12 The Fountain of Youth

Birds go south in the winter to get warm. Some people in the cold Northern States do the same. The farthest south they can go in the United States is to the corner State, shaped like a dog's paw, called Florida, which means the land of flowers. On the automobiles that go to Florida you can read the tags of every one of the forty-eight States. People go to Florida in the winter to sit in the sunshine, to bathe in the sea in January, to get rid of shivers, sneezes, and handkerchiefs. It is a winter playground, as New England is a summer playground. I know a man who is supposed to live in Baltimore, but he spends his winters in Florida and his summers in New England, so he only lives in Baltimore a few weeks in between.

The first white people who came to America came to Florida, because they had been told there was a fountain of youth there. The fountain of youth was supposed to be a spring which was said to have magic powers. It was believed if old people bathed in it or drank its water they would become young again. But no one has ever found a fountain of youth in Florida or anywhere else, though many old people after they have spent the winter in Florida say they feel young again.

But not everybody in Florida plays all winter long. Many have to work. They have to run the hotels for the people who do come to Florida to play. And a great many others are busy raising “fresh early vegetables” to ship to the cold Northern States, where they would have only canned or frozen vegetables during the winter otherwise. Just as there is a top time, a kite time, a football time, and a baseball time, there used to be certain times or seasons for certain fruits and vegetables; but in most of Florida it is so warm they seldom or never have frost or snow or ice, so they can raise fruits and vegetables the year round. Farmers ship the vegetables they raise out of season to other States, so that people in the North can now have fresh strawberries at Christmas, and asparagus too, and lettuce and radishes every month in the year.

The chief fruits from Florida are oranges and grape-fruit, which will grow only where there is no frost. Grape-fruit grows in bunches like big, yellow grapes—that's why it is called “grape”-fruit. Grape-fruit was at first thought not fit to eat—too bitter and not sweet like an orange; but people have learned to like it. More grape-fruit grows in Florida than in any other place i.t.w.W.

Once there was no Florida at all—the United States had no “paw” sticking out into the sea. It grew a paw and this is the way it grew it. The sea was warm and shallow and in the sea there lived millions, billions, trillions of little animals, each like a tiny drop of jelly with a tiny stony speck in the center, or a tiny stony shell on the outside, and millions and billions and trillions of these little sea animals died. As they died, millions, billions, trillions of these stony specks and shells fell to the bottom of the sea like a snowfall of chalk dust, and this piled up until the water was filled up. This stony, bony, chalky pile is Florida. On this kind of ground of which Florida is made plants grow very well indeed. In fact, this soft, chalky ground is so good for growing things that people dig it up and send it to other States to be put on the ground to make vegetables grow better.

Long, long years ago, before there were any people on the World, our whole country was at the bottom of the sea, and a great deal of our country was made under the sea just as Florida was made, from bones and shells of sea animals. This kind of bone and shell rock—for it is rock—is called limestone, because if you burn it it makes lime. Limestone is really bone-stone; stone made of the bones of sea animals. Then the earth wrinkled and crinkled and rose out of the water and formed our country. We know it was once under the sea because in many places now, high above the sea, even on mountain tops, we find this limestone with shells and bones of fish and other sea animals still showing in it. Marble, the most beautiful of all stone, is a kind of limestone, for it also is made of bone. People build houses and palaces of it and make statues and tombstones of marble or limestone.

Many of the people who go to Florida stop on their trip to see sights, and one of the greatest sights is in Virginia and Kentucky where the rock under the ground is all limestone. The “sights” are huge caves, and in Kentucky they are so large they are called Mammoth Caves. These caves have not been dug out by men but by water. Water, you know, melts sugar; but perhaps you didn't know that water melts rock too—not ordinary rock, but it melts limestone, and these caves are in limestone rock. The Mammoth Cave is like a huge cellar underground—a cave so large and high that you could put a whole city with its tall buildings in it. You could easily get lost and wander for miles. Men have been lost and unable to find their way out again and died and their skeletons have been found long years after.

Through the roof of the cave water drips drop by drop, and each drop leaves a bit of limestone, until in the course of time the dripping water makes icicles of rock that hang down from the roof of the cave. Drops of water from each icicle fall on to the floor of the cave, and the limestone gradually piles up and up like a stone post until at last the icicle above meets the post beneath. The trickling water also forms pools in the bottom of the cave, and in these pools of water live fish that are different from the fish in the water above ground. As it is pitch dark in the caves, these fish have no use for their eyes, so after long, long years they at last grew none. They are blind. Instead of seeing, they feel with the part of their heads where their eyes were.