Note 982 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

Bancroft, United States, i. 51; Pickett, Alabama, vol. i.; Martin’s Louisiana, i. 12; Nuttall’s Travels into Arkansas (1819), p. 248; Fairbanks’s History of Florida, chap. v.; Ellicott’s Journal, p. 125; Belknap, American Biography, i. 192. [Whether this passage of the Mississippi makes De Soto its discoverer, or whether Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his wandering is to be interpreted as bringing him, first of Europeans, to its banks, when on the 30th of October, 1528, he crossed one of its mouths, is a question in dispute, even if we do not accept the view that Alonzo de Pineda found its mouth in 1519 and called it Rio del Espiritu Santo (Navarrete, iii. 64). The arguments pro and con are examined by Rye in the Hakluyt Society’s volume. Cf., besides the authorities above named, French’s Historical Collections of Louisiana; Sparks’s Marquette; Gayarré’s Louisiana; Theodore Irving’s Conquest of Florida; Gravier’s La Salle, chap. i., and his “Route du Mississipi” in Congrès des Américanistes (1877), vol. i.; De Bow’s Commercial Review, 1849 and 1850; Southern Literary Messenger, December, 1848; North American Review, July, 1847.—Ed.]