Note 337 — Chapter VIII · 1518-1524.

The situation of certain places along the coast of the present states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, is thus described by Gomara: “From Santa Elena to Rio Seco, in 31°, are other forty leagues, and thence to La Cruz are twenty, and thence to Cañaveral, forty; and from Punta Cañaveral, in 28°, are other forty to Punta de la Florida (the peninsula of Florida).... This is in 25°, which is twenty leagues in length, and from it are a hundred or more leagues to Ancon bajo, which is fifty leagues from Rio Seco, from east to west, across Florida. From Ancon bajo they estimate it to be a hundred leagues to Rio de Nieves, and thence to that of Flores more than twenty, from which river it is seventy leagues to the Bay of the Holy Spirit (Baya del Espiritu Sancto), called by another name, La Culata (the breech of a gun), which river flows out into the ocean thirty leagues, and is in 29°, and thence it is more than seventy to Rio de Pescadores. From Rio de Pescadores, in 28° 30´, are a hundred leagues to Rio de las Palmas, near which crosses the tropic of Cancer; thence to Rio Panuco are more than thirty leagues; and thence to Villa Rica or Vera Cruz, seventy leagues.”—Primera y segunda parte de la historia general de las Indias. Gomara. cap. xii.