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brother Huascar, the lawful Inca. Pizarro agreed to accept as ransom for the Inca, a sufficient amount of gold to fill the room in which the conference with him was held, which was seventeen feet wide and twentytwo feet long. After the gold had been delivered, Pizarro treacherously refused to set Atahuallpa free,

and, on a pretext, condemned him to be burned alive. De Soto having obtained his share of the ransom, was very wealthy. He protested with great vigor against the bad faith of his leader, but without success. The sentence pronounced against the Inca was, however, commuted, and he was executed by strangling.

After the conquest of Peru had been completed,

De Soto hastened to Spain with his fortune, and was received by the great emperor Charles V., with the honors accorded to a conqueror. No request that

he could proffer was considered too extravagant, and when he asked it, permission was freely given him to go to conquer that great region then called "Florida," extending from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and to the north and northwest to an unlimited extent, of which Cabeza de Vaca had told the wonders.. Over all this territory De Soto was given absolute authority. The excitement in Spain produced by the publication of the plans of De Soto can be likened to nothing but the great upheaval that followed the preaching of the first Crusade by Peter the Hermit. As at that time men hastened to join the expedition against the infidels with motives combining avarice and superstitious reverence for the holy places, so now the flower of Spanish chivalry, wild with expectation as they dreamt of the El Dorado, of the Fountain of Youth, and of the wealth that they supposed was within their easy grasp, recklessly parted with houses and lands to enter upon the new expedition.

With six hundred picked men, and twenty officers, besides twenty-four ecclesiastics, De Soto sailed from San Lucaz, Spain, (the same port from which Columbus had set out on his third voyage, and Magalhaens on the one during which he circumnavigated the world,) in the spring of 1538. He stopped at Cuba, leaving the ladies of the expedition at Havana until the conquest should be effected, and arrived at Tampa Bay, after sailing around Cape Sable, and through the Gulf of Mexico, in May, 1539. The entire summer

A WINTER IN FLORIDA.

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was employed in wandering along the western shore of Florida, and by October, the gay explorers found themselves in the vicinity of the site on which Tallahassee was afterwards built, east of the Appalachicola

River. There they spent the winter. The company were all dispirited, and would have turned back, had De Soto been less determined. He had found no

gold, and there was little real promise of any, but he said that he was determined to see the poverty of the country with his own eyes. . His wish in this respect was amply realized before his death.

The Indians, ever desirous to put as great distance as possible between themselves and the invaders, constantly held out delusive hopes of gold in the distance, and now pointed to the northeast as the wealthy region. In that direction the wanderers pursued their perilous way, suffering much in the wildernesses from a lack of proper supplies. After having gone far to the north, De Soto arrived by the middle of October at an Indian village on the Alabama, called Mavilla, or Mobile, distant some forty miles from the present site of Selma, and about one hundred miles north of Pensacola. Here a battle occurred, in which it is said that twenty-five hundred natives lost their lives. It is supposed to have been the most sanguinary conflict in all the struggles between the Europeans and the original owners of the soil. The invaders lost their baggage, which was in the town, and was burned.

Despite his disasters, De Soto refused to send information of his condition to Cuba, though vessels had arrived on the coast from the Island. His firm spirit was not broken, and in the spring of 1541, after having wintered in the territory of the Chickasaws, to the north, he prepared anew for his journey. The Chickasaws refused a demand for men to carry his baggage, and burned their village and with it also the Spanish camp, many of the invaders perishing in the flames and in the ensuing skirmish. De Soto and his followers were now reduced almost to nakedness, but

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they pushed on to the northwest, losing a number of men by fever soon after their start. A march of a week brought them to the Mississippi, between Memphis and Helena. A delay of a month was made necessary because the Indian boats were insufficient for the transport of the army, but the river was finally crossed, and De Soto continued on to the northwest, touching the present Indian Territory. Thence, going southerly, he passed the hot springs of Arkansas, which his followers at first thought were identical with the Fountain of Youth. The winter was passed on the Washita River, and in the spring of 1542, the journey to the Atlantic was begun. The leader never reached that goal. He was attacked by a fever on the banks of the great river that he had explored, and died May 21, 1542, not far from the site on which the city of Natchez now stands. He was at first buried on the shore of the river, but because his followers did not want the Indians to find his body, and thus know that he had died, he was, with poetic propriety, solemnly deposited in the river itself.

The remnant of the army, which, when it entered upon its fruitless march, was larger and better equipped than those that had been sent against Mexico and Peru, now determined to seek Mexico through the forests; but the effort was not successful, and the almost worn-out wanderers again found themselves on the banks of the Father of Waters, not far from the junction of the Red River. There they built boats, though the task was one of the most difficult, sailed down the stream, and, after coasting to the southwest, reached Panuco, in Vera Cruz, in September, 1543. The Mississippi River had been discov