Landing at Tampa bay, Florida, he marched in the direction of Tallahassee, one of his captains, in the mean time, having discovered the Bay of Pensacola. Entering Georgia, he crossed the Ockmulgee, Oconee and Ogechee rivers, and marched up the Savannah to a point in Habersham county. Thence he marched westwardly across Georgia to the head waters of the Coosa, and along the course of the Oostenaula to the sight of the present town of Rome. Still moving down the Coosa he reached the Indian town of Tallassee, and was met by the son of Tuskaloosa, a powerful chief, whose rule extended from the Coosa and Alabama to the Tombigbee. Accepting an invitation from Tuskaloosa, DeSoto met the great chief at a village upon Line creek, in the county of Montgomery. Thence he passed through the counties of Montgomery, Lowndes and Dallas, and crossing the Alabama, moved southward through Wilcox. Tuskaloosa, the chief of the Mobiles, while accompanying DeSoto in this march, secretly dispatched his couriers in every direction to alarm and concentrate his warriors. On October 18, 1540, DeSoto and Tuskaloosa arrived at the capital of the chief, the town of Mobile, situated upon the north bank of the Alabama, at Choctaw bluff, in the county of Clarke. It was here that DeSoto was attacked by Tuskaloosa. The battle lasted nine hours, and eightytwo Spaniards were killed. Forty-five horses were also slain and the camp baggage destroyed by fire. The town of Mobile was burned, and it is said that Tuskaloosa perished in the flames. After this disastrous victory the Spaniards were anxious to march directly for Pensacola, where their ships were awaiting them with stores, but DeSoto, unwilling to surrender the enter

prise, took up his march toward the northwest, passing through the counties of Clarke, Marengo and Greene, and at last reaching the banks of the Black Warrior, near the village of Erie. It was there that he was again attacked by a large force of the Mobiles, supposed to number eight thousand warriors. The result was like that of all the contests between naked savages, armed with bows and arrows, and cavalrymen, armed with guns. The Indians were driven off. Crossing the Tombigbee, DeSoto marched westwardly through Mississippi, and at last reached the great father of waters, of which he was the first European discoverer. His ranks had been thinned by constant engagements with the brave Indians and by disease. The energy of his men was gone, and his own stout heart had failed him. In May, 1542, DeSoto died upon the banks of the Mississippi, and his body was buried in the waters. The remnant of his ill-fated expedition constructed boats and set sail down the river, July 2, 1543. But three hundred and twenty men were then left of the army of one thousand who had sailed from Cuba. As they descended the river they were attacked by fleets of canoes, and lost twelve in killed or drowned, and twenty-five in wounded. In sixteen days they reached the gulf and put to sea, landing at Panuca, on the Mexican coast, September 10, 1543, after four years of wandering through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. Such was the fate of the first attempt to colonize the southwest.

It was not until 1673 that a new attempt was made to found a colony of Europeans upon this gulf coast. It was in that year that two Canadians, Father Marquette, and Joliet, a trader, sought the great father of

waters, of which they had heard vague rumors.

Leaving the lakes, they ascended Fox river, crossed to the Wisconsin, and made their way in canoes to the Mississippi, and southwardly as far as the Arkansas. Joliet returned to Quebec and announced the result of his explorations. LaSalle organized an expedition and followed the Mississippi to the gulf, taking formal possession of the country, April 9, 1682, in the name of King Louis XIV. Upon information by LaSalle, of his discoveries, the French government fitted out an expedition to assist him in planting a colony near the Mouth of the Mississippi. They saw the importance of connecting their Canadian possessions by a chain of colonies and military posts with the Gulf of Mexico. LaSalle's little fleet failed to find the mouth of the great river, but landed the expedition upon the coast of Texas. There a colony was planted, and LaSalle, with a few companies, set out in search of the Mississippi. Doubt, hardships and famine led to his murder, by his own men, on the headwaters of the Trinity. A few of the adventurers made their way to Canada, and the rest perished on the coast of Texas.

Six years later commences the history of the three Canadian brothers, who were the actual founders of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Iberville had won some rank as a naval officer in the service of Louis XIV. He was commissioned in 1868, with a small fleet, to prosecute the search instituted by LaSalle, and was accompanied by his brothers, Bienville and Sanvolle. Discovering the mouth of the Mississippi, he explored the river some distance, penetrated the lakes, and finally established a colony at Biloxi. Sanvolle was appointed governor, and Bienville, lieu

tenant governor of Louisiana. They at once built a fort upon the Mississippi, to hold the river against the claim to the entire gulf coast set up by the Spanish Governor at Pensacola. In 1701, Bienville broke up the establishment at Biloxi, and moved the colony to Mobile Bay.

The growth of these feeble settlements was slow, and for a long time uncertain. The fear of the savages, and of sickness from the more fertile lands of the interior, caused the colonists to hug the coast closely, and to depend for subsistence upon barter with the Indians and upon contributions from the home government. Ten years after Iberville had planted his flag at the mouth of the Mississippi, the condition of the colony of Louisiana was extremely precarious. Of officers and soldiers there were one hundred and twenty-two, and of civilians there were but one hundred and fifty-seven. In 1712, the King of France granted Louisiana to one of his favorites, Crozat, a wealthy speculator, who hoped to build up a splendid name by developing this extensive region. Crozat sent out as governor Lamotte Cadillac, who, in his dispatches to Count Pontchartrain, represented Bienville's colony as being "a mass of rapscallians, from Canada, a cut-throat "set, without subordination, with no respect for religion, "and abandoned in vice with Indian women whom they "prefer to French girls." This picture of the earliest settlements of the gulf coast is no doubt overdrawn, but enough of it is true to convince the reader that these colonies did not possess the enterprise to lay broad and deep the foundation of a vigorous government and a flourishing commerce.

While they remained weak and apathetic, the Eng

lish colony of the Carolinas was extending its arms westward and seeking alliances. That colony was forty-four years old when Crozat assumed charge of the gulf, and had for a long time conducted trade with the great tribe of Muscogees, who extended from the Savannah nearly to the Warrior, and even with the brave Chickasaws, who held for a century later undisputed sway over north Mississippi.

In 1716, Bienville established a military post at Natchez, which became the nucleus for the settlement of west Mississippi. This was the only inportant event of the Crozat regime. In the following year his charter was annulled, and Louisiana was handed over to a West India company, of which the celebrated Law was chief director. This adventure also signally failed, the new colonists imitating their predecessors in hugging the coast and abstaining from agriculture. But war accomplished what peace had failed to do. When hostilities began between Spain and France, in 1719, the French saw the importance of strengthening the population and resources of their colony if they would save the great river from the hands of the Spaniard. The home government offered special inducements to settlers, and succeeded in increasing the population of the colonies very rapidly. Negro slaves were sent over in large numbers, and the cultivation of rice, indigo and tobacco was encouraged.

After the peace between Spain and France and the spread of French traders more frequently through the Indian tribes, the collisions between them and the English traders from the Carolinas became more and more serious. Each tried to inflame the savages against the other. The cordon of French military posts ex