crossed to the shores of the Rappahannock. They were received with seeming friendship, and erected a rude chapel; but the Indians soon showed a hostile spirit, and ultimately massacred all the party except an Indian boy. When Menendez returned to Florida from Spain in 1572, he sailed to the Chesapeake, and endeavored to secure Don Luis and his brother; but they fled. He captured eight Indians known to have taken part in the murder of the missionaries, and hanged them at the yard-arm of his vessel.[898] From this time Menendez gave little personal attention to the affairs of Florida, being elsewhere engaged by the King; and he died at Santander, in Spain, Sept. 17, 1574, when about to take command of an immense fleet which Philip II. was preparing. With his death Florida, where his nephew Pedro Menendez Marquez[899] had acted as governor, languished. Indian hostilities increased, San Felipe was invested, abandoned, and burned, and soon after the Governor himself was slain.[900] St. Augustine was finally burned by Drake. CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. OUR account of the voyages of Ponce de Leon is mainly from the _cédulas_ to him and official correspondence, correcting Herrera,[901] who is supposed by some to have had the explorer’s diary, now lost. Oviedo[902] mentions Bimini[903] as forty leagues from Guanahani. The modern edition[904] of Oviedo is vague and incorrect; and gives Ponce de Leon two caravels, but has no details. Gomara[905] is no less vague. Girava records the discovery, but dates it in 1512.[906] As early as 1519 the statement is found that the Bay of Juan Ponce had been visited by Alaminos, while accompanying Ponce de Leon,[907]—which must refer to this expedition of 1513. The “Traza de las costas” given by Navarrete (and reproduced by Buckingham Smith),[908] with the Garay patent of 1521, would seem to make Apalache Bay the western limit of the discoveries of Ponce de Leon, of whose expedition and of Alaminos’s no report is known. Peter Martyr[909] alludes to it, but only incidentally, when treating of Diego Velasquez. Barcia, in his _Ensayo cronológico_,[910] writing specially on Florida, seems to have had neither of the patents of Ponce de Leon, and no reports; and he places the discovery in 1512 instead of 1513.[911] Navarrete[912] simply follows Herrera. In the unfortunate expedition of Cordova Bernal Diaz was an actor, and gives us a witness’s testimony;[913] and it is made the subject of evidence in the suit in 1536 between the Pinzon and Colon families.[914] The general historians treat it in course.[915] The main authority for the first voyage of Garay is the royal letters patent,[916] the documents which are given by Navarrete[917] and in the _Documentos inéditos_,[918] as well as the accounts given in Peter Martyr,[919] Gomara,[920] and Herrera.[921]