He became so exhilarated, however, at Cape Horn, that he kept on, like the man with the cork leg, and went all around the world, being its first circumventor, and giving the first proof of the gyrating effects of mixing liquors with water. De Soto first chanced upon the Mississippi River, and, in 1542, was flung upon it with all his heavy armor on,—“a sink-or-swim” experiment, which resulted in his remaining down at the bottom. Diving for wrecks has since become for divers and diverse reasons common in that turbulent stream; but he is honored as the great diver; the river not being strong enough to get him up. John Law afterwards tried a Mississippi venture; but, unlike De Soto, he went up, and never came down again. Both De Leon and De Soto showed true American enterprise and energy in the pursuit of gold. Like their countryman Cortez, in Mexico, they were, however, more desirous of discovering metallic placers, and extracting from them sudden riches, than of luring by patient industry from a jealous soil its hoarded secrets of cereal wealth. On the north, Cartier, in 1534, became the unhappy discoverer of the Canadas, and other out-lying, uncovered, cold regions, afterwards parcelled out, not to ice companies like the Knickerbocker and others, but into viceroyalties. These freezing places, from the continual stirring about in them of such contrary elements for the succeeding century, might well be called the ice-creameries of England and France. Champlain, in 1603, like a wise man, founded Quebec on a rock; for which he has been illy requited by being called the father of the French settlements in Canada. [Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH INTRODUCES SMOKING TO THE ENGLISH COURT. (p. 74) ]