104 
The American Geologist. August, loou'. 
feature of its embouchure. Vespucci sailed past this delta 
early in the year 1498, surveying the mouths of the river from 
the masthead, or ver\- likely entering the river and spending 
some time there ; but we have no record of it, excepting the 
general and in this part vague account of the voyage, as writ- 
ten b> Vespucci, and the map by Waldseemiiller showing the 
projecting delta and three chief passes and mouths of the 
Mississippi. 
Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, in 1519, led an expedition of 
three or four sailing vessels to explore the northern coast of 
the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting map, transmitted to Spain, 
gives a somewhat correctly proportioned outline of the en- 
tire gulf, with Florida, Cuba, and Yucatan inclosing it on the 
east; and the Mississippi is named Rio del Espiritu Santo (Ri- 
ver of the Holy Spirit). In Harrisse's Discovery of Xorth 
America (1(892^ p. 168), a translation from the contemporary 
Spanish account of this expedition says, concerning the 
Mississippi, that the ships "entered a river which was 
found to be very, large and very deep, at the mouth of 
which they say they found an extensive town, where they re- 
mained forty days and careened their vessels. The natives 
treated our men in a friendly manner, trading with them, and 
giving what they possessed. The Spaniards ascended a dis- 
tance of six leagues up the river, and saw on its banks, 
right and left, forty villages." 
Pineda's map shows the Mississippi as if it had a wide 
mouth, growing wider like a bay in going inland, and it has 
no representation of the delta ; but this river and the several 
others tributary to the gulf are all mapped only at their mouths. 
\\niat he meant for the Mississippi is more clearly indicated 
by the map sent to Spain by Cortes and published there in 
1524, which shows the Rio del Espiritu Santo flowing through 
two lakes close to its mouth, evidently intended to represent 
lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne. The same delineation of the 
lower Mississippi is given also by the Turin map, of about the 
year 1523. Both these maps, doubtless based on information 
supplied by Pineda, display the course of the ^^lississippi above 
lake Pontchartrain to a distance of apparently at least a hun- 
dred miles, where it is represented as formed by three con- 
fluent streams. Through questioning the Indians, he probably 
learned of the Red river, and of its northern tributary, the 
