had lived as one of his tribe. But this good king had promised that if the Spaniards ever came thither, John Ortiz should go away freely with them.

After hearing this story of Ortiz, the Spaniards had an interview with Mococo, who not only entertained De Soto well, but gave him provisions to take with him, and sent John Ortiz rejoicing away with his companions.

De Soto continued his march. It was a very crooked route he took, and was changed and directed by the natural obstacles or advantages in this wild country through which they went.

John Ortiz was a great addition to them, for he knew many Indian languages, and acted as guide and interpreter. The country was divided into kingdoms or provinces, each with a different ruler. They were not very large, for De Soto passed through a good many on his march to the Mississippi River. Their towns were often walled about. The walls were made about breast high, of posts thrust into the ground, and rails laid across from one to the other, like rail-fence. Then they were filled with clay, which hardened in the sun. These primitive walls had loop-holes for firing arrows. But these rude defenses protected the natives but little against Spanish warfare, and wherever the white man went he left havoc in his track.

Often the Indians met them in kindness, gave them food, and escorted them on their way, but generally there was much bloodshed before the last of De Soto's troops left their boundaries.

Once they passed through a province ruled over by a woman. It was a beautiful country, in what is now Alabama. She treated them most graciously, and gave them food and buffalo skins.

Now they began to hear rumors of a great river in front of them, -a river of great riches and beauty, whose waters were yellow with gold. It was more than a year since De Soto first landed on the coast of Florida. He had lost many men, and very little gold had yet rewarded his labors. So he pushed impatiently on toward this wonderful river.

One spring morning in 1541, two years from the time they first landed on the coast of the New World, they halted on the banks of the Mississippi River. They were weary and worn and travelstained; the brightness was gone from their armor, and the trappings of the horses no longer glittered in the sun. But they were still hopeful and resolute and courageous.

The place where they touched the river was the point where the Arkansas River unites with the great father of waters. You can imagine it looked very different to the Spaniards from what it looks. to-day. Now steamboats ply up and down day and night, and towns and cities dot its banks. Then the great river, undisturbed by boats or ships, rushed furiously on to the sea. These are the words in which one of De Soto's men tells how it looked that day :

"The river was almost half a league broad. If a man stood still on the other side, it could not be discerned if he were a man or no. The water was of great depth and of a strong current, always muddy, and there came down continually many trees and timber, which the force of the water and the stream brought down."

For a year they remained at this part of the river. In that time De Soto crossed and recrossed on rude boats which they built, and made excursions into the interior of the country west of the river. He spent one winter among what are now known as the Ozark Mountains, near the great lead region of southwestern Missouri. But they were tired of adventure, and longed eagerly to get to the

sea.

Yet it seemed almost madness to think of trusting themselves to this terrible swift current with such rafts and boats as they had made to cross it; and it was as hopeless to think of going back through the trackless wilds through which they had come, and where they had left enemies all over their pathway. Their hearts began to fail. Finally De Soto, weary with devising hopeless plans, and heart-sick with disappointment, fell into a fever and died.

The Spaniards were afraid that the Indians would discover the loss of their leader, whom they had told the savages was a child of the sun, and could not die. They hid his body three days. Then they dug a grave under cover of a hut, but seeing some Indians looking at the place where the earth had been upturned, they secretly took it up in the night, and wrapping it in the Spanish mantle De Soto had been used to wear, they made it heavy with sand and threw it into the Mississippi. There, after many wanderings, he slept in peace at the bottom of the mighty river he had found.

After this the desire to get upon the open sea, and the prospect of getting back to Spain, inspired them to great exertions. The labors of Narvaez were repeated by them. They cut timber, forged iron, and built ships or brigantines to get to sea.

This took them nearly a year, and it was in July, 1543, before they were ready to go on board.

Their departure showed the same cruelty to the Indians which had marked all their conduct to them. They stripped the country around of all their corn and provisions, and when they set out they were so abundantly provided that they cast corn before their hogs which the animals could not eat because they were already so full, while the natives, robbed of the food they had planted, famished and despairing, crowded the shores and implored that some of their store should be given back. Some of the Spaniards, more tender-hearted than others, cast back a small portion, but many laughed in their faces, and threw back jeers at their distress as the boats glided down the river.

After much perilous sailing they reached the Spanish settlement of Panuco on the Gulf of Mexico, and were received with great hospitality by the colonists there. They returned to Spain shortly after, and thus ended the third expedition into Florida. It is hardly possible to say which of these seems most disastrous to the captain who commanded it.

CHAPTER VII.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH EXPLORERS.

Henry VII. of England. - Sebastian Cabot discovers North America. - The French King sends Ships to America. - Verrazano comes to New York. - Voyages of Jacques Cartier to Canada. His Ship lost in the St. Lawrence.

WHEN the other nations of Europe beheld how rich Spain and Portugal were growing from the spoils of the new lands they were sharing between them, they were naturally anxious to share also in the profits of discovery. Almost as soon as Columbus returned from his first voyage Henry VII. of England was busily fitting out ships for exploration.

I have told you before that Columbus sent his brother Bartholomew to England at the time that he went to Spain. Bartholomew had an adventurous journey; fell among thieves, lost his money, and reached England very ragged and poor. It was a long time before he could get decent clothes in which to be presented at court, and he worked hard at map-making in London for money to keep

himself from starvation.

It is claimed by English writers of this period that Henry VII.

intended to accept the proposition of Columbus and fit him out on the expedition. If this were so he was so slow and hesitating in his decision that Columbus had sailed from Spain and discovered America before Henry had fairly made up his mind. When the news of the discovery came to his ears, he set to work briskly and sent out an expedition, commanded by John and Sebastian Cabot, a father

Sebastian Cabot.

and son, who were living in Bristol, England, although they were natives of Venice. Sebastian Cabot was very young, probably only eighteen years old, but he seems to have been the ruling spirit of the voyage, and was one of the greatest navigators the world has ever known.

They sailed almost due west, and touched the continent of North America at Labrador, before Columbus had found the main-land. The Cabots, therefore, were really the first Europeans who landed on these shores. They took possession in the name of England, and sailed northward to find a way farther west. But the land everywhere presented a firm barrier to their ships.

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I found the land ranne all along to the north, which was to mee a great displeasure," wrote Sebastian, in his description of the voy

age.

See how all these navigators in their search after the rich Indies, at first scorned this poor continent of ours which has turned out to be worth a dozen Indies, in everything that really makes the world rich.

After Sebastian Cabot returned to England, his father died, and he had sole command of the expeditions which followed. He devoted the greater part of his life to searching after the long wished for western passage to Asia; made several voyages to the coast of South America, under the auspices of Spain, and finally went back to England and spent his later years in making charts and maps. He lived up to the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, and when a very old man, nearly eighty, he assisted in fitting out some ships to seek for a northwest passage to the Pacific, went to a parting banquet on the ship, and danced there like a youth of twenty.

From this discovery of John and Sebastian Cabot, England laid claim to the northern part of the New World near Labrador; Spain claimed Peru and Mexico and all the Orinoco River region; and

Portugal claimed Patagonia and Brazil, on account of Magellan's voyage there.

Francis I. was at this time king of France. He had pressing affairs on his hands, a kingdom beset with civil

war and foreign war. But in spite of his anxieties he felt very jealous of the possessions his brother kings of Spain, Portugal, and England, were getting on the new continent. When he heard they had divided the new countries across the sea, he cried out, "I should like to see the clause in Adam's will which gives them all America."

Verrazano.

In 1524 he sent Captain Juan Verrazano to see if he could find a corner where France might gain a foothold on this continent. Verrazano sailed with four ships, but nearly all were disabled early in the voyage, and he finally crossed with only one vessel,- the Dolphin, the only good ship of the four. He touched America near the coast of New York and New Jersey, entered Long Island Sound, and came up New York Bay. He describes a beautiful river, which probably was the Hudson, but he did not stop to explore it. Coming out from Long Island Sound, he sailed northward, past Cape Cod and the crooked coast of Maine, and finally stopped at the borders of Canada. From his discovery all this region was first called "New France."

Now as early as 1503 the Portuguese had discovered that Newfoundland was a wonderful place to catch fish, and that there was no end to the number of cod which swam around its banks. It is probable that Verrazano carried back reports of the great wealth of fish in these waters, for shortly after his return to France we hear of many French ships off Newfoundland Banks. One of the nobles of the court of Francis I. was allowed a certain sum of money on every ship-load of fish brought into French ports, and he took good care to encourage the fishing trade. For ten years after Verrazano's visit, we hear little of New France except that the fishing sloops went there every year in numbers.

St. Malo is a rocky little sea-port in the province of Brittany in France, and is famous for its brave and hardy sailors. Indeed, nearly all the dwellers in St. Malo get their living from the ocean, which washes up on their rock-bound coast. Jacques Cartier was born and bred there, and grew up to be just the kind of a man to command an expedition to America. In 1534, just ten years after