to
the St. John's river, where he was picked up by a friendly French ship
and carried to France, and so got home to England. The journey across
North America took him about eleven months, but one of his comrades, Job
Hortop, had no end of adventures, and was more than twenty years in
getting back to England. Ingram told such blessed yarns about houses of
crystal and silver, and other wonderful things, that many disbelieved
his whole story, but he was subjected to a searching examination before
Sir Francis Walsingham, and as to the main fact of his journey through
the wilderness there seems to be no doubt.[304]

[Footnote 304: Ingram's narrative was first published in
Hakluyt's folio of 1589, pp. 557-562, but in his larger work,
_Principal Navigations_, etc., London, 1600, it is omitted. As
Purchas quaintly says, "As for David Ingram's perambulation to
the north parts, Master Hakluyt in his first edition published
the same; but it seemeth some incredibilities of his reports
caused him to leaue him out in the next impression, the reward
of lying being not to be beleeued in truths." _Purchas his
Pilgrimes_, London, 1625, vol. iv. p. 1179. The examination
before Walsingham had reference to the projected voyage of Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, which was made in 1583. Ingram's relation,
"w^{ch} he reported vnto S^{r} Frauncys Walsingh[~m], Knight,
and diuers others of good judgment and creditt, in August and
Septembar, A^{o} Dni, 1582," is in the British Museum, Sloane
MS. No. 1447, fol. 1-18; it was copied and privately printed in
Plowden Weston's _Documents connected with the History of South
Carolina_, London, 1856. There is a MS. copy in the Sparks
collection in the Harvard University library. See the late Mr.
Charles Deane's note in his edition of Hakluyt's _Discourse
concerning Westerne Planting_, Cambridge, 1877, p. 229
(_Collections of Maine Hist. Soc._, 2d series, vol. ii.); see,
also, Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, iii. 186.]

[Sidenote: The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36.]

Far more important, historically, and in many ways more instructive than
the wanderings of David Ingram, was the journey of Cabeza de Vaca and
his ingenious comrades, in 1528-36, from the Mississippi river to their
friends in Mexico. This remarkable jour