In 1528 Pamphilo de Narvaez made an effort to take possession of Florida in the name of Charles V of Germany. He met with such hostility from the natives, however, that after months of wandering he reached the Gulf with a mere handful of men out of the six hundred with whom he had landed. Building five miserable boats, these crazy adventurers attempted to follow the line of the coast to the Mexican settlements. Four boats were lost in a storm; the survivors landed and sought to cross the continent to the Spanish colonies at Sonora. It seems incredible, but in this enterprise four of the men actually succeeded. Among them was Cabeca de Vaca, treasurer of the expedition. Their appearance in Europe nine years after their departure caused the greatest sensation, and the excitement created by their narrative was intense. The passion for adventure became stronger than ever among the Spaniards, and when the already celebrated Hernando de Soto, who had been with Pizarro in Peru, asked for and was granted permission to take possession of Florida in the name of Ferdinand of Spain, he had a multitude of volunteers to his standard.
De Soto was first appointed governor of Cuba that he might turn to account the resources of that wealthy island. His fleet of nine vessels and force of six hundred men, sailed from Havana on the 18th of May, 1539, and ten days later anchored in Tampa Bay. The first remarkable adventure that befel them was an encounter with one of the companions of Cabeca de Vaca, who had been held all this time captive among the Indians. He had acquired a thorough knowledge of their language, and his services as mediator and interpretor soon became invaluable.
Led by Ortiz—the captive—the explorers wandered through the unknown land until spring. Then a native offered to guide them to a distant country, governed by a woman, and rich in “yellow metal,” which the Spaniards understood to be gold, but which turned out to be only copper. The dominion of the Indian queen was reached at last, after much fighting and bloodshed. The old chronicles give a picturesque and rather pathetic account of the meeting between the poor cacica and the invaders. She came forth to welcome them, alighting from her litter and making gestures of pleasure and amity, taking from her neck a heavy string of pearls and presenting it to De Soto. He accepted the gift, and for a time kept up a pretense of friendship; but, having obtained all the information the queen had to give, he made her prisoner and robbed her and her people of all their valuables, even pillaging the graves of dead nobles for pearls. It is gratifying to know that the queen effected her escape from the guards, and that she regained a box of pearls on which De Soto set especial store.
The Spaniards now altered their course, and, taking a northwesterly direction, they found themselves, after a few months, at the foot of the Appalachian range of mountains, which, rather than cross, they turned their backs upon, and wandered into the lowlands of what is now Alabama, ignorant of the fact that these very mountains were rich in the gold they so ardently coveted.
The autumn of 1540 brought what remained of the party to a large village called Mavilla, the site of the modern city of Mobile, where a terrible battle took place. Mavilla was burned to ashes, and when the fight ended the victorious Spaniards found themselves in a desperate situation—at a distance from their ships, their provisions gone, and enemies on every side. The common soldiers, by this time, had had quite enough of exploration, and wished to return to the coast. But De Soto, who had received secret information that his fleet was even now anchored in the Bay of Pensacola, six days’ journey from Mavilla, determined to make one more effort to redeem his honor by a notable discovery of some sort. He forced his men to journey northward, and in December they reached a Chickasaw village, in what is now the State of Mississippi. By spring they had fought their way completely across the State, and in May they reached the banks of the mighty river from which the State takes its name. Not knowing that he had made his great discovery, De Soto went to work to build boats and barges with which to cross the river. Constantly harassed by the natives, the explorers continued their northward wanderings until they reached the region of the present State of Missouri. Proceeding westward, they encamped for the winter at the present location of Little Rock, Arkansas. But the spot turned out to be an unhealthy one; the white men began to succumb to disease; Juan Ortiz, the chief helper, died; scouts sent out to explore the neighborhood brought back darkest reports of impenetrable wildernesses, and of bands of hostiles creeping up from every side to attack them. Saddest of all, De Soto, broken with disease and long endurance, lay down to rise no more. Calling his little army around him, he asked their pardon for the sufferings he had brought upon them, and named Luis de Alvaredo as his successor. The following day the unhappy De Soto breathed his last, and was buried secretly outside the camp; but, fearing an immediate attack from the natives should the death of the hero be made known, and the newly-made grave exciting suspicion among the Indians in the neighborhood, Alvaredo had the corpse disinterred in the night, and, wrapped in clothes made heavy with sand, dropped into the Mississippi.
Alvaredo then led his people westward, hoping to reach the Pacific coast. But after long months of wandering, and dreading to be overtaken by winter on the prairies, they retraced their steps to the Mississippi, where they pitched camp and spent six months building boats in which to go down the river. A terrible voyage of seventeen days, between banks lined with Indians, who plied them pitilessly with poisoned arrows, brought them to the Gulf, and a further weary cruise along the coast of Louisiana and Texas landed them at the Spanish settlement of Panuco, in Mexico. This was in October, 1543; they had been wandering for nearly four years.
The English were rather tardy in following the lead of the Spanish, French, and Portuguese explorers, but, once started, they pursued their researches with great vigor. In 1562 one of their adventurers, Sir John Hawkins, engaged in the slave trade, and carried cargoes of negroes to the West Indies. In 1577, Sir Francis Drake accomplished the circumnavigation of the globe. Attempts were made at the same period to discover the northwestern passage, by Willoughby, Frobisher, Henry Hudson, and others. The only attempt to found a colony in the New World during this century was made by Sir Walter Raleigh; his step-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had obtained the first charter ever granted an Englishman for a colony, but his project failed, and he himself perished at sea.
A patent was granted Raleigh, constituting him lord proprietary, with almost unlimited powers, according to the Christian Protestant faith, of all land which he might discover between the thirty-third and fortieth degrees of north latitude. Under this patent Raleigh dispatched two vessels under the command of Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow. They landed on the island of Wococken and took possession in the name of Queen Elizabeth. The country they called Virginia, and such glowing accounts did they send back to England that seven vessels under Sir Richard Grenville were sent out, bearing one hundred and fifty colonists. As soon as these landed, Sir Richard Grenville took the ships back to England, capturing a rich Spanish prize on the way. The colony fared very badly after a time, Lane, the governor, being utterly unfit for his office. The Indians wishing to get rid of their visitors, induced them to ascend the Roanoke River, on the upper banks of which, they declared, dwelt a nation skillful in refining gold, whose city was inclosed with a wall of pearls. After the gold rushed the colonists, but they found only famine and distress. The Indians, on their return, refused to give them any more provisions, and even ceased to cultivate corn, hoping to drive out the Englishmen altogether. In revenge, the white men, having invited the chief to a conference, fell upon him and slew him, with many of his people. This was the end of their peaceful relations with the Indians. The colony was on the verge of starvation when Sir Francis Drake, the slave-trading nobleman, appeared outside the harbor with a fleet of twenty-three ships. At the urgent prayer of the starving settlers, Sir Francis carried them back to England. Hardly had they gone before a ship laden with supplies, dispatched by Raleigh, arrived. Finding the colony vanished, the ship returned. Before it reached England, Sir Richard Grenville arrived at Roanoke with three ships. After searching in vain for the missing colony, he also returned, leaving fifteen men on the island to hold possession for the English. Still undiscouraged, Raleigh sent out a second colony, this time choosing agriculturists, and sending with them their wives and children. On reaching Roanoke they found the bones of the fifteen men Grenville had left, and the fort in ruins. Meanwhile the Spanish invasion was threatening England. Raleigh was one of the most active in devising schemes for resistance. It was almost a year before he was able to send supplies to his colony at Roanoke; this he did at last, but the captain, instead of proceeding straight on his mission, went in chase of two Spanish prizes, came to grief, and was obliged to return to England. By this time Raleigh’s means were almost exhausted, but he managed to send out the relief ships, but they arrived too late. The island was a desert and the only clue to the fate of the colony was the word “Croatian” on the bark of a tree. It has been conjectured that they escaped, through the kindness of the Indians to Croatian; perhaps they were received into some tribe and became a part of the wild men; the Indians themselves have such a tradition. Raleigh sent five different search parties after his little colony, but none of them ever had the least success.
In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold reached the shores of Massachusetts, and, sailing southward, landed on a promontory which he called Cape Cod. He also discovered the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. On the former they built a store-house and a fort, and prepared to settle, but when the ships got ready to sail, they lost their resolution and insisted upon returning to England.