34 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



Ocali (now Ocala, Marion County), the cacique, Vitachuco, 

 met and fought the Spanish invaders, but of course was 

 utterly routed by the superior Aveapons and discipline of 

 his foes. 



De Soto marched on through Florida into Alabama, his 

 troops meeting hardships, death by arrows, death by dis- 

 ease, starvation, fatigue ; but no gold. Then, while at the 

 Indian village of Mawvilla (presumably Mobile), their 

 leader heard that not far away, at Ochuse, now Pensacola, 

 his shij)S were waiting his arrival ; but so infatuated, so 

 resolute to find gold or die, was this fated soldier, that he 

 carefully kept the news from his many followers, and 

 straightway led them further into the interior. And there, 

 less than four years after his enthusiastic- landing at Tampa 

 Bay, with his thousand troopers, Fernando De Soto, one 

 of the most brilliant soldiers of his time, was laid to rest 

 beneath the waters of the Mississippi River, lest, if buried 

 on land, his Indian foes should find the grave, and, freed 

 from their fear of the great warrior, destroy his followers. 

 This sad duty performed, the disheartened remnant of 

 the expedition started on the march for Mexico, three 

 hundred and eleven survivors out of a thousand having 

 marched five hundred miles and wasted four years of their 

 lives for no result. 



And so closed the third scene in Florida's history, leav- 

 ing her just w^here Juan Ponce De Leon had found her 

 thirty years before, except indeed that her soil was the 

 richer for Spanish blood and Spanish bones. 



And now one would have thought that at last the adven- 

 turous Spaniards would have been content to abandon 

 Florida to its fate. 



But the fact is, that those rugged old soldiers of by- 

 gone days were very much as we find the human family at 

 the present time : each one thought himself smarter than 



