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It was the spring of 1792. The Spaniard Elisa of Nootka had for a year kept his pilot Narvaez, in a crazy little schooner crowded with thirty sailors, charting north-east past the harbour of Victoria, through Haro Strait, following very much the same channel that steamers follow to-day as they ply between Victoria and Vancouver.
With him were some Indian guides and a negro named Estevanico, or Stephen, who had been one of the survivors of the Narvaez expedition to Florida and had travelled for years among the Indians of the north. He was expected to be of great assistance.
On returning to the shore, he missed his ships, and after traveling westward on foot for a month, built five rude vessels, and once more put to sea. For six weeks the little fleet hugged the shore, till it came to the mouth of the Mississippi, where two of the boats were upset and Narvaez was drowned. The rest reached the coast of Texas in safety.
In one swoop Narvaez lost power, position and one eye, which had been knocked out during the contest, and Cortes found his following reinforced by so great a number and quality that he had never dreamed of such a thing. "You are, indeed, fortunate," said Narvaez to his conqueror, "in having captured me." "It is," said Cortes carelessly, "the least of the things I have done in Mexico!"
Nevertheless, they made a stout resistance. To add to the difficulties of the shrewd and valiant leader, a Spanish force was sent from the West Indies, under Narvaez, to supplant him. This force he defeated, and captured their chief. In 1520 Cortes gained over the Mexicans, at Otumba, a victory which was decisive in its consequences.
They gave him a chance to recuperate, to get something to eat, and to dress the wounds of his men. All the Spaniards wanted was time to bring about the inevitable downfall of Mexico and the Mexicans. Among the men who had followed Narvaez was a Negro who had brought with him the germs of small-pox, which were communicated to the Aztecs in the city.
Hernando de Soto landed first at Tampa Bay in Florida, and after a short excursion into the country, wintered at Ana-ica Apalache, an Indian town on Apalachee Bay, the same at which Panfilo de Narvaez had beaten his spurs into nails to make the boats in which he and most of his men perished.
Three expeditions to that country had already been tried: one undertaken in 1512, by Juan Ponce de Leon, formerly a companion of Columbus; another in 1520, by Vasquez de Allyon; and another by Panphilo de Narvaez. All of these had signally failed, the bones of most of the leaders and their followers having been left to bleach upon the soil they had come to conquer.
All this the peasant heard, and from it he understood at last what was the matter with his neighbour, so he began calling aloud, "Open, your worships, to Senor Baldwin and to Senor the Marquis of Mantua, who comes badly wounded, and to Senor Abindarraez, the Moor, whom the valiant Rodrigo de Narvaez, the Alcaide of Antequera, brings captive."
Thus Mendizábal, Espartero, Serrano, Narvaez, the Queen of Ferdinand VII., Cristina, and many other persons appear in the books, giving one the impression that history is alive, and not the record of long-dead actors we are accustomed to find it.
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