The exact route that De Soto followed is in many places hard to determine. He wandered through Florida and Georgia, probably into South Carolina and Tennessee, and perhaps as far as North Carolina,--then he turned southward and approached Mobile Bay. On this southward march was carried the Indian chief Tuscaloosa. At Mauvila, or Mabila, near Mobile Bay, a desperate battle took place in October, 1540, between Tuscaloosa’s warriors and the Spaniards. The Spaniards bought victory with the loss of eighty men and forty horses, which could ill be spared. They lost not only forces but hope. From that time De Soto’s wanderings seem to have been animated by a dogged resolution not to return without honor and treasure. He learned that his men planned, as soon as they reached the Bay of Pensacola, then less than a hundred miles away, to give up the expedition. Swiftly he resolved that they should not reach Pensacola. Instead of going toward the coast and the ships containing supplies, he set his face to the wilderness and marched northward. “He determined to send no news of himself until he should have discovered a rich country,” says an old annalist. “He was an inflexible man and dry of word,” wrote one who knew him, “who, although he liked to know what the others all thought and had to say, after he once said a thing he did not like to be opposed; and as he ever acted as he thought best, all bent to his will.... There was none who would say a thing to him after it became known that he had made up his mind.” Traveling to the northwest, in May, 1541, he reached “a deep and very furious” river, so wide that “a man standing on the farther shore could not be told whether he was a man or not.” This was the Mississippi, the Father of Waters. The Spaniards made boats and crossed the river and continued their wanderings on the other side, going northward nearly to the Missouri River. Month after month they sought gold; at last they turned southward from the vain search. On the homeward journey, De Soto was taken ill. He faced death as fearlessly as he had met every foe before. He bade farewell to his men, thanked them for their loyalty and faith to him, and advised them as to the choice of a leader to take his place. The Spaniards did not wish the Indians, to whom they had represented themselves as immortal, to know that death had overtaken their great captain. Therefore, in the dead of night they sunk his body in the Father of Waters, near the junction of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. After wandering about for several months, they constructed frail vessels and trusted themselves to the stream. They reached the mouth of the river and made their way along the coast until the remnant left by disease and warfare arrived at a Spanish settlement in Mexico. John Cabot The Discoverer of the Continent of North America