I THE VOYAGE OF VESPUCCI PAST THE MOUTHS OF THE MISSISSIPPI According to the historical researches set forth in this first paper of a series on the discoveries and explorations of the Mississippi in various portions of its course, the river appears to have been earliest discovered and mapped at its mouth in a voyage of Pinzon and Solis, with Amerigo Vespucci as astronomer and cartographer, probably in March or April, 1498, less than six years from the first landfall of Columbus. Twenty-one years then passed before the Mississippi was next seen in the voyage of Pineda, in 1519, being reached by ascending a bayou from Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas. In 1528 one of the mouths of the Mississippi was seen in the forlorn last voyage of Narvaez; and in 1541 the river was crossed far above its mouth, by the ambitious but ill-fated expedition of De Soto, and after his death it was descended by the survivors in boats to the Gulf. Four times within a period of forty-three years, the Spaniards reached by sea and by land the lower part of the Mississippi. They sought gold or silver in vain, and the extreme disasters of the last two expeditions caused them to abandon their purpose of planting colonies and making this region a part of New Spain. The entire river, excepting its sources, was to be explored and owned by others, but much later, for acquiring wealth by commerce, and for extending the dominion of France. More than a hundred years after De Soto, the Mississippi was re-discovered by Europeans, this time in its upper course, when Groseilliers and Radisson in 1655, with many Indian canoes, ascended it from near the Wisconsin river to Prairie Island, if I have rightly understood the narrative of Radisson; and they crossed it higher, at or near the site of Minneapolis, in 1660, when they went to visit the Prairie Sioux at the farthest limit of their second western expedition. Halfway in time between De Soto and these men, a Spanish expedition under Oñate, coming from New Mexico in 1601, probably reached the Mississippi near the mouth of the Arkansas river; but we have only scanty records of this exploration, which some have ascribed to the year 1662, following a fictitious narrative that would make Peñalosa the leader.