But Mexico and Peru were already won. When, therefore, the Spaniards began to look about them for new worlds to conquer, their eyes fell upon Florida. It is true that all those who had set forth upon this errand met with nothing but disaster.[8] A spell seemed hanging over this land of flowers. The Spaniards had indeed, with much pomp, planted a cross, strangely proclaiming themselves masters of the country; yet, without power to hold a foot of ground, this cross stood a monument to their failures, as its inscription seemed an epitaph to their presumption. FOOTNOTES [1] LEVER OF ARCHIMEDES. The saying attributed to this celebrated mathematician of ancient times, that if they would give him a fulcrum for his lever he would move the world, is often employed in one or another sense as a figure of speech. [2] POPE ALEXANDER VI. confirmed the act of partition by a special decree, called a bull. [3] ANTILLES, an early name of the West Indies. [4] TERRA FIRMA, literally meaning firm land; a name first used by the Spaniards to distinguish the American continent, or that part first discovered, from the West India Islands. [5] CHRISTIAN NAME, from its discovery on Easter Sunday, _Pascha Floridum_—Flowery Easter. [6] BURNING ONE'S SHIPS has passed into a proverb often used to illustrate some act of extraordinary hardihood, by which one puts it out of his power to draw back from an undertaking. Cortez only followed the example of the Emperor Julian in ancient Rome, and of William the Conqueror in England. [7] SOUTH SEA. The Pacific Ocean was so first called. [8] DISASTER befell the attempt of Narvaez upon Florida in 1528. Look it up. DE SOTO'S DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.[1] "_One may buy gold at too dear a price._"—_Spanish._ If we look at the earliest Spanish maps on which the Gulf of Mexico is laid down, not only do we find the delta of a great river put in the place where we would expect to see, on our maps of to-day, the Mississippi making its triumphal entry into the sea, but the map-makers have even given it a name—Rio del Espiritu Santo—meaning, in their language, the River of the Holy Ghost. [Illustration: FRENCH MAP OF 1542. FROM JOMARD.]