our country, that when Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca, a follower of the
unfortunate Panphilo de Narvaez, and who had been long thought dead,
landed in Spain, he gave such glowing accounts of Florida[1] and the
neighbouring regions that the whole kingdom was in a ferment,
and many a heart panted to emigrate to a land where the fruits
were perennial, and where it was thought flowed the fabled
fountain of youth.

Three expeditions to that country had already been tried:
one undertaken in 1512, by Juan Ponce de Leon, formerly a companion
of Columbus; another in 1520, by Vasquez de Allyon; and another by
Panphilo de Narvaez. All of these had signally failed, the bones
of most of the leaders and their followers having been left to bleach
upon the soil they had come to conquer.

The unfortunate issue of the former expeditions did not operate as
a check upon the aspiring mind of De Soto, but made him the more
anxious to spring as an actor into the arena which had been the scene
of the discomfiture and death of the hardy chivalry of the kingdom.
He sought an audience of the emperor, and the latter, after hearing
De Soto's proposition that, "he could conquer the country known as
Florida at his own expense," conferred upon him the title of
"Governor of Cuba and Florida."

On the 6th of April, 1538, De Soto sailed from Spain with an armament
of ten vessels and a splendidly equipped army of nine hundred chosen men,
amidst the roar of cannons and the inspiring strains of martial music.

It is not within the province of this work to follow De Soto through
all his terrible trials on the North American continent; the wonderful