such river till now. It was about a mile in breadth, and its mass of water swept downward to the sea with a current of amazing strength. It was the Mississippi. The Spaniards built vessels and ferried themselves to the western bank.

There they resumed their wanderings. De Soto would not yet admit that he had failed. He still hoped that the plunder of a rich city would reward his toils. For many months the Spaniards strayed among the swamps and dense forests of that dreary region. The natives showed at first some disposition to be helpful. But the Spaniards, in their disappointment, were pitiless and savage. They amused themselves by inflicting pain upon the prisoners. They cut off their hands; they hunted them with bloodhounds; they burned them at the stake. The Indians became dangerous. De Soto hoped to awe them by claiming to be one of the gods, but the imposture was too palpable.

"How can a man be God when he cannot get bread to eat?" asked a sagacious savage.

It was now three years since De Soto had landed in America. The utter failure of the expedition could no longer be concealed, and the men wished to return home. Broken in spirit and in frame, De Soto caught a fever and died. His soldiers felled a tree and scooped room within its trunk for the body of the ill-fated adventurer. They could not bury their chief on land, lest the Indians should dishonor his remains.

In the silence of midnight the rude coffin was sunk in the Mississippi, and the discoverer of the great river slept beneath its waters.

The Spaniards promptly resolved now to make their way to Cuba. They had tools, and wood was abundant. They slew their horses for flesh; they plundered the Indians for bread; they struck the fetters from their prisoners to reinforce their scanty supply of iron. They built ships enough

1497.

The Story of America's Name.

45

to float them down the Mississippi. Three hundred ragged and disheartened men were all that remained of the brilliant company whose hopes had been so high, whose good fortune had been so much envied.

The courage and endurance of the early voyagers excite our wonder. Few of them sailed in ships so large as a hundred. tons' burden. The merchant ships of that time were very small. The royal navies of Europe contained large vessels, but commerce was too poor to employ any but the smallest. The commerce of imperial Rome employed ships which even now would be deemed large. St. Paul was wrecked in a ship of over five hundred tons' burden. Josephus sailed in a ship of nearly one thousand tons. Europe contented herself, as yet, with vessels of a very different class. A ship of forty or fifty tons was deemed sufficient by the daring adventurers who sought to reach the Land of Promise beyond the great sea.

THE STORY OF AMERICA'S NAME.

The honor of discovering America is curiously divided. Columbus, who first found the West India Islands (and six years later saw the mainland), is always called the discoverer, and Americus Vespucius, who first saw the continent, was lucky enough to leave the land his name.

This first voyage Vespucius carefully described, noting down a great many interesting and a great many whimsical things. When he landed on the coast of Venezuela, in the summer of 1497, the first thing he saw was a queer little village built over the water, like Venice. "There were about forty-four houses, shaped like bells, built upon very large piles, having entrances by means of drawbridges."

The natives proved suspicious and hostile here, and as the Spaniards stood looking at them, they drew up all their bridges, and appeared to shut themselves into their houses.

Immediately after twenty-two canoe-loads of savages came round by sea and advanced on the boats of Vespucius. A fight ensued, the natives displaying much art and treachery, but fleeing finally in dismay at the roar and smoke of the Spanish guns.

At his next landing-place, farther south, the navigator found a gentler tribe, though, like the first, all naked savages. They retreated before him and his men, and left their wigwams, which he stopped to inspect. Fires were burning, and the Indians had just been cooking young alligators, num