De Soto

De Soto, FERNANDO, Spanish discoverer, born at Jeres de los Cavalleros, in Estremadura, about 1496, of a good but impoverished family, accompanied Pedrarias Davila to Darien in 1519, served on the expedition to Nicaragua in 1527, and afterwards assisted Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, returning to Spain with a fortune of 'an hundred and fourscore thousand ducats.' Charles V. now gave him permission to conquer Florida at his own expense, and appointed him governor of Cuba ; and in 1538 he sailed from San Lucar with a richly equipped company of 600 men, 24 ecclesiastics, and 20 officers. The fleet anchored in the bay of Espiritu Santo (now Tampa Bay) on 25th May 1539 ; the ships were sent back to Cuba, and the long search for gold was begun. For three years, harassed by hostile Indians, lured onward by reports of wealth that lay beyond, the ever-decreasing company continued their toilsome march over a route that cannot now be very clearly traced. In 1541 the Mississippi was reached and crossed, and the third winter was spent on Washita River. Returning to the Mississippi in the spring, De Soto, worn out by disappointments, died of a fever on its banks in June 1542 ; and that his death might be concealed from the Indians, his body, wrapped in a cloak, was lowered at midnight into the waters of the great stream he had discovered. In the following year his companions, reduced to half their original number, sailed down the river in seven frail boats, and finally reached the town of Panuco, in Mexico. See Lives by Wilmer (Phila. 1858), Abbott (N.Y. 1874), and Shipp (Phila. 1881).