluntarily starved themselves to death, so the avaricious whites were disappointed in their expectations of gain. D'Aillon afterward returned, with three ships, to conquer the whole of Chicora. The natives feigned friendship, decoyed the whites on shore, and then, with poisoned arrows, massacred nearly the whole of them, in revenge for their former perfidy. But few returned with D'Aillon to Haiti. This was the first discovery of the Carolina coast.