adventurers were now near the Atlantic, on ground which had been
trodden by whites before, and they decided to turn inland and explore
the country to the west. After months more of wandering, and the loss of
many men through their battles with the Indians, they found themselves
in the autumn of 1540 at a large village called Mavilla. It stood where
stands to-day the city of Mobile. Here a large force of Indians was
gathered.

The Indian chief or cacique met De Soto with a show of friendship, and
induced him and a few of his men to follow him within the palisades
which surrounded the village. No sooner had they got there than the
chief shouted some words of insult in his own tongue and darted into one
of the houses. A minor chief got into a dispute with a Spanish soldier,
who, in the usual Spanish fashion, carried forward the argument with a
blow from his sword. This served as a signal for hostilities. In an
instant clouds of arrows poured from the houses, and before the
Spaniards could escape nearly the whole of them were slain. Only De
Soto and a few others got out with their lives from the trap into which
they had been beguiled.

Filled with revengeful rage, the Spanish forces now invested and
assailed the town, and a furious conflict began, lasting for nine hours.
In the end the whites, from their superior weapons and organization, won
the victory. But theirs was a costly triumph, for many of them had
fallen and nearly all their property had been destroyed. Mavilla was
burned and hosts of the Indians were killed, but the Spaniards were in a
terrible situation, far from their ships, without medicine or food, and
surrounded by brave and furious enemies.

The soldiers felt that they had had enough adventure of this kind, and
clamored to be led back to their ships. De Soto had been advised that
the ships were then in the Bay of Pensacola, only six days' journey from
Mavilla, but he kept this a secret from his men, for hopes of fame and
wealth still filled his soul. In the end, despite their entreaties, he
led the men to the north, spending the winter in a small village of the
Chickasaw Indians.

When spring opened the adventurers resumed their journey into the
unknown. In his usual forcible fashion De Soto seized on Indians to
carry his baggage, and in this way he brought on a violent battle, in
which the whites met with a serious defeat and were in imminent danger
of annihilation. Not a man of them would have lived