FLORIDA.


the early annals of America.


Fresh from the laurels which


he had acquired un
the plunder of the
mission to conquer


der Pizarro, and
Incas, De Soto
and govern Flor


laden with his share of
easily obtained a com-
ida, and with equal ease


secured a numerous company to aid him in the enterprise.
On the 25th of May, 1539, his fleet entered a bay which he
named Espiritu Santo (now Tampa Bay), and disembarked
one thousand men-at-arms and three hundred and fifty
horses. Fired by stories which the wily natives here told
him of the rich cities and "a great store of christal, gold,
and rubies, and diamonds" that lay to the northward, De
Soto sent his vessels back, and started boldly forth with his
followers upon those painful wanderings which ended only
when half a continent had been traversed, and his worn-out
body had been anchored to its final resting-place beneath
the turbid waters of the Mississippi. The story of those


wanderings is one of the most romantic in history or fiction,
but it has been so often told as to need no newer version,
and limitation of space would prevent anything like justice
-being done to it here. Hither and thither through that
vast territory which borders the Gulf of Mexico, but always
bearing westward, the ever-dwindling array accompanied
its indomitable leader during three long and weary years,
and then, leaving him in his watery grave, the remainder
coasted the Gulf in improvised boats, and finally reached
the Spanish settlements in Mexico-only three hundred
and eleven persons surviving of the thousand who four
,years before had landed at the harbor of Espiritu Santo.
 Religious zeal originated the next attempts to effect a
 lodgment in Florida. Jn 1549 four Franciscan friars landed
 at Espiritu Santo Bay, and tried to penetrate the country ;
'but three'of them were incontinently slain by the natives,
and the other one abandoned in discouragement the attempt
to Christianize unbelievers who backed up their heresy with
the hatchet. Ten years later, in 1559, Don Tristan de