[This sketch is from a copy in the Kohl Washington Collection, after a manuscript atlas in the Bodleian. It is without date, but seemingly of about the middle of the sixteenth century. The “B. de Miruello” seems to commemorate a pilot of Ponce de Leon’s day. The sketch of the Atlantic coast made by Chaves in 1536 is preserved to us only in the description given by Oviedo, of which an English version will be found in the Historical Magazine, x. 371.—Ed.]
The route of De Soto is, of course, a question for a variety of views.[978] We have in the preceding narrative followed for the track through Georgia a paper read by Colonel Charles C. Jones, Jr., before the Georgia Historical Society, and printed in Savannah in 1880,[979] and for that through Alabama the data given by Pickett in his History of Alabama,[980] whose local knowledge adds weight to his opinion.[981] As to the point of De Soto’s crossing the Mississippi, there is a very general agreement on the lowest Chickasaw Bluff.[982] We are without the means, in any of the original sources, to determine beyond dispute the most northerly point reached by Soto. He had evidently approached, but had learned nothing of, the Missouri River. Almost at the same time that Soto, with the naked, starving remnant of his army, was at Pacaha, another Spanish force under Vasquez de Coronado, well handled and perfectly equipped, must in July and August, 1541, have been encamped so near that an Indian runner in a few days might have carried tidings between them. Coronado actually heard of his countryman, and sent him a letter; but his messenger failed to find Soto’s party.[983] But, strangely enough, the cruel, useless expedition of Soto finds ample space in history, while the well-managed march of Coronado’s careful exploration finds scant mention.[984] No greater contrast exists in our history than that between these two campaigns.
A sufficient indication has been given, in the notes of the preceding narrative, of the sources of information concerning the futile attempts of the Spaniards at colonization on the Atlantic coast up to the time of the occupation of Port Royal by Ribault in 1562. Of the consequent bloody struggle between the Spanish Catholics and the French Huguenots there are original sources on both sides.
On the Spanish part we have the Cartas escritas al rey of Pedro Menendez (Sept. 11, Oct. 15, and Dec. 5, 1565), which are preserved in the Archives at Seville, and have been used by Parkman,[985] and the Memoria del buen suceso i buen viage of the chaplain of the expedition, Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales.[986] Barcia’s Ensayo cronológico is the most comprehensive of the Spanish accounts, and he gives a large part of the Memorial de las jornadas of Solis de Meras, a brother-in-law of Menendez. It has never been printed separately; but Charlevoix used Barcia’s extract, and it is translated from Barcia in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (vol. ii. p. 216). Barcia seems also to have had access to the papers of Menendez,[987] and to have received this Journal of Solis directly from his family.
On the French side, for the first expedition of Ribault in 1562 we have the very scarce text of the Histoire de l’expédition Française en Floride, published in London in 1563, which Hakluyt refers to as being in print “in French and English” when he wrote his Westerne Planting.[988] Sparks[989] could not find that it was ever published in French; nor was Winter Jones aware of the existence of this 1563 edition when he prepared for the Hakluyt Society an issue of Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (1582), in which that collector had included an English version of it as The True and Last Discoverie of Florida, translated into Englishe by one Thomas Hackit, being the same text which appeared separately in 1563 as the Whole and True Discovery of Terra Florida.[990]
At Paris in 1586 appeared a volume, dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh, entitled, L’histoire notable de la Floride, ... contenant les trois voyages faits en icelle par certains capitaines et pilotes François descrits par le Capitaine Laudonnière, ... à laquelle a esté adjousté un quatriesme voyage fait par le Capitaine Gourgues, Mise en lumiere par M. Basanier. This was a comprehensive account, or rather compilation, of the four several French expeditions,—1562, 1564, 1565, 1567,—covering the letters of Laudonnière for the first three, and an anonymous account, perhaps by the editor Basanier, of the fourth. Hakluyt, who had induced the French publication, gave the whole an English dress in his Notable History, translated by R. H., printed in London in 1587,[991] and again in his Principall Navigations, vol. iii., the text of which is also to be found in the later edition and in French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (1869), i. 165.[992]
ROUTE OF DE SOTO (after Delisle),—WESTERLY PART.