burned, bruised and scalded. Some had their arms broken."

This terrible conflict was of short duration. Though the Spaniards
were taken by surprise, they were not unarmed. Their long keen sabres
gave them a great advantage over their assailants. Though several were
slain, and many more severely wounded, the natives were soon
overpowered. The exasperated Spaniards were not disposed to show much
mercy. In these two conflicts with the Indians, Vitachuco fell, and
thirteen hundred of his ablest warriors.

De Soto had received so terrific a blow, that for half an hour he
remained insensible. The gigantic fist of the savage had awfully
bruised his face, knocking out several of his teeth. It was four days
before he recovered sufficient strength to continue his march and
twenty days elapsed before he could take any solid food. On the fifth
day after this great disaster the Spaniards resumed their journeyings
in a northwest direction, in search of a province of which they had
heard favorable accounts, called Osachile. The first day they advanced
but about twelve miles, encamping upon the banks of a broad and deep
river, which is supposed to have been the Suwanee.

A band of Indians was upon the opposite side of the stream evidently
in hostile array. The Spaniards spent a day and a half in constructing
rafts to float them across. They approached the shore in such
strength, that the Indians took to flight, without assailing them.
Having crossed the river they entered upon a prairie country of
fertile soil, where the industrious Indians had many fields well
filled with corn, beans and pumpkins. But as they journeyed on, the
Indians, in small bands, assailed them at every point from which an
unseen arrow or javelin could be thrown. The Spaniards, on their
march, kept in quite a compact body, numbering seven or eight hundred
men, several hundred of whom were mounted on horses gayly caparisoned,
which animals, be it remembered, the Indians had never before seen.

After proceeding about thirty miles through a pretty well cultivated
country, with scattered farm-houses, they came to quite an important
Indian town called Osachile. It contained about two hundred houses;
but the terrified inhabitants had fled, taking with them their most
valuable effects, and utter solitude reigned in its streets.

The country was generally flat, though occasionally it assumed a
little of the character of what is called the rolling prairie. The
Ind