trinkets, pointed to the north. The Spaniards caught the hint, and plunged into a country of swamps and rivers. They found the expected city of gold to be an Appalachee village of forty cabins. The adventurers at last got back to the harbor of St. Marks, and put to sea in some brigantines which they built. They were driven ashore, and all perished except four men, who under Lieutenant de Vaca reached the village of San Miguel on the Pacific coast, and were taken thence to the city of Mexico.

A new expedition was planned in 1537, and put under direction of the cavalier Ferdinand de Soto. The King of Spain appointed him governor of Cuba and Florida, with the usual privilege of exploration and conquest. Six hundred high-born young Spaniards flocked to his standard. They were clad in the manner of knights, with all the trappings of chivalry. The expedition was fitted with all things requisite for an adventure into the New World under the inspiration of conquest and romance. The squadron, including ten vessels, sailed from San Lucar to Havana, where De Soto left his wife as governess, and then proceeded to Tampa Bay. Some of the adventurers were frightened when they saw the unbroken forests of the New World, and turned back; but in June of 1539 the leader, with the greater number of his followers, set out into the interior. For three months they marched about, swimming rivers, wading morasses and fighting Indians. October found them on Flint River, where they established themselves for the winter. In the following spring they set out in a northeasterly direction to find a great city, of which a woman was empress. The Spaniards reached the Ogechee in April of 1540. During that month they struggled on into South Carolina; then turned westward into the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee; thence into Northern Georgia; and thence to Lower Alabama.

At Mauville, or Mobile, they attacked the Indian town, and killed or burned to death 2,500 Indians. Arriving at Pensacola, they found the supply ships from Cuba; but not satisfied with the results thus far, they turned to the north into the country of the Chickasaws. They wandered far until February 15, 1541, when the Indians set on fire the town in which they were encamped, and well-nigh destroyed the invaders.

Native guides brought De Soto to the Mississippi. The point of discovery was just below the Chickasaw Bluffs. Barges were built, and in May the Spaniards crossed into Arkansas. They lived on the wild abundance of the land of the Dakotas. They marched on to the St. Francis, thence to the Hot Springs, passing the winter of 1541-2 on the Wachita. They cruelly abused and destroyed the Indians who fell into their power, but became more and more desperate with their progress. They followed the Wachita to the Red River, and that stream to the Mississippi. De Soto was broken down. His dreams of conquest and empire had passed away. A fever seized him, and he died on the banks of the great river, and in the turbid waters his coffin was sunk by night.

After the death of De Soto his successors wandered about until the summer of 1543, when they reached the Gulf of Mexico, and finally found shelter at the Spanish settlement at the mouth of the River of Palms.

The next important enterprise of the Spaniards was intrusted to Pedro Melendez, a criminal and soldier of fortune. In the year 1565 he was commissioned by Philip II. to colonize Florida. He was to receive a large gift of land and a liberal salary. He gathered together a colony of 2,500 persons, and in July of 1565 sailed from Spain. On the 28th of August he reached the coast of Florida, near the mouth of the St. John's. On this river, thirty-five miles in

the interior, a colony of thirty Huguenots had been established; and the extermination of this settlement was a part of the instructions of Melendez. He reached Florida on St. Augustine's day and named the harbor and river in honor of that saint. Philip of Spain was proclaimed monarch of North America, and on the 8th of September the foundations were laid of St. Augustine, the oldest town built by white men within the limits of the United States.

Melendez next attacked and destroyed the Huguenot settlement on the St. John's. The French were butchered without mercy. The atrocity was indescribable. More than 700 of the colonists were massacred. Only a small number of servants and mechanics were permitted to live. Bloody were the auspices under which the first permanent European settlement was made in our country.

The present chapter may be properly concluded with a paragraph on the discoveries and adventures of the Portuguese. John II., King of Portugal at the time of the first Columbian voyage, paid little attention to the New World. In 1495 he was succeeded by his son Manuel, who would gladly have taken part in the achievements of the Spaniards and the English; but he was too late on the sea to gain for his countrymen a permanent footing on the North American coast. Not until the summer of 1501 was Gaspar Cortereal commissioned to sail on a voyage of discovery. To him a fleet was given, and he reached America in the summer of that year. He explored the American coast from Maine northward for about 700 miles. At that point he met the icebergs, and could go no farther. He succeeded in kidnaping fifty Indians, whom on his return to Portugal he sold as slaves. Another voyage was undertaken, with the distinct purpose of capturing natives for the slave market of Europe; but a year went by, and no tidings came from the

expedition. Then the brother of Cortereal sailed in search of him; but neither the one nor the other was heard of afterward forever. The fate of the first Portuguese slave ships that came to our shores has remained a mystery of the

sea.

CHAPTER III.

MANY writers have dwelt upon the state of enthusiasm and fervor which prevailed at the European courts when the news was borne abroad that Columbus had returned from the western shores of the Atlantic. True, there was great confusion in the reports. The navigator himself supposed that he had found the Indies-the land of Cathay which Marco Polo and other story-telling travelers had described as lying on the easternmost parts of Asia. One thing was certain; he had found land. Many islands had been circumnavigated. Others were so extensive as to seem to be continents. Clearly it was but the beginning of discovery. All imaginations were inflamed with the intelligence. Incredulity was brushed aside, and a vast transatlantic world rose upon the imagination like a mirage beyond the desert.

All the maritime nations immediately prepared to discover and to occupy the new lands in the West. The seafaring communities were quickest in sending forth their captains on the lines of discovery and adventure. England held as she has ever done-a peculiarly favorable situation for the work of navigation and conquest over sea. Her mariners were bold and skillful. They had in them the courage of the Vikings, the hardihood of the Saxons and the imaginations of the Normans. When the news of Columbus' discoveries were spread abroad in the harbors of Merry England her captains, not a few, were ready to take up the work and go forth in search of the New World,