De Soto, says one of those who accompanied him, was a “stern man, and of few words.”  Even in the midst of reverses, his will had been law to his followers, and he had sustained himself through the depths of disappointment with the energy of a stubborn pride.  But his hour was come.  He fell into deep dejection, followed by an attack of fever, and soon after died miserably.  To preserve his body from the Indians, his followers sank it at midnight in the river, and the sullen waters of the Mississippi buried his ambition and his hopes.

The adventurers were now, with few exceptions, disgusted with the enterprise, and longed only to escape from the scene of their miseries.  After a vain attempt to reach Mexico by Land, they again turned back to the Mississippi, and labored, with all the resources which their desperate necessity could suggest, to construct vessels in which they might make their way to some Christian settlement.  Their condition was most forlorn.  Few of their horses remained alive; their baggage had been destroyed at the burning of the Indian town of Mavila, and many of the soldiers were without armor and without weapons.  In place of the gallant array which, more than three years before, had left the harbor of Espiritu Santo, a company of sickly and starving men were laboring among the swampy forests of the Mississippi, some clad in skins, and some in mats woven from a kind of wild vine.

Seven brigantines were finished and launched; and, trusting their lives on board these frail vessels, they descended the Mississippi, running the gantlet between hostile tribes, who fiercely attacked them.  Reaching the Gulf, tho not without the loss of eleven of their number, they made sail for the Spanish settlement on the River Panuco, where they arrived safely, and where the inhabitants met them with a cordial welcome.  Three hundred and eleven men thus escaped with life, leaving behind them the bones of their comrades strewn broadcast through the wilderness.

[1] From Parkman’s “Pioneers of France in the New World.”  By permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co.  Hernando de Soto was born in Badaios, Spain, in 1500, and died near the Mississippi River, probably on May 21, 1542.  Before discovering the Mississippi, he had been in Panama and Nicaragua; had been active with Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, from which he returned very rich to Spain, and in 1587 had been appointed Governor of Cuba and Florida, with orders to explore and settle the country.  It was while engaged in the latter work that he discovered the Mississippi.

De Soto’s route has been determined only approximately.  He is believed first to have made a circuit northward from Tampa, through Florida into Georgia and perhaps into Carolina, thence going westward to Alabama and Mobile Bay.  From the latter he turned northward again, thence going westward to the Mississippi, which he is believed to have crossed at Chickasaw Bluffs, in May,