tery was rare; polygamy unknown. Maize, beans, pumpkins, and, it would seem, a species of native cotton, were cultivated; the mezquite-tree furnished bread. The dress was of skins or cotton mantles. They possessed nothing which could gratify avarice; the promised turquoises were valueless blue stones.

Unwilling to give up the hope of discovering an opulent country, on the twenty-third of April, 1541, Coronado, with the false Indian as the pilot of his detachment, began a march to the north-east. Crossing the track of Cabeza de Vaca, in the valley of the Canadian river, they came in nine days upon plains which seemed to have no end, and where countless prairie dogs peered on them from their burrows. Many pools of water were found impregnated with salt, and bitter to the taste. The wanderings of the general, extending over three hundred leagues, brought him among the Querechos, hunters of the bison, which gave them food and clothing, strings to their bows, and coverings to their lodges. They had dogs to carry their tents when they moved; they knew of no wealth but the products of the chase, and they migrated with the wild herds. The Spaniards came once upon a prairie that was broken neither by rocks nor hills, nor trees nor shrubs, nor anything which could arrest the eye as it followed the sea of grass to the horizon. In the hollow ravines there were trees, which could be seen only by approaching the steep bank; the path for descending to the water was marked by the tracks of the bison. Here some of the Teyas nation from the valley of the Rio Grande del Norte were found hunting. The governor, sending back the most of his men, with a chosen band journeyed on for forty-two days longer, having no food but the meat of buffaloes, and no fuel but their dung. At last he reached the province, which, apparently from some confusion of names, he was led to call Quivira, and which lay in forty degrees north latitude, unless he may have erred one or two degrees in his observations. It was well watered by brooks and rivers, which flowed to what the Spaniards then called the Espiritu Santo; the soil was the best strong, black mould, and bore plums like those of Spain, nuts, grapes, and excellent mulberries. The inhabitants were savages, having no culture but of maize; no metal but copper; no lodges but

of straw or of bison skins; no clothing but buffalo robes. Here, on the bank of a great tributary of the Mississippi, a cross was raised with this inscription: "Thus far came the general, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado."

After a still further search for rich kingdoms, and after the Rio Grande del Norte had been explored by parties from the army for twenty leagues above its tributary, the Jemez, and for an uncertain distance below El Paso, the general, returning to Tiguex, on the twentieth of October, 1541, reported to Charles V. that, poor as were the villages on the great river of the North, nothing better had been found, and that the region was not fit to be colonized. Persuaded that no discoveries could be made of lands rich in gold, or thickly enough settled to be worth dividing as estates, Coronado, in 1542, with the hearty concurrence of his officers, returned to New Spain. His failure to find a Northern Peru threw him out of favor; yet what could have more deserved applause than the courage and skill of the men who thoroughly examined and accurately portrayed the country north of Sonora, from what is now Kansas on the one side to the chasm of the Colorado on the other?

In the year of the return of Coronado, a Spanish expedition sailed from Acapulco under the command of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese. In January, 1543, Cabrillo died in the harbor of San Diego; but his pilot, Bartolome Ferrelo, continued the exploration, and traced the coast of the American continent on the Pacific to within two and a half degrees of the mouth of Columbia river.

CHAPTER III.

THE SPANIARDS IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

THE expedition from Mexico had not been begun, when, in 1537, Cabeza de Vaca, landing in Spain, addressed to the imperial Catholic king a narrative of his adventures; and the tales of "the Columbus of the continent" quickened the belief that the country between the river Palmas and the Atlantic was the richest in the world.

The assertion was received even by those who had seen Mexico and Peru. To no one was this faith more disastrous than to Ferdinand de Soto, of Xeres. He had been the favorite companion of Pizarro, and at the storming of Cusco had surpassed his companions in arms. He assisted in arresting the unhappy Atahualpa, and shared in the immense ransom with which the credulous Inca purchased the promise of freedom. Perceiving the angry jealousies of the conquerors of Peru, Soto had seasonably withdrawn, to display his opulence in Spain, and to solicit advancement. His reception was triumphant; success of all kinds awaited him. The daughter of the distinguished nobleman under whom he had first served as a poor adventurer became his wife; and the special favor of Charles V. invited him to prefer a large request. It had been believed that the recesses of the continent at the north concealed cities as magnificent and temples as richly endowed as any which had yet been plundered within the tropics. Soto desired to rival Cortes in glory, and surpass Pizarro in wealth. Blinded by avarice and the love of power, he repaired to Valladolid, and demanded permission to conquer Florida at his own cost; and Charles V. readily conceded to so renowned a commander the government of Cuba, with absolute power over

the immense territory to which the name of Florida was still vaguely applied.

No sooner was the design of the new armament published in Spain than the wildest hopes were indulged. How brilliant must be the prospect, since the conqueror of Peru was willing to hazard his fortune and the greatness of his name! Adventurers assembled as volunteers, many of them people of noble birth and good estates. Houses and vineyards, lands for tillage, and rows of olive-trees in the Ajarrafe of Seville, were sold, as in the times of the crusades, to obtain the means of military equipments. The port of San Lucar of Barrameda was crowded with those who hastened to solicit permission to share in the undertaking. Even soldiers of Portugal desired to be enrolled for the service. A muster was held the Portuguese glittered in burnished armor; and the Castilians were "very gallant with silk upon silk." From the numerous aspirants, Soto selected for his companions six hundred men in the bloom of life, the flower of the peninsula.

The fleet sailed as gayly as if on a holiday excursion. From Cuba the precaution had been taken to send vessels to Florida to explore a harbor; and two Indians, brought captives to Havana, invented such falsehoods as they perceived would be acceptable. They conversed by signs; and the signs were interpreted as affirming that Florida abounded in gold.

The news spread great contentment; Soto and his troops restlessly longed for the hour of their departure to the conquest of "the richest country which had yet been discovered." The infection spread in Cuba; and Vasco Porcallo, an aged and a wealthy man, lavished his fortune in magnificent preparations.

Soto had been welcomed in Cuba by long and brilliant festivals and rejoicings. In May, 1539, all preparations were completed; leaving his wife to govern the island, he and his company, full of unbounded expectations, embarked for Florida; and in about a fortnight his fleet anchored in the bay of Spiritu Santo. The soldiers went on shore; the horses, between two and three hundred in number, were disembarked. Soto would listen to no augury but of success; and, like Cor

tes, he refused to retain his ships, lest they should tempt to a retreat. Most of them were sent to Havana. Porcallo grew alarmed. It had been a principal object with him to obtain slaves for his estates and mines in Cuba; despairing of success, he sailed for the island after the first skirmish. Soto was indignant at the desertion, but concealed his anger.

And now began the nomadic march of horsemen and infantry, completely armed; a force exceeding in numbers and equipments the famous partisans who triumphed over the empires of Mexico and Peru. Everything was provided that experience in former invasions could suggest: chains for captives, and the instruments of a forge; weapons of all kinds then in use, and blood-hounds as auxiliaries against the natives; ample stores of food, and, as a last resort, a drove of hogs, which would soon swarm in the favoring climate where the forests and maize furnished them abundant sustenance. It was a roving company of gallant freebooters in quest of a fortune; a romantic stroll of men whom avarice rendered ferocious, through unexplored regions, over unknown paths, wherever rumor might point to the residence of some chieftain with more than Peruvian wealth, or the ill-interpreted signs of the ignorant natives might seem to promise gold. Often, at the resting-places, groups of listless adventurers clustered together to enjoy the excitement of desperate gaming. Religious zeal was also united with avarice: twelve priests, besides other ecclesiastics, accompanied the expedition. Ornaments for the service of mass were provided; every festival was to be kept, every religious practice to be observed. As the troop marched through the wilderness, the solemn processions, which the church enjoined, were scrupulously instituted. Florida was to become Catholic during scenes of robbery and carnage.

The movements of the first season, from June to the end of October, brought the company from the bay of Spiritu Santo to the home of the Appalachians, east of the Flint river, and not far from the head of the bay of Appalachee. The names of the intermediate places cannot be identified. The march was tedious and full of dangers. The Indians were always hostile; the two captives of the former expedition