Grozvth pf the Mississippi Delta. — Upham. 105 
Black river, which would be the two inflowing" streams at 
nearly the distance mentioned from lake Pontchartrain. 
The little ships of Pineda's expedition therefore must be 
supposed, according to these maps, to have entered the Mis- 
sissippi by one of its outflowing navig"able bayous, which, be- 
fore the construction of levees, discharged a considerable part 
of the waters of the great river through lakes JMaurepas, 
Pontchartrain, and Borgne. The Indian town described at 
the mouth of the river may have been at the mouth of the 
bayou, that is, on or near lake Maurepas ; or it may have been 
near the chief place of outflow from the main river, which most 
probably then, as now, was at the Bayou Manchac, 117 miles- 
above the site of New Orleans by the course of the river, 
and 14 miles below Baton Rouge. There is no reason to dis- 
trust the statement that within six leagues thence up the Mis- 
sissippi the Spaniards observed forty groups of temporary or 
permanent Indian dwellings. If the ships only entered the 
mouth of the ba>'0u ( or of the Amite river, through which it 
sends its waters to the lake),- being- there careened and re- 
paired, it is casv to mfer that some of the Spaniards ascended 
the. Amite river and the Bayou Manchac in small boats to the 
Mississippi, noted the \\'idth of that mighty stream, sounded 
its great depth, and reported its Indian villages. The delta, 
jutting out as a long cape, was neglected by Pineda in his map- 
ping, which was accepted generally by cartographers. The 
chart of \>spucci's flrst \oyage, more truthful as to this river's 
embouchure, had been lost and forgotten. 
In 1528 one of the mouths of the ]Mississippi was seen in 
the forlorn last voyage of Pamphilo (or Panfilo) de Narvaez, 
who tried in vain to steni its current and enter it. All that 
we know of his fate is from the narrative of Cabeza de Vaca,^ 
one of the very few survivors from their shipwrecks, who, after 
eight years of hardships and wandering among the Indian 
tribes, reached the Spanish settlements in northwestern Mex- 
ico. No map, nor other information of this river, was re- 
ceived from that expedition. 
When De Soto, in his grand but disastrous expedition 
through the area of our southern states, had crossed the ]\Iis- 
sissippi in 1541, apparently near the site of Memphis, and the 
next year had died at an Indian town, Guachoya, near the 
mouth of the Arkansas river, his followers under their new 
