nistered the communion to his brethren, they having
vowed absolute obedience to him, and he the same to the Pope.

DE SOTO DISCOVERS THE MISSISSIPPI[52]

A.D. 1541

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT

From the eastern coast of Florida the Spaniards made early
explorations of the interior until they reached the
Mississippi River. Florida, which was discovered by Juan
Ponce de Leon in 1513, was soon visited by other voyagers,
and in 1528 Panfilo Narvaez made a disastrous march into the
forests. One survivor of his party, Cabaca de Vaca,
afterward crossed the Mississippi, near the site of Memphis,
and made his way to the Spanish settlements in Mexico.

Still the vast Florida region was unexplored, but in 1539
Hernando de Soto, the companion of Pizarro in the conquest
of Peru (1532) landed, with upward of six hundred men, at
what is now called Tampa Bay, on the west coast, in search
of the fabulous wealth believed to await him. "For month
after month and year after year the procession of priests
and cavaliers, cross-bowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian
captives laden with the baggage, wandered on through wild
and boundless wastes, lured hither and thither by the _ignis
fatuus_ of their hopes." Through untold hardships, increased
by fierce battles with the Indians, they traversed wide
regions now embraced in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
reaching the great river probably in the spring of 1541, and
still looking for the "phantom El Dorado."

De Soto directed his footsteps in a westerly direction, carefully
avoiding an approach to the sea, lest his troops should rise in mutiny,
send for the ships, and escape from the ill-starred enterprise. This
certainly indicates, under the circumstances, an unsound, if not a
deranged, mind. For four days the troops toiled along through a dismal
region, uninhabited, and encumbered with tangled forests and almost
impassable swamps.

At length they came to a small village called Chisca, upon the banks of
the most majestic stream they had yet discovered. Sublimely the mighty
flood, a mile and a half in width, rolled by them. The current was rapid
and bore upon its bosom a vast amount of trees, logs, and driftwood,
showing that its sources must be hundreds of leagues far away in the
unknown interior. This was the mighty Mississippi, the "Father of
Waters." The Indians at that point cal