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Updated: May 1, 2025
No farther attempt appears to have been made towards the conquest and settlement of Florida by the Spaniards, till the year 1528, when Panfilo de Narvaez made a most disastrous expedition to that country, which will form the subject of the ensuing section of this chapter; except that about the year 1525, the licentiate Luke Vasquez de Ayllon sailed with three ships for that country from Santiago in the island of Hispaniola . Vasquez arrived with his small armament at Cape Santa Elena in Florida, where he found an Indian town called Oritza; since named Chicora by the Spaniards, and another town in the neighbourhood called Guale, to which the Spaniards have given the name of Gualdape.
We must send him home with such a report that no others of his kind will visit this coast again. She had everything arranged for that." The Egret settled to her nest again and the Pelican went on with the story. "In the spring of the year Ayllon came loafing up the Florida coast with two brigantines and a crew of rascally adventurers, looking for slaves and gold.
The best were along the Savannah River where some of my people had had a rookery since any of them could remember. Ayllon discovered the pearls when he came up from Hispaniola looking for slaves, but it was an evil day for him when he came again to fill his pockets with them, for by that time the lady of Cofachique was looking for Ayllon." "For Soto, you mean," said the Snowy Egret,
"If she so much as looked at you and her glance caught your eye, then you had to do what she said, whether you liked it or not. But most of her people liked obeying her, for she was as wise as she was terrible. That was why she did not kill Lucas de Ayllon at the pearling place as the Cacique wished her to do. 'If we kill him, said the Chief Woman, 'others will come to avenge him.
Another explorer, De Ayllon, sailed north of Florida, seeking a sacred stream which was said to possess the same enchanted powers. A third, De Narvaez, went far into the country, with more men than Cortez led to the conquest of Mexico, but after months of wandering only a handful of his men returned, and not a grain of gold was found to pay for their suffering.
Nine years later he attempted to plant a colony in Florida; the Indians attacked him fiercely; he was mortally wounded, and died soon afterwards in Cuba. The voyages of Garay and Vasquez de Ayllon threw new light on the discoveries of Ponce, and the general outline of the coasts of Florida became known to the Spaniards.
"At a signal," she went on, "when the Spaniards were lolling after dinner with their iron shirts half off, and the guns stacked on the sand, the Indians fell upon them with terrible slaughter. Ayllon got away to his ships with a few of his men, but there were not boats enough for all of them, and they could not swim in their armor.
Ayllon was hoping to find this passage when he put in at Hampton Roads, just as Hudson hoped to find it, eighty-five years afterward, when he entered the harbor of New York Hudson, who in a later voyage, sought it once more in Hudson Bay, and perished miserably there, set adrift in an open boat and abandoned by his own mutinous sailors. I. Men from Asia and from Norway.
"I showed the Adelantado the god-house with its dead Caciques all stuffed with pearls, and the warrior-house where the arms of Ayllon were laid up for a trophy. It would have been well for him to be contented with these things.
"But even there, I think, the Cacica's thought followed him. A storm came up out of the Gulf, black with thunder and flashing green fire. The ships were undermanned, for the sailors, too, had been ashore feasting. One of the brigantines but not the one which carried Ayllon staggered awhile in the huge seas and went under."
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