—De Soto, a Spaniard, discovers the Mississippi. He traveled, with six hundred men, through Georgia and Alabama, and fought a bloody battle with the Indians near Mobile. These Indians had a walled town of several thousand inhabitants. Thence he traveled west to the Mississippi and Red Rivers. He died at the mouth of the Red river, May 21, 1542. 1553—Persecution of the English Puritans commences. 1562—French Huguenots attempt a settlement in Florida. They gave the name Carolina to the coast on the north. The first colony is discouraged, and returns. In the year 1564 another Huguenot colony is founded on the River May. 1565—Melendez, a Spaniard, founds St. Augustine, September 8th, with five hundred colonists. It was the first permanent settlement in the United States. —Melendez destroys the French colony. 1567—The Chevalier Gouges (French) attacks St. Augustine, and puts to death two hundred Spaniards in retaliation. 1578—The first English settlement contemplated. Queen Elizabeth grants a patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert “to such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands as he should find in North America.” He makes two attempts to plant a colony—in 1579 and in 1583—fails in each, and perishes with his vessel, September 23, 1583. 1584—Sir Walter Raleigh receives a similar patent, and sends two vessels to the shores of Pamlico Sound. Queen Elizabeth names the country Virginia. 1585—Raleigh sends a colony to Roanoke Island, but it is unfortunate, and returns home. 1587—He sends another colony, but the Spanish Armada threatening England, he could not send it supplies for some time, and when visited, later, no trace of it could be found. Discouraged, he gives up his patent to a London company of merchants, who content themselves to trade with the Indians. 1602—Bartholomew Gosnold visits New England. 1603—Henry IV., King of France, grants Acadia (Nova Scotia) to Sieur de Monts, who founds a colony on the Bay of Fundy, at Port Royal in 1605. 1606—James I., King of England, establishes the London and Plymouth companies for settling North America. 1607—The Plymouth company land a colony at the mouth of the Kennebec river. It is unfortunate, and returns to England. —The London company send out an expedition, which, accidentally discovering Chesapeake Bay, enter, and found a colony on James River, at Jamestown. The romantic Captain John Smith was one of the colonists. This was the first permanent English settlement in North America. 1608—Smith seeking, by orders from the London company, a passage to the Pacific ocean, up the Chickahominy, is taken prisoner by the Indians, condemned to death, and saved by Pocahontas. —Quebec founded by the French under Champlain.