[Footnote 1: Ponce de Leon (Pon'thay day La-on') or, in English, Pons
de Lee'on. Many persons now prefer the English pronunciation of all
these Spanish names.]
[Footnote 2: Balboa (Bal-bo'ah).]
[Footnote 3: De Soto (Da So'to).]
[Footnote 4: Florida: this word means flowery; the name was given
by the Spaniards because they discovered the country on Easter Sunday,
which they call Flowery Easter.]
[Footnote 5: Panama (Pan-a-mah').]
29. De Soto discovers the Mississippi.--Long after Balboa and Ponce
de Leon were dead, a Spaniard named De Soto landed in Florida and
marched through the country in search of gold mines.
In the course of his long and weary wanderings, he came to a river
more than a mile across. The Indians told him it was the Mississippi,
or the Great River. In discovering it, De Soto had found the largest
river in North America; he had also found his own grave, for he died
shortly after, and was secretly buried at midnight in its muddy
waters.
[Illustration: BURIAL OF DE SOTO.]
30. The Spaniards build St. Augustine;[6] we buy Florida in
1819.--More than twenty years after the burial of De Soto, a Spanish
soldier named Menendez[7] went to Florida and built a fort on the
eastern coast.
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