10

THE SPANIARDS TAKE FLORIDA.

sailed up the river Sorel, and explored the lake which now bears his name. To his enterprise and courage the French were indebted for their colonies in this country.

CHAPTER III.

THE SPANIARDS TAKE POSSESSION OF FLORIDA.

As the Spaniards had been the first nation to attempt the discovery of the New World, so they were the most enterprising and adventurous in their endeavours to conquer and colonize its extensive and fertile countries. The history of their warlike achievements in Mexico and Peru present examples of the most heroic bravery and perseverance, darkened by many shadows of avarice and injustice. The whole nation seems to have been fired with the spirit of foreign adventure, and the New World was the grand theatre for its display.

Previous to the expeditions of Cortes and Pizarro, Florida had been discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon. This adventurer had accompanied Columbus in his second voyage; and afterwards had been successively appointed governor of the eastern province of Hispaniola, and of Porto Rico. When he had been displaced from the government of the latter island, in consequence of the paramount claims of Columbus's family, he fitted out an expedition with the romantic design of searching for a country in which, according to information received from the Caribs, there was a fountain whose waters imparted to those who bathed in them the gift of perpetual youth. Having sailed about among the Bahamas and touched at several of them, in pursuit of this fairy land, he at length (March 27, 1512,) came in sight of the continent. As this discovery was made on Easter Sunday, which the Spaniards call Pascua Florida, the land was called Florida. Its verdant forests and magnificent flowering aloes may have afforded another reason for assigning it this name.

It was not till the 8th of April that he was able to effect a landing in the latitude of thirty degrees and eight minutes, a little to the north of St. Augustine. He claimed the territory

NARVAEZ IN FLORIDA.

11

for Spain, remained some weeks exploring the coast, and then returned to Porto Rico, leaving a part of his company in the newly discovered country.

The king of Spain rewarded him with the government of Florida, on condition that he should conquer and colonise it. This he attempted in 1521, but was resisted with great fury by the Indians, who killed many of his followers, drove the survivors to their ships, and compelled him to relinquish the enterprise. Ponce de Leon himself was wounded with an arrow, and died shortly after his return to Cuba.

In 1510, the southern coast of the United States was partially explored by Grijalva; and in 1520, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon fitted out two slave ships, from St. Domingo, visited the coast of South Carolina, then called Chicora, discovered the Combahee river, to which the name of the Jordan was given; and finally, having decoyed a large number of the Indians on board his ships, set sail with them for St. Domingo, leaving behind the most determined purpose of revenge among the injured natives.

His sovereign rewarded this atrocious enterprise by appointing Ayllon to the conquest of Chicora. In attempting this, he lost one of his ships and a great number of his men, who were killed by the natives in revenge for former wrongs. He was finally compelled to relinquish his undertaking.

In 1526, Pamphilo de Narvaez, the same officer who had been sent by Velasquez to supersede Cortes in Mexico, attempted the conquest of Florida. This expedition was signally disastrous. The Spaniards landed near Appalachee bay, marched into the interior, and spent six months, in various hardships and conflicts with the Indians, and at last found their way back to the sea shore, somewhere near the bay of Pensacola. Here they fitted out boats, and embarking were shipwrecked near the mouth of the Mississippi. Only four or five out of three hundred reached Mexico to tell the story of their disasters. These men gave such flattering accounts of the riches of the country, that their sufferings by no means deterred others from attempting its subjugation.

The next Spanish adventurer on the shores of the United States was Ferdinand de Soto, a highly distinguished officer, who had shared the glory and wealth obtained by Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. Returning to Spain after the most brilliant success in that country, he demanded of Charles V. to conquer Florida at his own cost; and received from that

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FERDINAND DE SOTO.

monarch a commission for that purpose, together with the government of Cuba. (1537.)

Multitudes of adventurers flocked to his standard. Expectation had been raised to the greatest height by the exaggerated accounts of the wealth of Florida; and men of all classes sold their possessions in Spain to fit themselves out for a conquest which promised to outshine those of Mexico and Peru, in the brilliancy of its results.

Soto selected six hundred of the choicest men for his companions, and sailed to Cuba. (1538.) Here he was joined by other adventurers, and having completed his preparations, he embarked for Florida in May, 1539. Having arrived in the bay of Spiritu Santo, he sent back most of his ships to Havanna, and commenced his march into the interior -a march which has no parallel in the history of adventure. Fired by the example of their countrymen in the more southern regions, the Spaniards advanced as if to certain conquest and wealth. They were abundantly supplied with provisions and munitions of war, horses for the cavalry, and blood-hounds for hunting the natives; and their numbers exceeded those of the armies which had conquered Mexico and Peru. But they were destined for a far different fate. Their grand error, the pursuit of gold, was the source of endless disasters and sufferings.

The Indians, who were determined in their hostility to the invaders, had recourse to stratagem, as well as force, in order to get rid of them. They continually deceived the Spaniards by representing to them that, by continuing their march into the interior, they would at last arrive at a region abounding with gold-and deluded, again and again, by this plausible story, Soto passed onward from tribe to tribe, and from river to river, until his splendid and well appointed army had melted away to a mere handful of men, worn out with sufferings, and destitute of the means of subsistence or defence.

Setting out from the bay of Spiritu Santo in June 1539, they spent the time in wandering through forests and morasses, until October, when they found themselves in the neighbourhood of Appalachee bay. The men were dispirited, and desirous to return home; but Soto would not hear of such a measure; he sent to Cuba for supplies for the next year's expedition.

In March, 1540, deluded by the promise of an Indian guide to conduct him to a country where gold was abundant, Soto

set forth again and marched towards the north-east, till they reached the Ogechee, and then through the country of the Cherokees, now a part of the gold region; but without discovering any of the precious metal. From Georgia the Spaniards passed into Alabama, and in October fought a severe battle with the Indians, at a town which was then called Mavilla or Mobile, on the Alabama above the junction of the Tombecbee. In this engagement 2,500 Indians are said to have fallen. The town was burned. The Spaniards had 18 killed and 150 wounded, and lost a part of their horses and all their baggage, which was burned in the town.

Having received supplies from Cuba, Soto now marched towards the north and west. In December, 1540, he had reached the upper part of the Mississippi, where he wintered in a deserted town of the Chickasaws. In the spring he demanded of them 200 men, to carry the baggage of the soldiers. The Indians, instead of complying with this unwarrantable requisition, set fire to the town in which the Spaniards were encamped, in the night, and attacked them with great fury. The loss of men in this encounter was trifling, but the Spaniards suffered severely from the destruction of their clothing, their arms, and a part of their horses. The Indians knew not how to follow up their first advantage, and the invaders were soon in a condition to continue their progress to the west.

In April, 1541, Soto discovered the Mississippi, being the first European who visited that river. In June he had crossed it, and reached Missouri; and during the summer he is supposed to have penetrated as far as the highlands of the White river, 200 miles from the Mississippi. Thence he turned towards the south, and passed through Arkansas into Louisiana. His wanderings and contests with the Indians continued until May 21st, 1542, when, worn out with sickness and fatigue, the unfortunate Soto died, on the banks of the great river which he had discovered. To conceal his death from the Indians, his followers sunk the body in the middle of the

stream.

'The discoverer of the Mississippi,' says Bancroft, from whose eloquent history we have condensed this brief account of his expedition- the discoverer of the Mississippi slept beneath its waters. He had crossed a large part of the continent in search of gold, and found nothing so remarkable as his burial place.'

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THE FRENCH IN CAROLINA.

He had been the soul of the enterprise; and when he had perished, the remnant of his followers were only anxious for a safe passage to their countrymen. Under the conduct of Moscoso, their new leader, they attempted to reach Mexico, and marched 300 miles westward from the Mississippi. But the Red river was swollen so as to present an impassable barrier to their further progress, and they were compelled to return and prepare boats for passing down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico-an undertaking of great difficulty and danger, which was not accomplished until July 18th, 1543. Fifty days afterwards the remnant of Soto's splendid company of adventurers, now reduced to 311 in number, arrived at the province of Panuco in Mexico.

Thus far the Spaniards, although they claimed the whole coast of the United States under the name of Florida, had not effected a single settlement on the soil. For some years after Soto's failure the design seems to have been abandoned; until an attempt of the French to establish a colony in Florida awakened the jealousy of the Spaniards; and brought them forward once more, to revive and make good their claim to the land which had cost them so much blood and treasure.

Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France, conceived the design of establishing a colony of French Protestants in America; which should afford a refuge to those who were persecuted for their religious opinions, during the civil wars with which his country was disturbed in the reign of Charles IX. He obtained a commission for this purpose from the king; and intrusted the expedition to John Ribault, who sailed with a squadron in February, 1562.

Having arrived on the coast of Florida in the latitude of St. Augustine, Ribault explored the coast, discovered the river St. Johns, which he called the river of May, and visited Port Royal entrance near Beaufort, and having left a colony of 26 persons at a fort which he named Carolina in honour of Charles IX., he returned to France. The civil wars in that kingdom being revived, no reinforcements were sent out to the colony, and it was speedily abandoned.

On the return of peace (1564,) Coligny was enabled to send out a new expedition under Laudonniere, an able and intelligent commander, who arrived on the coast of Florida in June, began a settlement on the river May, and erected a new Fort Carolina, many leagues to the south of its predecessor. Here they had to encounter the usual hardships and privations of