Five years before his Florida expedition he had been appointed, with a large naval and land force under his command, by Velasquez, governor of Cuba, to supersede Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, and to send him in chains to Havana, to answer charges of insubordination to the authority of Velasquez. But Cortez was not the man to be thus superseded. Never did his genius for great enterprises make a more striking display than by the measures he adopted and executed in this emergency. By them he converted that threatening expedition into one of succor for himself, embracing every supply, soldiers included, he required to complete his conquests. Of this great achievement the defeat of the incompetent Narvaez was only an incident. No labored comparison of conqueror and vanquished could present a more striking contrast between them than that suggested by their first interview. “Esteem it,” said Narvaez, “great good fortune that you have taken me captive.” “It is the least of the things I have done in Mexico,” replied Cortez, a sarcasm aimed at the incapacity of Narvaez, apart from the gains of the victor. The fruits of the expedition to Narvaez were the loss of his left eye, shackles, imprisonment, banishment, and the humiliation of kneeling to his conqueror and attempting to kiss his hand. To the Aztec the result was the introduction of a scourge that no surrender could placate, no submission, however absolute and abject, could stay, and, therefore, more pitiless than the sword of Cortez—the small-pox. After leaving Mexico, Narvaez appeared before the Emperor Charles V., to accuse Cortez of treason, and to petition for a redress of his own wrongs, but the dazzling success of Cortez, to say nothing of his large remittances to the royal treasury, was an effectual answer to every charge. The emperor, however, healed the wounded pride, and silenced the complaints of the prosecutor by a commission with the aforementioned sonorous titles to organize an expedition for a new conquest, by which he might compensate himself for the loss of the treasures and empire of Montezuma, which he had so disastrously failed to snatch from the iron grasp of Cortez. The preparations to execute this commission having been made by providing a fleet, a land force, consisting of men-at-arms and cavalry, as well as the necessary supplies, Narvaez, in April, 1528, sailed for the Florida coast, and landed at or near Tampa bay. Having resolved on a westward movement, he ordered his fleet to sail along the coast, whilst he, by rather a circuitous march, would advance in the same direction. This parting was at once final and fatal. He again reached the Gulf, somewhere in the neighborhood of St. Marks, with his command woefully wasted and diminished by toil, battle and disease; and, as can well be imagined, with his dreams of avarice and dominion rudely dispelled.