swollen torrents, harrassed on every hand by enraged savages, but with hopes inspired, amid all embarrassments, by the ignis fatuus of early adventurers—the El Dorado of North America—he stood upon the banks of the Mississippi, the discoverer of the most majestic river in the world. Crossing this, where the southern boundary of Tennessee touches it, as though it had been a swamped rain, he pressed his vain search for the “gold region,” westward through cane-brakes, marshes and tangled forests, perplexed by the murmurings of his followers, until he reached the head waters of the Arkansas, where Fort Gibson was afterwards located, within one hundred miles of the southern boundary of Kansas. Looking out upon the broad expanse of prairie before him, he saw no prospect of the “land of hope.” Disappointed and disheartened, the little band of adventurers returned to the banks of the Mississippi. There, on the wet lands of the bottoms, surrounded by weeds and cane-brakes, with no one to administer to the sympathies and wants of the sick, De Soto died of fever. “Thus perished,” says Bancroft, “Ferdinand De Soto, the governor of Cuba, the successful associate of Pizarro. His miserable end was the more observed from the greatness of his former prosperity. His soldiers pronounced his eulogy by grieving for his loss; the priests chanted over his body the first requiems that were ever heard on the waters of the Mississippi. To conceal his death, his body was wrapped in a mantle, and, in the stillness of midnight, was sunk in the middle of the stream. The discoverer of the Mississippi slept beneath its waters. He had crossed a large part of the continent in search of gold, and found nothing so remarkable as a burial place.” His followers reduced in numbers to three hundred and eleven, after long wanderings, reached a place of safety in Mexico.[1]
- ↑ Some writers discredit the account of De Soto's journey, but I have followed the readings of Bancroft and Schoolcraft. The latter has been over the country west of the Mississippi, and finds it to corroborate the description of it in the alleged account of De Soto's journey.
