recorded in matter of fact narratives of contemporaries, and
corroborated by minute and daily memoranda of
eye-witnesses."

These are the wild and wondrous adventures which I wish here to
record. I have spared no pains in obtaining the most accurate
information which the records of those days have transmitted to us.
It is as wrong to traduce the dead as the living. If one should be
careful not to write a line which dying he would wish to blot, he
should also endeavor to write of the departed in so candid and
paternal a spirit, while severely just to the truth of history, as to
be safe from reproach. One who is aiding to form public opinion
respecting another, who has left the world, should remember that he
may yet meet the departed in the spirit land. And he may perhaps be
greeted with the words, "Your condemnation was too severe. You did not
make due allowance for the times in which I lived. You have held up my
name to unmerited reproach."

Careful investigation has revealed De Soto to me as by no means so bad
a man as I had supposed him to have been. And I think that the candid
reader will admit that there was much, in his heroic but melancholy
career, which calls for charitable construction and sympathy.

The authorities upon which I have mainly relied for my statements, are
given in the body of the work. There is no country on the globe, whose
early history is so full of interest and instruction as our own. The
writer feels grateful to the press, in general, for the kindly spirit
in which it has spoken of the attempt, in this series, to interest the
popular reader in those remarkable incidents which have led to the
establishment of this majestic republic.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

_Childhood and Youth._

PAGE

Birthplace of Ferdinand De Soto.--Spanish Colony at Darien.--Don Pedro
de Avila, Governor of Darien.--Vasco Nunez.--Famine.--Love in the
Spanish Castle.--Character of Isabella.--Embarrassment of De
Soto.--Isabella's Parting Counsel. 9

CHAPTER II.

_The Spanish Colony._

Character of De Soto.--Cruel Command of Don Pedro.--Incident.--The
Duel.--Uracca.--Consternation at Darien.--Expedition
Organized.--Uracca's Reception of Espinosa and his Troops.--The
Spaniards Retreat.--De Soto Indignant.--Espinosa's Cruelty, and
Deposition from Command.