and cavaliers, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden
with the baggage, still wandered on through wild and boundless wastes,
lured hither and thither by the ignis-fatuus of their hopes. They
traversed great portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
everywhere inflicting and enduring misery, but never approaching their
fantom El Dorado. At length, in the third year of their journeying,
they reached the banks of the Mississippi, a hundred and thirty-two
years before its second discovery by Marquette. One of their number
describes the great river as almost half 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 toward the north where maize
could not be cultivated because the vast herds of wild cattle devoured
it.[2] 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