The expedition of Pamphilo de Narvaez, dispatched in 1527 to explore and subjugate the newly discovered land of Florida, had met with failure and misfortune. The wretched remnant thereof, under the command of Cabeça de Vaca, endeavored to escape the country and its ills by embarking from the bay of Aute, now called St. Marks, in boats constructed in the rudest fashion amid the bitterest privations. Upon this voyage, sailing toward the west, they "came to a point of land beyond which was a very great river." "I halted," says De Vaca, "at an islet off the point, to wait for the other boats, but the governor (Narvaez) would not come up, choosing rather to remain in bay very near, where were many small islands; and there we joined company, and took up fresh water from the sea, into which the river poured in a torrent."* An attempt was made to enter this river, but finding, as De Vaca afterward reports, the current too violent for their clumsy craft, they sailed on only to meet with a dreadfully disastrous shipwreck upon probably what is now the coast of Texas.

There can be no doubt that the great river thus seen by Cabeça de Vaca in 1528 was the Mississippi, and although he did not enter it, he may plead priority to De Soto in determining the question as to whom the distinction of its discovery belongs.

Nine years before De Vaca's voyage, however, in 1519, Francisco de Garay, then the governor of the island of Jamaica, equipped and dispatched four caravels to the newly discovered land of Florida, for the purpose of thoroughly exploring the contour of its coast, and finding, if perchance one could be found, a strait whereby the circumnavigation of the globe might be accomplished, and the truth of Columbus's theory practically demonstrated. Of this expedition, which is conscientiously recorded by Navarrete, Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda was given the command. Baffled in his attempt to turn the cape of Florida by contrary winds and the dangerous reefs that there abound, Pineda headed his vessels westward, and, sailing along the northern coast of the gulf, came at length to the mouth of the Panuco, upon the eastern coast of Mexico. Encountering here Cortes and his forces, who claimed the country and were preparing to subjugate it, he sailed back easterly along the coast, and entered a river having a great volume of water (muy caudaloso), “at the mouth of which there was a large village, where they sojourned more than forty days, careening their ships and trading with the natives, with whom they established much friendship and confidence. They ascended the river six leagues, and saw forty villages upon one bank or another. The * La relacion y comentarios del governador Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, 1555, fol. xv., xvi.

province was called Amichel. It was a good country, pleasing, healthy, and provided with plenty of provisions and fruits." *

A map, a sketch of which is here given, was prepared upon the completion of this expedition and sent to Spain by Garay, the projector of the expedition, in 1520. This, the earliest map of the Gulf of Mexico, apprised the Spaniards for the first time of the continental character of the

land called Florida, for it indicated the complete continuity of the northern and southern coasts to the west, which before that time were supposed, like all the other Indies, to be islands. The coast-line of the Gulf of Mexico and the estuaries of the principal rivers, as indicated upon this map, are, considering the circumstances and times, sufficiently correct to warrant the assumption that Pineda must have clung closely to the land. Indeed, the purpose for which his expedition sailed made it a veritable duty, and he therefore doubtless saw the mouths at least of every river indicated upon his map. One of these, we perceive, is named, and the probabilities are that the river which alone we are told they entered and described is the one thus honored. Particular reference was made, on the other hand, to the unusual size of the river visited, and therefore that river

*Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viages, tomo iii., p. 65. Madrid, 1829.

must be the largest indicated. The Rio del Espiritu Santo of the chart corresponds unquestionably with the Mississippi.

It is possible that the large river Pineda visited might have been the Rio Grande del Norte, yet it is nevertheless improbable that its greatness only should be described if the larger and more noteworthy Mississippi had been seen. That river Pineda surely must have observed while following, as the narrative states, "the direction of the coast, and noting with attention all the country, ports, rivers, inhabitants, and other things of note."* Cabeça de Vaca, having no such object in view, was able to note it a league away simply by the violent force of the current that came from it and the fresh water amid the brine.

The character of the country and its inhabitants, on the other hand, as given in the narrative already quoted, conforms rather to the Mississippi country than to that of the Rio Grande. At a hospitable village near its mouth they careened their vessels and tarried more than forty days, in which time they traded pleasantly with the peaceful people, and when at length they ascended the river to better inform themselves about this new congenial land, they found it good and healthy, and abounding plentifully in provisions and fruits. Indeed, the conditions of this country must have supported many people, for within a distance of about twenty miles they found situated upon either bank no less than forty villages. If Pineda, who had already visited the new land at the mouth of the Panuco, did not deem that country worthy of mention, it is not likely that he would thus so pleasingly describe that of the Rio Grande, which is even more sterile and inferior. The Mississippi country, on the other hand, is superior to the Panuco, and, in fact, to any land our navigator had before experienced in the Indies, and we might therefore safely assume, all else considered, that it was that which was described. Aside from the question, however, as to which was the river Pineda entered, it can scarcely be doubted that the Mississippi was encountered and noted as he cruised along the northern coast of the gulf, which before his time was entirely unknown.

Thus, twenty-three years before De Soto, and nine years before De Vaca, was this great river first discovered-a river whose waters verily drain an entire continent, and which is, perhaps, the largest in the world.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

Murpher Reynolds.

* Navarrete, tomo iii., p. 64.

WASHINGTON AND WILLIAM THE SILENT-A PARALLEL

Some one has said that great men are rare; and Goldwin Smith, that great men are the most precious gifts of Heaven. But which are the great, and how shall we distinguish these "rare" ones from the great mass of mankind? How differently are men estimated by one another! For example, take the case of Washington. Said La Fayette, who had been Washington's intimate friend, and was a member of his family "in the times that tried men's souls": "In my opinion, General Washington is the greatest of men, for I look upon him as the most virtuous." Thomas Jefferson wrote, "He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." Chateaubriand remarked to Washington himself, "It is less difficult to discover the polar passage than to create a nation as you have done." Another has said, "There are two men whom a lofty ambition might propose to itself as models-Napoleon and Washington." And Napoleon himself in passing upon their comparative merits said to some Americans, just before he set out upon his expedition to Egypt: Posterity will talk of Washington with reverence, as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolutions." But then breaks in Carlyle, the noted Scotch cynic, saying, "George Washington, another of your perfect characters, to me a most limited and uninteresting sort, and who needs taking down a peg."

Said Grattan, the celebrated Irish orator, "The two greatest men in modern times are William III. and George Washington." I think it preferable to compare Washington, the father of his country, the great American Fabius, with William "the Silent," the eminent prince of Orange, the founder of the independence of the Netherlands, and the most eminent ancestor of this same English king. As I view these, they more nearly resemble each other in all the qualities which constitute true greatness, than any other two men whose names have reached the historic page.

As history in truth never exactly repeats itself, so, also, no two men in their qualities, achievements, and surroundings have been precisely alike. Writers have taken delight in placing Homer and Virgil, Milton and Johnson, Napoleon and Alexander, Dryden and Pope, William Penn and John Locke, side by side for comparison and contrast. I would present

a parallel between William, prince of Orange, and George Washington. There are many points of similarity as well as of contrast between these

But when Philip was duly crowned ruler over all his father's possessions, he resolved to attain despotic power and universal empire. He, therefore, re-enacted all the arbitrary measures of his father, especially the edict of 1550, which had given great offense to the Netherlanders. But they did not submit. They raised armies, procured military supplies, garrisoned their forts, and prepared for defense. They were divided among themselves, and thus succeeded poorly. Yet, after some years' war, Philip, not meeting with the success he had hoped, resolved to crush the land he had so nearly subjugated. He dispatched the terrible duke of Alva to the Low Countries at the head of a powerful Spanish army, as governor-in-general of the Netherlands. Said the duke, “ I have tamed men of iron in my day, and shall I not easily crush these men of butter?" With unlimited authority and a great military force, for seven long and bloody years, and after inflicting upon the people cruelties most merciless, and such as are nowhere else recorded in history, he left the land, recommending as his parting advice that every city in the Netherlands should be burned to the ground, except a few which could be permanently occupied by the royal troops. The historian adds, "No mode in which human beings have ever caused their fellow-creatures to suffer was omitted from daily practice. Men, women, and children, old and young, nobles and paupers, opulent burghers, lunatics, and even dead bodies-all were indiscriminately made to furnish food for the scaffold and the stake. Men were tortured, beheaded, hanged by the neck and the legs, burned before slow fires, pinched to death with red-hot tongs, broken upon the wheel, starved, and skinned alive. Their skins, stripped from the living body, were stretched upon drums, to be beaten in the march of their brethren to the gallows." Alva boasted that, besides those killed in battle, he had executed in these seven terrible years eighteen thousand and six hundred persons. He kindled a war that burned for sixty-eight years, and cost Spain eight hundred million dollars, its finest troops, and seven of its fairest provinces. These unparalleled cruelties at length caused the Netherlands, slow as they were, to throw off the Spanish yoke and declare their independence, July 26, 1581, nearly two centuries before the declaration of American independence.

These two declarations, the Netherland and the American, as national documents, excel any other two in their enunciation of the just principles of all human governments. As we read them over, we instinctively feel that these grand, liberty-loving peoples were prompted by the same sentiments, feelings, and general political opinions, and that either could cheerfully have adopted the declaration of the other.

Now, on the supposition that the seventeen Netherlands were