An Indian race, the Choctaw, gave the name to the river and bay, and thus to the present city; for _Maubila_, or “paddling” Indians, long occupied what is now South Alabama, and their language was in later days the trade jargon from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Their primitive manner of living was interrupted about three centuries and a half ago. The West Indies then became Spanish, and the mainland was explored in all directions for colonization. A map of 1513, attributed to Columbus, shows many indentations on the north coast of the Mexican Gulf, then without a name, and the only one of them with a river (Rio de la Palma) resembles Mobile Bay. From time to time afterwards a score of other maps, with gradually increasing distinctness, develop the true outline. On them the principal feature of the north coast is a pear-shaped bay within the shore-line, into which empty one or more rivers called Rio del Espiritu Santo, or some variation of that name. It is first distinct on the map which Governor Garay of Jamaica sent home, as showing Piñeda’s exploration of Florida in 1519. Some have thought this the Mississippi River, with a total disregard of the fact that the delta of that great river projects out into the Gulf, while this bay is within the coast. We have to wait a century and a half before there is any account of the exploration of the Mississippi mouth; and meantime, dozens of maps show the bay or river of the Holy Spirit. It is, on the map, the most prominent object on the north coast of the Gulf, corresponding to Panuco (Tampico) on the west. Spanish ships visited it, and some explorers have left descriptions. Narvaez possibly wintered in it on his disastrous voyage of 1528, and a French tradition was that piles of bones on Dauphine Island were remains of his men. Here, or in Pensacola Bay, De Soto’s admiral, Maldonado, waited for De Soto, and here he certainly touched later in search of his lost master. The famous expedition of De Soto crossed the Mobile River basin at right angles, but the itinerary is uncertain. The Spaniards did not care enough to map it intelligently, and the Indians, according to the proverb, could tell no tales. It is doubtful, indeed, if De Soto came much within a hundred miles of the present site of Mobile, although early French tradition makes him to have crossed somewhere near the later settlement of Mobile Indians, about Mount Vernon landing.