272 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



which went by land were one hundred and fifty horsemen ^" 

 De Soto and his company reached Havannah in March, 1539, 

 and on May 30th they landed in Florida. " They set on land 

 two hundred and thirteen horses, which they brought with 

 them, to unburden the ships that they might draw less water^." 

 The horses were weak with travelling upon the sea. It was 

 not the first time that horses had been in Florida, for in 1525 

 Allyon had sailed thither with six ships, carrying five hundred 

 men and between eighty and ninety horses, but the expedition 

 met wath nothing but disaster and the remnant got back to 

 San Domingo. In 1527 preparations were made in Spain for 

 a fresh expedition to Florida. Pamphilo de Narvaez set sail 

 from San Lucar in 1527, and after wintering at Cuba he landed 

 in 1528 at Santa Cruz in Florida, He and his comrades were 

 reduced to great straits and had to kill a horse for food every 

 third day, while they were constructing at Baya de Caballos 

 frail vessels in which they hoped to reach the Spanish settle- 

 ments, but most of them were lost at sea. 



De Soto's men discovered the site of Narvaez' camp at 

 Alpaca and found there skulls of horses^. The horses brought by 

 Narvaez cannot then have contributed any element towards the 

 equine population of America. After three years' wanderings, 

 in which he committed the most wanton cruelties on the 

 Indians, de Soto reached the Mississippi, which he crossed 

 about lat. 35° N. in 1541. " He desired to send news of himself 

 to Cuba that some supply of men and horses might be sent 

 unto him." By this time he had lost two hundred and fifty 

 men and one hundred and fifty horses*. He wintered in 

 Autiamque and in the next year (1542) he departed from 

 it to see Nilco, which the Indians said was near the great 

 river, "with determination to come to the sea and procure some 

 succour of men and horses, for he had now but three hundred 

 men-of-war and forty horses, some of them lame, which did 

 nothing but help to make up the number : and for w^ant of iron 

 they had gone above a year unshod, and because they were 

 used to it in the plain country, it did them no great harm^" 



1 Hakluyt, op. cit. p. 21. 2 jbid. p. 25. 3 j?,,^. p. 43. 



^ Ibid. pp. 111-12. 5 Ibid. p. 115. 



