In all other enlightened pursuits which the world then knew, Spain's sons were making remarkable progress here. In geography, natural history, natural philosophy, and other sciences they were as truly the pioneers of America as they had been in discovery. It is a startling fact that so early as 1579 a public autopsy on the body of an Indian was held at the University of Mexico, to determine the nature of an epidemic which was then devastating New Spain. It is doubtful if by that time they had got so far in London itself. And in still extant books of the same period we find plans for repeating firearms, and a plain hint of the telephone! The first printing-press did not reach the English colonies of America until 1638,--nearly one hundred years behind Mexico. The whole world came very slowly to newspapers; and the first authentic newspaper in its history was published in Germany in 1615. The first one in England began in 1622; and the American colonies never had one until 1704. The "Mercurio Volante" (Flying Mercury), a pamphlet which printed news, was running in the City of Mexico before 1693. When the ill reports of Coronado had largely been forgotten, there began another Spanish movement into New Mexico and Arizona. In the mean time there had been very important doings in Florida. The many failures in that unlucky land had not deterred the Spaniards from further attempts to colonize it. At last, in 1560, the first permanent foothold was effected there by Aviles de Menendez, a brutal Spaniard, who nevertheless had the honor of founding and naming the oldest city in the United States,--St. Augustine, 1560. Menendez found there a little colony of French-Huguenots, who had wandered thither the year before under Ribault; and those whom he captured he hanged, with a placard saying that they were executed "not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." Two years later, the French expedition of Dominique de Gourges captured the three Spanish forts which had been built there, and hanged the colonists "not as Spaniards, but as assassins,"--which was a very neat revenge in rhetoric, if an unpraiseworthy one in deed. In 1586 Sir Francis Drake, whose piratical proclivities have already been alluded to, destroyed the friendly colony of St. Augustine; but it was at once rebuilt. In 1763 Florida was ceded to Great Britain by Spain, in exchange for Havana, which Albemarle had captured the year before. It is also interesting to note that the Spaniards had been to Virginia nearly thirty years before Sir Walter Raleigh's attempt to establish a colony there, and full half a century before Capt. John Smith's visit. As early as 1556 Chesapeake Bay was known to the Spaniards as the Bay of Santa Maria; and an unsuccessful expedition had been sent to colonize the country.