blesome
for being consulted; as the author endeavours continually to preserve
the chronological series of events throughout the numerous discoveries,
colonizations and conquests of the Spaniards, in all the islands and
continental provinces of Spanish America, by which he is forced into
perpetual and abrupt transitions from subject to subject; instead of
using a double arrangement, geographical as well as chronological, in
which the narrative belonging to each territorial division might have
been distinctly and separately arranged in chronological order. Thus in
regard to _Florida_, which constitutes the subject of our present
chapter, we have had to travel through every one of the _six_ volumes of
Herrera, on purpose to reduce all the scattered notices respecting the
early discovery of that country under one unbroken narrative.

Owing to the utter impossibility of ascertaining the various parts which
were visited by the Spaniards, in these early peregrinations in Florida
as related in this chapter, we have not given any map of the country on
this occasion, which will be supplied in a future division of this work,
when we come to particular and more recent travels in that province of
North America. Indeed the country originally named Florida by the
Spaniards was vastly more extensive than the modern application of that
name, and appears to have included all Louisiana, with Georgia the
Carolinas and Virginia, and the entire countries on the Mississippi and
Ohio rivers. In fact it was meant as a generic term, including all of
the eastern parts of north America, not previously comprised under New
Spain and its dependencies; just as Virginia was applied in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth to all that part of North America claimed by the
English, which was afterwards partitioned into many provinces, from Nova
Scotia to Georgia both inclusive. Besides, a map to serve the purposes
of the present chapter is of almost impossible construction, as all the
appellations of towns and territories, especially in the extensive
peregrinations of Ferdinand de Soto, are merely the fugacious names of
the caciques or sachems who happened at the time to rule over the
various tribes of savages which were visited by Soto in his singularly
erratic expedition. One point only in the whole course of his wanderings
can be ascertained with certainty, the Bay of _Espirita Santo_ on the
western coast of Florida, in about lat. 28 deg. N. and long. 83 deg. W.