speare had been reading Magellan's voyage just before he wrote his play.

The natives could not understand how the white men could be so small and sail such large boats. They had an original idea about the vessels. They believed the boats were the babies of the large ship, and called the latter the "mother-canoes" and her boats the little ones.

When Magellan reached the Straits which now bear his name, one of his vessels was lost, and another had deserted. This left him with only three ships. Slowly and cautiously feeling their way at every step, they entered the crooked, winding straits. It was cold and stormy. Above their heads, taller many times than the masts, rose the icy peaks of Terra del Fuego, glittering and pitiless. The crew began to mutiny, but Magellan resolutely put them down. "Do I cry because I am cold and hungry?" he asked the murmurers. "Let a man dare to speak of his suffering and he dies at once."

When at length they came out upon the sea that Balboa had seen eight years before from Darien, they all forgot their miseries. Though their mouths were so swollen from scurvy that they could not chew their food, they cried aloud for joy. This calm, placid ocean, so free from storms, Magellan called "Pacific," and it bears the name to this day.

The ships sailed southward toward warmer latitudes, but their sufferings had only just began. Provisions failed. They ate their shoe leather and their clothing. They chewed sawdust and gnawed pieces of wood. They bargained for rats, which some lucky ones caught in the hold, and sold as high as a ducat apiece. At length they reached some of the South Sea islands and got relief.

But Magellan, trying to make Christians of the people on the Philippine Islands, by fighting those whom he could not convert, was killed. His ships were left without their rash but brave commander. One after the other was lost, till only one ship remained. This was commanded by Sebastian del Cano.

The lonely vessel went on, sailing past Borneo, the Cape of Good Hope, and up the African coast, till it reached Spain. In September, 1522, just three years from their first setting out, they returned. Of their two hundred and thirty-four men, they brought back eighteen. So ended THE FIRST VOYAGE AROUND THE GLOBE, one of the most remarkable in all the history of navigation. From this time forth the practicability of reaching Asia by sailing west was proved beyond a doubt.

CHAPTER VI.

DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

Cortez and Pizarro. - Story of Narvaez. - Cabeça de Vaca crosses the Continent. — Ferdinand de Soto.- Grand Army of De Soto. Story of John Ortiz. - The Great Mississippi. Burial of De Soto. - Return of his Army.

AFTER Balboa had established his colony on the Isthmus of Darien all the coasts thereabout were explored, and other settlements made on the Gulf of Mexico. Hernando Cortez, a brave but cruel Spaniard, went to Mexico, and found great quantities of gold and silver there. He oppressed the helpless natives, and wrested from them their treasures, treating them in the most unjust and cruel manner. Francis Pizarro followed the example of Cortez, in Peru. They both acquired great wealth, and the fame of their success went all over Spain, and fired other Spanish adventurers with the desire of making similar conquests.

All these Spanish conquerors were devout Roman Catholics, and had one passion almost as strong as their love for gold, this was their desire to convert the natives to Christianity. While they plundered and pillaged them, took their goods, burnt their cities, destroyed their crops, and left these poor people to starve, they were all the time setting up the cross with the image of the crucified Jesus upon it and forcing them to adore it. What sort of a religion the poor natives thought it was which seemed to justify so much bloodshed and plunder, I do not know; but I fancy they did not make very sincere Christians, who were driven to religion by the point of the sword.

After the news of the success of Cortez and the great wealth he was gaining in Mexico, the adventurers remembered the country of Florida which Ponce de Leon had visited. It was reported that Florida was quite as rich in gold as Mexico; and in 1527 a navigator, named Pamphilo de Narvaez, got a grant of Florida from Charles V. of Spain, and sailed thither.

He landed with his men on the eastern coast of the long peninsula of Florida. When they went on shore they found the Indians disposed to be quite friendly. They told the Spaniards stories of gold which could be found in the province of Apalache, which was to the north of them. Narvaez went on to Apalache. But the natives began to dislike and distrust the Spaniards more and more as

they marched into the heart of their country, and finally became bold enough to oppose their ill-treatment of them. They attacked Narvaez, killed many of his men, and refused to furnish him with grain or any kind of food. Then the Spaniards suffered dreadfully. They killed their horses and ate them, living all the time in constant fear lest the Indians should come upon them in their weakened state, and cutting them off from the sea leave them to perish of hunger. In their desperation they resolved to build ships where they were, on the coast of the province of Apalache, which was in the northern part of Florida, and from thence put to sea.

But they had nothing of which to build ships, neither timber, nor iron, nor cloth for sails, nor rope for rigging. Lacking all these things, they yet contrived to construct five brigantines, which seem to have been a kind of large boat with sails, capable of holding forty or fifty men. How they accomplished this is wonderful to

relate.

From the iron in their armor, their horses' trappings, and their stirrups, they forged saws, hammers, axes, and other needed tools. They actually made their spurs into nails, and their swords into saws and knives. They cut down trees, and made timber for their boats. They wove ropes from the hair of the horses which they had killed for food. They sewed all their shirts and other linen up into sails, and after such terrible labors as it amazes one to think of, their five brigantines were completed and they went on board.

In a short time a great storm came up, and the boat in which Narvaez sailed was lost and never heard of again.

One of these five brigantines was commanded by a daring fellow named Cabeça de Vaca, and he alone succeeded in reaching the main-land with his crew. On their way they passed the mouth of a great river which poured into the sea with such force that it carried earth and roots and branches of trees with it. ably the first time the Mississippi River was ever

man.

This was probseen by a white

After landing somewhere on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Cabeça de Vaca and his companions wandered into the wilderness which lay all about them. They were supposed to be utterly lost by all who remembered them, when, eight years after, Cabeça and three companions turned up on the Pacific coast of Mexico in a Spanish settlement there called Culiacan. They had traveled across the continent, making friends with the Indians, and living among

them as one of the tribe; till at last, long bearded and long haired, looking more like savages than white men, they found their way to this town on the Pacific.

When Pizarro was in Peru, he had with him, in his army, a captain named Ferdinand de Soto, who had grown very rich from spoils taken from the Peruvians. About the year 1535 he was on a visit to Spain, and met there Cabeça de Vaca, who had just come back from America after his long sojourn in the wilderness. De Vaca told De Soto many stories of this strange country, and its wonders, and especially of the reports he had heard, of gold that could be found there. De Soto was very ambitious to earn the glories of conquest in some rich land, as Cortez and Pizarro had done in Mexico and Peru. After talking with De Vaca he resolved to fit out ships and go to conquer Florida. He was rich, so that he easily bought the governorship of Florida of the King of Spain, and sailed off in the track of Narvaez and De Leon.

Ferdinand de Soto.

His ships anchored in the Bay of Espirito Santo (Bay of the Holy Spirit) on the 28th of May, 1539. He had a large fleet, nine vessels in all, and his soldiers numbered seven hundred men, most of them mounted on horses. De Soto landed with his men, dressed in full armor, which soldiers all wore in expeditions of war. They took on shore a great many horses and swine. These were the first horses and pigs brought to North America. There were no such animals on this continent, and De Soto first introduced them. Besides all the men and animals, they carried on shore provisions and supplies of all kinds. They had even chains with which to chain the natives whom they should take prisoners, so you can see they did not come with the intention of inducing the Indians to be their friends. After landing, De Soto sent back part of the ships to Cuba to return with more provisions, and left the rest in the bay to guard it in case they wished to come back to the ships.

Then they began their march inland. The men in their armor, spurred and booted, the horses with heavy glittering trappings, the loads of supplies, droves of animals, all to push their way through the thick everglades, the trackless swamps, which abound in Florida even to this day. It was a weary journey before they came in sight of land which looked as if it were habitable. When

they emerged from the swamps and forests upon a plain planted with grain, they saw a party of some ten or twelve Indians running toward them. They were going to fire upon and kill them, when to their surprise one of these natives ran before the others and throwing up his arms to stop the attack, called out in good Spanish,—

"Good sirs, I am a Christian. Slay me not, nor these Indians, who have saved my life."

At this address all the troop of De Soto stopped in much amazement to hear their own language in these wilds. Being questioned, the stranger told them this story :

He said that his name was John Ortiz, and he was a true-born Spaniard. He had been one of the sailors of Pamphilo de Narvaez, when he came to these coasts twelve years before to explore Florida. He was one of the few who had escaped death in this expedition. When after long hardships he had got back to Cuba, the wife of Narvaez was fitting out ships to seek after her husband. John Ortiz sailed in this expedition. When they reached the coast of Florida he went on shore with some of his companions in a ship's boat. Near that part of the bay where Narvaez first landed, they saw a stick set up in form of a cross, and thought it might have been set up by him as a token that he had escaped from shipwreck. Just then some Indians who appeared friendly beckoned them to land. John Ortiz and one other went on shore. But no sooner had they landed than these Indians attacked them, slew his companion, and wounded Ortiz, while the frightened boat's crew hastened back to the ship believing them both slain. They would have killed Ortiz, but that the daughter of the chief begged for his life. This one white man alone, she urged, could do no harm, and he might be useful to them. So Ucita- this was the name of the chief - saved the Spaniard's life at the pleading of his daughter.

After this Ortiz lived for some time with this tribe.

He was

given the strange office of guarding the temple where the Indians were in the habit of placing the bodies of those who had died. The poor Spaniard had many bloody encounters with the wolves, who came by night to seize the bodies which were kept there.

At length the daughter of Ucita, the Indian princess who had at first befriended him, came secretly and told him her tribe again had designs upon his life, and advised him to flee to the kingdom of Mococo, who was a chief not far distant.

Mococo received him with open arms, and for several years Ortiz