Here they were obviously prepared, to make a desperate resistance. Night came on, dark and chill. The Spaniards bivouacked on the open plain, awaiting the morning, when, with but about seven hundred men, they were to assail eight thousand warriors, very strongly posted on bluffs, with a deep and rapid river flowing at their feet. The Indians gave the Spaniards no repose. During the darkness they were continually passing the river at different points in their canoes, and then uniting in one band, with hideous outcries assailing the weary travellers. The military genius of De Soto successfully beat them off through the night. He then intrenched himself so as to bid defiance to their attacks, and employed one hundred of his most skilful workmen in building, under the concealment of a neighboring grove, two very large flat boats. Twelve days passed before these barges were finished. By the aid of men and horses, they were brought to the river and launched. In the morning, before the dawn, ten mounted horsemen and forty footmen embarked in each boat, the footmen to ply the oars as vigorously as possible in the rapid passage of the river to a designated spot, where the horsemen were immediately to spur their steeds upon the shore, and with their sabres open a passage for the rest of the troops. De Soto was anxious to pass in the first boat, but his followers entreated him not to expose his life, upon which everything depended, to so great a peril. The moment the boats were dimly seen by the watchful natives, a signal war-whoop rang along the bank for miles. Five hundred warriors rushed to the menaced spot, to prevent the landing. Such a shower of arrows was thrown upon the boat that every man was more or less wounded. The moment the bows touched the beach, the steel-clad horsemen plunged upon the foe, and cut their way through them with blood-dripping sabres. Other native warriors were however hurrying to the assistance of their comrades. In the meantime the boats had with great rapidity recrossed the river, and brought over another detachment of eighty men with De Soto himself at their head. After a sanguinary conflict the Spaniards obtained complete possession of the landing place. Though unimportant skirmishes were kept up through the day, the remaining troops were without difficulty brought across the river. At nightfall not an Indian was to be seen. They had all withdrawn and fortified themselves with palisades in a neighboring swamp.