the hills for deer, and brought half a dozen every night for their guests;
others killed hares and rabbits by arranging themselves in a circle and
striking down the game with billets of wood as it ran from one to another
through the woods. All this game was brought to the visitors to be
breathed upon and blessed, and when this had to be done for several
hundred people it became troublesome. The women also brought wild fruit,
and would eat nothing till the guests had seen and touched it. If the
visitors seemed offended, the natives were terrified, and apparently
thought that they should die unless they had the favor of these wise and
good men. Farther on, people did not come out into the paths to gather
round them, as the first had done, but stayed meekly in their houses,
sitting with their faces turned to the wall, and with their property
heaped in the middle of the room. From these people the travellers
received many valuable skins, and other gifts. Wherever there was a
fountain, the natives readily showed it, but apparently knew nothing of
any miraculous gift; yet they themselves were in such fine physical
condition, and seemed so young and so active, that it was as if they had
already bathed in some magic spring. They had wonderful endurance of heat
and cold, and such health that, when their bodies were pierced through and
through by arrows, they would recover rapidly from their wounds. These
things convinced the Spaniards that, even if the Indians would not
disclose the source of all their bodily freshness, it must, at any rate,
lie somewhere in the neighborhood. Yet a little while, no doubt, and their
visitors would reach it.

It was a strange journey for these gray and careworn men as they passed
up the defiles and valleys along the St. John's River, beyond the spot
where now spreads the city of Jacksonville, and even up to the woods and
springs about Magnolia and Green Cove. Yellow jasmines trailed their
festoons above their heads; wild roses grew at their feet; the air was