374 DeCandolle’s Origin of Cultivated Plants. 
able, that the enthusiasm of Columbus would have been so 
In July, 1528, Cabeca de Vaca found, near Tampa Bay, in 
orida, “maize, beans and pumpkins in great plenty, and 
beginning to be fit for gathering.” In 1535-6, when passing 
_ through Texas, the Indians supplied him with prickly pears 
and, occasionally, maize; but after crossing “a great river 
coming from the north "—probably the Rio Grande—he and 
his companions came to a region having “fine dwellings of 
civilization, whose inhabitants lived on beans and pumpkins — 
and, when the.season was not too dry for raising it, maize 
(Relacion, 1542; transl. by B. Smith, 1871). 
- In the summer and autumn of 1539, De Soto found the 
chestnuts” (Oviedo, lib. xvii, cc. 24, 28; True Relation, es 
Ahr of Elwas; transl. by Buckingham Smith, pp. 45, 
, 285). Oviedo writes “ calabagas,” but the author of the 
the method by which the Indians hastened the germination of 
the seeds of these “citrouilles du pays,” and “raise them with 
great ease.” 
Lahontan (Nowy. Voyages, 1708, ii, 61) describes the Citrouilles ee 
of (southern) Canada—‘sweet, and of a different kind from 
