AN BIS2TORICAL SKETCH.


pire in Florida; but he greatly underestimated the power
of the natives, who killed large numbers of his followers,
drove the rest to their ships, and gave Ponce de Leon him-
self a wound of which he died shortly afterward in Cuba.
Three years later (1524), De Ayllon made another slave-
hunting expedition to "Chicora," but this time the natives
beat him at his own game, and having lured his party into
an ambuscade, massacred two hundred of them and com-
pelled the rest to seek safety in flight.
 For several years after these untoward events the atten-
tion of Spanish adventurers was absorbed by the splendid
achievements of Cortes; but in 1528 Pamfilo de Narvaez,
commissioned to conquer and govern the country, set out


from Spain with a great
men-at-arms and landed
as Tampa Bay. Aimin
and to find the stores of
vinced existed somewhe
with three hundred men
hostile, the long-sought
were wholly unobtainable
unspeakable sufferings tl
man, Narvaez himself ha
night in a boat in which
of this expedition was 1
who with three other su
famous "medicine-men'
seven years made their
countrymen in Mexico.


0 V.


of nearly five
;h of what is no,
to explore the
etals which he


expedition
a little nort
g at once
precious m


hundred
w known
interior
was con-


re, he left the ships and set out
; but the natives were relentlessly
gold was, never found, provisions


e, and after weary wanderings and
xe expedition perished almost to a


ving been blown
he was sleeping.
the narrative of
irvivors (all who
 among the In
 way westward


to sea during the
The chief result
Cabega da Vaca,
escaped) became
dians, and after
by land to their


They were the first Europeans


whose eyes ever beheld the Mississippi River, and Mr.
Fairbanks points out that the credit of this great discovery
should be given to Da Vaca rather than to De Soto.
 After the ill-fated expedition of Narvaez, Florida en-
joyed eleven years of quiet, and then came that expedition
of Hernando de Soto which is one of the most famous in