f a league wide, deep, rapid, and constantly rolling
down trees and drift-wood on its turbid current.

The Spaniards crossed over at a point above the mouth of the Arkansas.
They advanced westward, but found no treasures,--nothing indeed but
hardships, and an Indian enemy, furious, writes one of their officers,
"as mad dogs." They heard of a country towards the north where maize
could not be cultivated because the vast herds of wild cattle devoured
it. They penetrated so far that they entered the range of the roving
prairie tribes; for, one day, as they pushed their way with difficulty
across great plains covered with tall, rank grass, they met a band of
savages who dwelt in lodges of skins sewed together, subsisting on game
alone, and wandering perpetually from place to place. Finding neither
gold nor the South Sea, for both of which they had hoped, they returned
to the banks of the Mississippi.

De Soto, says one of those who accompanied him, was a "stern man, and of
few words." Even in the midst of reverses, his will had been law to
his followers, and he had sustained himself through the depths of
disappointment with the energy of a stubborn pride. But his hour was
come. He fell into deep dejection, followed by an attack of fever, and
soon after died miserably. To preserve his body from the Indians, his
followers sank it at midnight in the river, and the sullen waters of the
Mississippi buried his ambition and his hopes.

The adventurers were now, with few exceptions, disgusted with the
enterprise, and longed only to escape from the scene of their miseries.
After a vain attempt to reach Mexico by land, they again turned back
to the Mississippi, and labored, with all the resources which their
desperate necessity could suggest, to construct vessels in which they
might make their way to some Christian settlement. Their condition was
most forlorn. Few of their horses remained alive; their baggage had been
destroyed at the burning of the Indian town of Mavila, and many of the
soldiers were without armor and without weapons. In place of the gallant
array which, more than three years before, had left the harbor of
Espiritu Santo, a company of sickly and starving men were laboring among
the swampy forests of the Mississippi, some clad in skins, and some in
mats woven from a kind of wild vine.

Seven brigantines were finished and launched; and, trusting their lives
on board these frail vessels, they descended the Mississip