The Making of the Great West (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Adams Drake
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(1542), and other Spanish navigators, who were sent by Cortez or the Viceroy to extend discovery up the coast. They coasted the Gulf of California, first called the Vermilion Sea, and sailed beyond it, as high as 30° North latitude.
So thanks to Cortez, Spain had secured the much-coveted way to India at last. Yet when he came home to his native country, the king demanded of those about him who Cortez was. "I am a man," said the conqueror of Mexico, "who has gained your majesty more provinces than your father left you towns."
Supreme on land and sea, Spain pushed on her conquests abroad without hinderance. If such deeds as hers had so irritated the self-love of a rival prince, how must they have stirred the blood of all those daring spirits by whom Charles was surrounded, and who burned to distinguish themselves in the service of their liege lord and sovereign. In America, men said the making of a new empire had begun. If that were so, it meant that men of energy, ambition and capacity, the kind of men on whom fortune waits to bestow her choicest favors, should seek her there.
BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
"Silent upon a peak in Darien."—Keats.
But Mexico and Peru were already won. When, therefore, the Spaniards began to look about them for new worlds to conquer, their eyes fell upon Florida. It is true that all those who had set forth upon this errand met with nothing but disaster.8 A spell seemed hanging over this land of flowers. The Spaniards had indeed, with much pomp, planted a cross, strangely proclaiming themselves masters of the country; yet, without power to hold a foot of ground, this cross stood a monument to their failures, as its inscription seemed an epitaph to their presumption.
Footnotes
1. Lever of Archimedes. The saying attributed to this celebrated mathematician of ancient times, that if they would give him a fulcrum for his lever he would move the world, is often employed in one or another sense as a figure of speech.
2. Pope Alexander VI. confirmed the act of partition by a special decree, called a bull.
3. Antilles, an early name of the West Indies.
4. Terra Firma, literally meaning firm land; a name first used by the Spaniards to distinguish the American continent, or that part first discovered, from the West India Islands.
5. Christian Name, from its discovery on Easter Sunday, Pascha Floridum—Flowery Easter.
6. Burning One's Ships has passed into a proverb often used to illustrate some act of extraordinary hardihood, by which one puts it out of his power to draw back from an undertaking. Cortez only followed the example of the Emperor Julian in ancient Rome, and of William the Conqueror in England.
7. South Sea. The Pacific Ocean was so first called.
8. Disaster befell the attempt of Narvaez upon Florida in 1528. Look it up.
De Soto's Discovery of the Mississippi.1
"One may buy gold at too dear a price."—Spanish.
If we look at the earliest Spanish maps on which the Gulf of Mexico is laid down, not only do we find the delta of a great river put in the place where we would expect to see, on our maps of to-day, the Mississippi making its triumphal entry into the sea, but the map-makers have even given it a name—Rio del Espiritu Santo—meaning, in their language, the River of the Holy Ghost.
FRENCH MAP OF 1542. FROM JOMARD.
That this knowledge ought not to detract from the work of subsequent explorers is quite clear to our minds, because the charts themselves show that only the coast line2 had been examined when these results were put upon parchment. The explorers had indeed found a river, and made a note of it, but had passed on their way without so much as suspecting that the muddy waters they saw flowing out of the land before them drained a continent. Had they made this important discovery, we cannot doubt their readiness to have profited by it in making their third invasion of Florida. So the discovery, if it can be called one, had no practical value for those who made it, and the country remained a sealed book as before. We cannot wonder at this because La Salle subsequently failed to find the river when actually searching for it, though he had seen it before.
With 600 men, both horse and foot, thoroughly equipped and ably led, Hernando de Soto3 set sail from Havana in May, and landed on the Florida coast on Whitsunday4 of the year 1539.
DE SOTO.
De Soto did not burn his ships, like Cortes, but sent them back to Havana to await his further orders. These Spaniards had come, not as peaceful colonists, looking for homes and a welcome among the owners of the soil, but as soldiers bent only upon conquest. De Soto, as we have seen, had brought an army with him. Its camp was pitched in military order. It moved at the trumpet's martial sound. Two hundred horsemen carrying lances and long swords marched in the van. With them rode the Adelantado, his standard-bearer and suite. Behind these squadrons marched the men of all arms—cross-bowmen, arquebusmen, calivermen, pikemen, pages and squires, who attached themselves to the officers in De Soto's train—then came the baggage with its camp-guard of grooms and serving-men: and last of all, another strong body of infantry solidly closed the rear of the advancing column, so that whether in camp or on the march, it was always ready to fight. In effect, De Soto entered Florida sword in hand, declaring all who should oppose him enemies.
SOLDIER OF 1585.
De Soto enforced an iron discipline, never failing, like a good soldier, himself to set an example of obedience to the orders published for the conduct of his army. In following his fortunes, it is well to keep the fact firmly in mind that De Soto was embarked in a campaign for conquest only.
Toward the unoffending natives of the country the invaders used force first, conciliation afterwards. As in Mexico and Peru, so here they meant to crush out all opposition,—to thoroughly subjugate the country to their arms. De Soto had served under Pizarro, and had shown himself an apt pupil of a cruel master. The Indians were held to have no rights whatever, or at least none that white men were bound to respect. Meaning to make slaves of them, the Spaniards had brought bloodhounds to hunt them down, chains with iron collars to keep them from running away, and wherever the army went these poor wretches were led along in its train, like so many wild beasts, by their cruel masters. On the march they were loaded down with burdens. When the Spaniards halted, the captives would