George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[60] had failed. The Spanish governors were directed to

Chap. II.}

favor the design; all slaves, that had been taken from the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, were to be manumitted and restored to their country. In 1549,

1549.

a ship was fitted out with much solemnity; but the priests, who sought the first interview with the natives, were feared as enemies, and, being immediately attacked, Louis and two others fell martyrs to their zeal.

Death seemed to guard the approaches to that land. While the Castilians were everywhere else victorious, they were driven for a time to abandon the soil of Florida, after it was wet with their blood. But under that name they continued to claim all North America, even as far as Newfoundland and Canada. No history exists of their early exploration of the coast, nor is even the name of the Spanish navigator preserved, who, between the years 1528 and 1540, discovered the Chesapeake, and made it known as ‘the Bay of St. Mary.’ Under that appellation the historian Oviedo, writing a little after 1540, describes it as opening to the sea in the latitude of thirty-six degrees and forty minutes, and as including islands; of two rivers which it receives, he calls the northeastern one, Salt River; the other, the river of the Holy Ghost; the cape to the north of it, which he places in the latitude of thirty-seven degrees, he names Cape St. John.¹ The bay of St. Mary is marked on all Spanish maps, after the year 1549.² But as yet not a Spanish fort was erected on the Atlantic coast, not a harbor was occupied, not one settlement was begun. The first permanent establishment of the Spaniards in Florida was the result of jealous bigotry.