the Spanish colonies, (1502,) but not by Columbus. He, liberated by the sovereigns, made his fourth and last voyage, (1502-4,) during which he attempted the first colony upon the continent near the River Belen, on the Isthmus of Panama. He had met with far more numerous failures than successes, when he returned to Spain after an almost uninterrupted service of thirteen years. Others, following in his steps, had met with greater rewards than he; but the dreams of the voyagers and of their countrymen were still to be fulfilled.

His spirInfirm and injured as he was and as he had been, it. Columbus never lost heart. Even when just set free from his fetters, at the end of his third voyage, he had written to the Spanish sovereigns and to the Roman pontiff of his unshaken determination to extend the Christian faith

and to recover the sepulchre at Jerusalem. The same objects were commended in his will to his posterity. Indeed, it seems as if he clung to his religious purposes the more earnestly as his worldly projects failed. A few months passed after his final return, and the aged discoverer sank to rest, seventy years old, (May 20, 1506.)

Name

His spirit, so free from irresolution and from of Amer- worldly pride, has descended in part, it is to be hoped, ica. upon the lands to which he led the way. But they bear another name. Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence, but a resident in Spain at the time of Columbus's discovery, subsequently sailed to the west in the service of Spain, and then of Portugal. His descriptions of the continent which he reached, and which he portrayed as possessing all the attributes of a newly-discovered one, induced a German geographer to coin the pame of America about the time that Columbus died, (1507.)

A new

Vespucci was far from conceiving or conveying world. the truth concerning America. Voyages in the

north, to which we shall revert, had already (1497–98) begun to reveal the real character of the new shores. But it was some years before Cuba was found to be merely an island, (1508,) and it was still longer before the Pacific was reached across the isthmus in the centre, (1513,) and through the straits on the south of the continent, (1520.) Slowly and wonderingly it was learned that Columbus had discovered a new world.

Spanish adventures.

CHAPTER III.

SPANISH SETTLEMENTS.

FROM almost every point hitherto gained in America, as well as from the shores of Spain, adventures, some great, some small, some national, some individual, were urged by the Spaniards in all directions. The West Indies, at first the whole, soon became the mere centre of the Spanish possessions.

Ponce de
Leon in
Florida.

The first to reach the territory of the present United States was Ponce de Leon, a companion of Columbus. Long visited by dreams of riches, and latterly, in his advancing age, excited by rumors of a fountain in which youth might be renewed, Ponce set sail from Porto Rico in search of the treasures in the north. On Easter Sunday,—in the Spanish calendar Pascua Florida,

he descried a land to which, in his mingled visions of resurrection and of abundance, he gave the name of Florida or Flower-land, (1512.) Nine years later, with a commission from the Spanish crown, as governor of Florida, Ponce returned to conquer and to colonize his discovery. But driven off by the natives of the coast, the old adventurer left Florida to return no more, (1521.)

Various

A series of expeditions had already begun to expedi- scour the Atlantic coast. The Portuguese Cortions. tereal had led the way, twenty years before, in a cruise towards the north, (1501.) A line of Spanish adventurers, intent upon treasure and conquest, succeeded.

Vasquez de Ayllon twice made descents upon Chicora, the later Carolina, (1520-24.) Gomez sailed farther to the north in quest of a western passage to richer lands, (1525.) Pamphilo de Narvaez tried his fortune in Florida, (1528,) whither also De Soto directed his greater expedition, and pursued his wanderings northward and westward (1539-43) with no greater reward than the discovery of the Mississippi, (1541.) At the same time, Vasquez Coronado was penetrating from Mexico high up into the interior, (1540–42,) while De Cabrillo (1542) was coasting the Pacific shore, and, though dying on the voyage, leaving his pilot, Ferrelo, to ascend as far as Oregon, (1543.) Of these western explorations there were few if any results to satisfy the explorers. Nor were the adventurers in the east better contented; the only ones to gain any thing being those who laded their ships with slaves. The natives had been pressed into bondage almost from the moment when they were first seen in the West Indies.

Luis de

A figure of more Christian aspect appears in Cancello. Luis de Cancello, a Dominican friar. Obtaining an order from Spain that all the slaves from the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico should be returned, he set sail with such as he could collect. Instead of proposing to conquer the natives, he went with the hope of converting them to a religion of peace. But in his first interview with them on the coast, he and two priests accompanying him were slain, (1549.)

Melen

Nearly twenty years elapsed, and our soil was dez. still unoccupied by the Spaniards. At length a veteran commander, Melendez de Avilez, engaged to complete the conquest and to commence the colonization of Florida, with a train of soldiers, priests, and negro slaves. He was of a stern temper, without a vision of romance or a touch of sensibility to turn him from the severe enterprise

which he had assumed. He began with the foundation of St. Augustine, (September 8, 1565,) the oldest town in the United States. Then he routed and slew some French settlers who had lately encamped upon the ground claimed by Spain,* and whose destruction had been one of the great incentives to his expedition. Where they fell most thickly, the conqueror marked out the site of a Christian church. The colony thus resolutely founded brought none of the rich returns that had been looked for; but it was not abandoned.

De Espejio and

Fifteen years afterwards, the expeditions from Mexico were renewed by Ruiz (1580) and De Vizcaino. Espejio, (1581,) the latter of whom, followed by soldiers and Indians, marched northward, until he named the country New Mexico, and founded the settlement of Santa Fe, the second town of the United States in point of age. Twenty years later, (1602,) a squadron under Sebastiano Vizcaino explored the Californian shore, bestowing upon its headlands and its bays many of the names which they still bear. It was Vizcaino's hope to colonize the coast, but he died in the midst of his schemes, (1608.)

Motives.

The motives of the Spanish settler, as we perceive, were partly of a high and partly of a low nature. Devoted to great aims and to generous deeds, he encountered, as Luis de Cancello did in Florida, the perils of an unknown shore, in order to impart to others the faith in which he lived and for which he was willing to die. But in another aspect the Spanish character grows dark and threatening. Men, like the greater part of those who have been mentioned, sought our land for gold or for dominion; sometimes, indeed, with a national object, but more generally for merely selfish ends. Motives of this sort led to scenes of cruelty and of carnage, on which it is, fortunately, unnecessary to dwell.

* See the next chapter.

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