Verazan, 'which was sweet and pleasant, and not differing from ours, we think that they esteem the same, because that in every place where they grow, they take away the under branches growing round about, that the fruit thereof may ripen the better.*

This navigator followed nearly the whole coast of the present United States; but he stayed at no place long enough to explore the interior; and his accounts of the natives are necessarily brief and imperfect. De Soto, on the contrary, spent more than four years in making a progress through his dominions, as president of Florida; and the history of his enterprise contains, perhaps, the only notices, in any detail, of the character, habits, and general economy of the earlier aborigines. The book appears to be little

* HACKLUYT'S Voyages, vol. iii. p. 297.

†This name,-derived from Pascha Florida, or Palm-Sunday, because the land was discovered on that day,-then included an indefinite extent of territory, north and west of the present Floridas. HACK. vol. iii. p. 305.

‡ We have never seen this book in the original; and we have heard, that no great pains were taken to make it generally known. In 1609, when the English began to think of planting colonies here, Hackluyt procured a copy, and turned it into English, under the title of 'Virginia richly valued, by the description of the maine land of Florida, her next neighbour: out of the four yeeres continuall travell and discouerie for above one thousand miles east and west, of DON FERDINANDO DE SOTO, and six hundred able men in his companie. Wherein are truly observed the riches and fertilitie of those parts, abounding with things necessarie, pleasant, and profitable for the life of man: with the natures and dispositions of the inhabitants. Written by a Portugall gentleman of Eluas, emploied in all

known in this country; and we shall exhibit its contents to the reader, by following the course of the expedition.

Ferdinand De Soto was the son of a squire of Xerez, near Bajadoz, in Spain. He adventured to the West Indies, as a soldier of fortune, under Governor Arias; who soon rewarded his courage, by giving him a troop of horse; and still further promoted his views, by assigning him a post under Pizarro. As he displayed more gallantry than the other captains, he obtained a greater portion of the booty; and, when he returned to Spain, he had exchanged his sword and target for one hundred and eighty thousand ducats. He married Donna Isabella, the daughter of Arias; and the emperor made him governor of Cuba, president of Florida, and marquis of a part of the lands, which he might conquer. He was joined by many rich persons from various parts of Spain: six hundred men were disposed in seven ships; and, in the month of April, 1538, the expedition left the harbour of Seville.

On Whit-Sunday, they reached Cuba. St. Jago, Baraçoa, Bayamo, Puerto de Principes, St. Esperito, and Havanna, were then the only towns in the island; and the first, which now contains forty thousand in

the action, and translated out of the Portugese by RICHARD HACKLUYT. Lond. Felix Kyngstan for Mathew Lownes.' Small 4to. p. 180.

habitants, was a village of eighty houses, composed, for the most part, of boards and thatch. Among the other native productions, we find 'a fruit, whereby many people are sustained, and chiefly the slaves, which are called batatas. These grow now in the island of Terçera, belonging to the kingdom of Portugal, and they grow within the earth, and are like a fruit called iname; they have almost the taste of the chesnut.'*

r

* We have been thus particular in copying this description, because, in the systematic hostility, which some English journals pursue, to every thing American, it has recently been suggested, in the shape of a wonder, that the New World was not the original country of the potatoe., 'It is a singular fact,' we are told, that, in all the extent of territory traversed by Messrs. Humbolt and Bonpland, they neither met with, nor could hear of, the potatoe growing in its native wildness; nor had it been discovered in any part of America till very recently, when the authors of the Flora Peruviana are said to have found the common species (solanum tuberosum) growing in a wild state in the mountains of Chili, with a new and edible species larger than the common one.' Quarterly Review, No. xxxv. p. 141. Here are a mis-statement, a mistake, and a prevarication. The Flora Peruviana was not composed by authors,' but by a single individual: and, while the text refutes the assertion, that the potatoe was not, 'till very recently, discovered in any part of America,' another journal, published under the same roof with the one just quoted, will enable us to remove all the doubts, which are veiled under the words are said.' 'Don Joze Pavon, we are informed, the celebrated author of the Flora Peruviana, who resided many years in South America, says, 'the solanum tuberosum grows wild in the environs of Lima, in Peru, and fourteen leagues from Lima, on the coast. I have, also, found it wild in the kingdom of Chili.' The Indians cultivate it in great abundance in Peru and Chili, and call it papas. It is said, also, to have been found in the forest near Santa Fe de Bagola.' Journal of Science and the Arts, vol. v. p. 198.

From St. Jago the soldiers went by land to Havanna; whence they set sail, on the 18th of May, 1539; and, after a prosperous voyage of seven days, landed on the coast of Florida. The Indians of that day, it would seem, had a mode of transmitting intelligence by a rude kind of telegraph. The town, which De Soto first entered, was empty; and, he saw, along the coast,' we are told, many smokes, which the Indians had made, to give advice the one to the other.' Such fires were discovered by all the early voyagers; but, whether they were designed to communicate information, or merely to cook victuals, may not be perfectly certain.

'The towne,' says the historian, 'was of seven or eight houses. The Lorde's house stoode neere the shore, upon a verie hie mount, made by hand for strength. At another end of the town stood the church, and on the top of it stood a fowle, made of wood, with gilded eies.' Travellers are so prone to bestow the same name upon things, which have little in common, that we are at a loss to know what is here meant by the word church. As it is mentioned in conjunction with the Lord's house, it gives us the idea of a modern place of worship; but the mound, upon which the Lord's house stood, might have been the reason of associating the two things together; and this church, like the temple of Mexico, would thus be nothing more

than a structure of earth, or wood, or stone, with the symbols of worship upon the top.

Soon after De Soto's arrival, one of his foraging parties encountered a body of the natives, with a Spaniard, by the name of Ortez, who had been a captive among them, for more than nine years.* According to him, the Indians had a custom of depositing their dead in a sort of vault. When Ucita, upon the entreaty of his daughter, granted the life of his prisoner, he appointed him 'keeper of the temple: because that, by night, the wolves did carry the dead corpses out of the same.' What species of building this temple' was, we know not; but it seems, at any rate, to imply an improvement in tombs, of which our present Indians have no idea.

Ucita had, at length, determined to make a sacrafice of his captive; and it was only by the exertions of his daughter, that the design was frustrated. .Ortez escaped to Mocoço, the king of another nation; who received him with joy, and had always treated him with kindness. It is considered, we think, as something of a refinement in the English law, that heathen witnesses are made to swear according to their own principles of religious faith. Savages, in their rudest state, are seldom known to use oaths at all: and yet, if Ortez is to be believed, Mocoço 'caused him pre

* See postea, p. 262.