Sidenote: De Soto follows Narvaez. Early in the summer of 1539 Hernando de Soto, the favorite of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru (1532), anchored his fleet in the bay of Espiritu Santo, Florida, determined to gain independent renown as the conqueror of the North American wilds. His was a much larger and better-equipped party than had subjugated either Mexico or Peru. But he met the fate of Narvaez. False Indian guides led him hither and thither through the swamps and moss-grown jungles of the Gulf region, and the survivors formed a sorry company indeed when the Mississippi River was reached (April, 1541),--probably at the lowest Chickasaw Bluff,--after two years of fruitless wandering. The next winter, still betrayed by his savage guides and harassed by attacks from other natives, he spent upon the Washita, but despairing of reaching Mexico by land, he returned to the Mississippi, where he died of swamp-fever (May 21, 1542). The great river he had discovered was his tomb. His wretched followers, by this time much reduced in numbers, descended the stream, and after great hardships finally reached the Mexican coast-settlements in September. 10. Spanish Colonies (1492-1687). Sidenotes: Spanish friars in the southwest. Spain's American possessions at close of sixteenth century. A half century had now passed since the advent of Columbus in the Bahamas; yet upon the mainland to the north, Spain as yet held neither harbor, fort, nor settlement. In the southwest, the proximity of Mexico and the milder character of the natives made it easier to maintain a settlement in what is now United States territory. In 1582, forty years after Coronado's march, Franciscan friars opened missions in the valleys of the Rio Grande and the Gila,--the Cibola of old. Sixteen years later (1598) Santa Fé was established as the seat of Spanish power in the north; by 1630 this power was at its highest in New Mexico and Arizona, fifty missions administering religious instruction to ninety Pueblo towns. In 1687 the chain of missions had reached the Gulf of California, and then slowly extended northward along the Pacific coast till San Francisco, with its system of Indian vassalage, was established in 1776. In Florida, after the extermination of the French Huguenot colony in 1564, Spain made wholesale claims to all that region; but De Gourgues dealt her settlements a staggering blow, and she seemed thereafter incapable of further colonizing the province. At the close of the sixteenth century Spain held but few points in what is now the United States,--Santa Fé in New Mexico, a few scattering missions along the Gila and Rio Grande, and St. Augustine in Florida. 11. The French in North America (1524-1550). Sidenotes: The French enter the field. Cartier at Montreal; and Quebec.