[972] [Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 42; Sunderland, vol. v. no. 12,815; Leclerc, no. 881, at 350 francs; Field, Indian Bibliography no. 587; Brinley, no. 4,353. Rich (no. 102) priced it in 1832 at £2 2s.—Ed.]
[973] [Brinton (Floridian Peninsula, p. 23) thinks Garcilasso had never seen the Elvas narrative; but Sparks (Marquette, in American Biography, vol. x.) intimates that it was Garcilasso’s only written source.—Ed.]
[974] [Theodore Irving, The Conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto, New York, 1851. The first edition appeared in 1835, and there were editions printed in London in 1835 and 1850. The book is a clever popularizing of the original sources, with main dependence on Garcilasso (cf. Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 765), whom its author believes he can better trust, especially as regards the purposes of De Soto, wherein he differs most from the Gentleman of Elvas. Irving’s championship of the Inca has not been unchallenged; cf. Rye’s Introduction to the Hakluyt Society’s volume. The Inca’s account is more than twice as long as that of the Gentleman of Elvas, while Biedma’s is very brief,—a dozen pages or so. Davis (Conquest of New Mexico, p. 25) is in error in saying that Garcilasso accompanied De Soto.—Ed.]
[975] [There was an amended edition published by Barcia at Madrid in 1723 (Carter-Brown, iii. 328; Leclerc, no. 882, at 25 francs); again in 1803; and a French version by Pierre Richelet, Histoire de la conquête de la Floride, was published in 1670, 1709, 1711, 1731, 1735, and 1737 (Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,050; vol. iii. nos. 132, 470; O’Callaghan Catalogue, no. 965). A German translation by H. L. Meier, Geschichte der Eroberung von Florida, was printed at Zelle in 1753 (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 997) with many notes, and again at Nordhausen in 1785. The only English version is that embodied in Bernard Shipp’s History of Hernando de Soto and Florida (p. 229, etc.),—a stout octavo, published in Philadelphia in 1881. Shipp uses, not the original, but Richelet’s version, the Lisle edition of 1711, and prints it with very few notes. His book covers the expeditions to North America between 1512 and 1568, taking Florida in its continental sense; but as De Soto is his main hero, he follows him through his Peruvian career. Shipp’s method is to give large extracts from the most accessible early writers, with linking abstracts, making his book one mainly of compilation.—Ed.]
[976] Letter of Hernando de Soto, and Memoir of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda. [The transcript of the Fontaneda Memoir is marked by Muñoz “as a very good account, although it is by a man who did not understand the art of writing, and therefore many sentences are incomplete. On the margin of the original [at Simancas] are points made by the hand of Herrera, who doubtless drew on this for that part [of his Historia general] about the River Jordan which he says was sought by Ponce de Leon.” This memoir on Florida and its natives was written in Spain about 1575. It is also given in English in French’s Historical Collection of Louisiana (1875), p. 235, from the French of Ternaux; cf. Brinton’s Floridian Peninsula, p. 26. The Editor appends various notes and a comparative statement of the authorities relative to the landing of De Soto and his subsequent movements, and adds a list of the original authorities on De Soto’s expedition and a map of a part of the Floridian peninsula. The authorities are also reviewed by Rye in the Introduction to the Hakluyt Society’s volume. Smith also printed the will of De Soto in the Hist. Mag. (May, 1861), v. 134.—Ed.]
[977] [A memorial of Alonzo Vasquez (1560), asking for privileges in Florida, and giving evidences of his services under De Soto, is translated in the Historical Magazine (September, 1860), iv. 257.—Ed.]
[978] [Buckingham Smith has considered the question of De Soto’s landing in a paper, “Espiritu Santo,” appended to his Letter of De Soto (Washington, 1854), p. 51.—Ed.]
[979] [Colonel Jones epitomizes the march through Georgia in chap. ii. of his History of Georgia (Boston, 1883). In the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1881, p. 619, he figures and describes two silver crosses which were taken in 1832 from an Indian mound in Murray County, Georgia, at a spot where he believed De Soto to have encamped (June, 1540), and which he inclines to associate with that explorer. Stevens (History of Georgia, i. 26) thinks but little positive knowledge can be made out regarding De Soto’s route.—Ed.]
[980] [Pages 25-41. Pickett in 1849 printed the first chapter of his proposed work in a tract called, Invasion of the Territory of Alabama by One Thousand Spaniards under Ferdinand de Soto in 1540 (Montgomery, 1849). Pickett says he got confirmatory information respecting the route from Indian traditions among the Creeks.—Ed.]
[981] “We are satisfied that the Mauvila, the scene of Soto’s bloody fight, was upon the north bank of the Alabama, at a place now called Choctaw Bluff, in the County of Clarke, about twenty-five miles above the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee” (Pickett, i. 27). The name of this town is written “Mauilla” by the Gentleman of Elvas, “Mavilla” by Biedma, but “Mabile” by Ranjel. The u and v were interchangeable letters in Spanish printing, and readily changed to b. (Irving, second edition, p. 261).