an, 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 Mississippi,
running the gantlet between hostile tribes, who fiercely attacked
them. Reaching the Gulf, tho not without the loss of eleven of their
number, they made sail for the Spanish settlement on the River Panuco,
where they arrived safely, and where the inhabitants met them with a
cordial welcome. Three hundred and eleven men thus escaped with life,
leaving behind them the bones of their comrades strewn broadcast
through the wilderness.

[1] From Parkman's "Pioneers of France in the New World." By
permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Hernando de Soto
was born in Badaios, Spain, in 1500, and died near the Mississippi
River, probably on May 21, 1542. Before discovering the Mississippi,
he had been in Panama and Nicaragua; had been active with Pizarro
in the conquest of Peru, from which he returned very rich to
Spain, and in 1587 had been appointed Governor of Cuba and
Florida, with orders to explore and settle the coun