The Discovery of Pensacola Bay by Panfilo de Narvaez—The Visits of Maldonado, Captain of the Fleet of Hernando de Soto.

On one of the early days of October, 1528, there could have been seen, coasting westward along and afterwards landing on the south shore of Santa Rosa Island, five small, rudely-constructed vessels, having for sails a grotesque patchwork of masculine under and over-wear. That fleet was the fruit of the first effort at naval construction within the present limits of the United States. It was built of yellow pine and caulked with palmetto fibre and pitch. Horses’ tails and manes furnished the cordage, as did their hides its water vessels. Its freightage consisted of two hundred and forty human bodies, wasted and worn by fatigue and exposure, and as many hearts heavy and racked with disappointment. It was commanded by His Excellency Panfilo de Narvaez, Captain-general and Adelantado of Florida, a tall, big-limbed, red-haired, one-eyed man, “with a voice deep and sonorous as though it came from a cavern.”

These were the first white men to make footprints on the shores of Pensacola Bay and to look out upon its waters. Although they landed on the Island, there is no evidence that their vessels entered the harbor.

Narvaez, an Hidalgo, born at Valladolid about 1480, was a man capable of conceiving and undertaking great enterprises, but too rash and ill-starred for their successful execution, possessing the ambition and avarice which impelled the Spanish adventurers to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico during the sixteenth century, with whom Indian life was but a trifling sacrifice for a pearl or an ounce of gold.

Five years before his Florida expedition he had been appointed, with a large naval and land force under his command, by Velasquez, governor of Cuba, to supersede Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, and to send him in chains to Havana, to answer charges of insubordination to the authority of Velasquez. But Cortez was not the man to be thus superseded. Never did his genius for great enterprises make a more striking display than by the measures he adopted and executed in this emergency. By them he converted that threatening expedition into one of succor for himself, embracing every supply, soldiers included, he required to complete his conquests. Of this great achievement the defeat of the incompetent Narvaez was only an incident.

No labored comparison of conqueror and vanquished could present a more striking contrast between them than that suggested by their first interview. “Esteem it,” said Narvaez, “great good fortune that you have taken me captive.” “It is the least of the things I have done in Mexico,” replied Cortez, a sarcasm aimed at the incapacity of Narvaez, apart from the gains of the victor.

The fruits of the expedition to Narvaez were the loss of his left eye, shackles, imprisonment, banishment, and the humiliation of kneeling to his conqueror and attempting to kiss his hand. To the Aztec the result was the introduction of a scourge that no surrender could placate, no submission, however absolute and abject, could stay, and, therefore, more pitiless than the sword of Cortez—the small-pox.

After leaving Mexico, Narvaez appeared before the Emperor Charles V., to accuse Cortez of treason, and to petition for a redress of his own wrongs, but the dazzling success of Cortez, to say nothing of his large remittances to the royal treasury, was an effectual answer to every charge. The emperor, however, healed the wounded pride, and silenced the complaints of the prosecutor by a commission with the aforementioned sonorous titles to organize an expedition for a new conquest, by which he might compensate himself for the loss of the treasures and empire of Montezuma, which he had so disastrously failed to snatch from the iron grasp of Cortez.

The preparations to execute this commission having been made by providing a fleet, a land force, consisting of men-at-arms and cavalry, as well as the necessary supplies, Narvaez, in April, 1528, sailed for the Florida coast, and landed at or near Tampa bay.

Having resolved on a westward movement, he ordered his fleet to sail along the coast, whilst he, by rather a circuitous march, would advance in the same direction. This parting was at once final and fatal. He again reached the Gulf, somewhere in the neighborhood of St. Marks, with his command woefully wasted and diminished by toil, battle and disease; and, as can well be imagined, with his dreams of avarice and dominion rudely dispelled.

No tidings of the fleet from which he had so lucklessly parted being obtainable, despair improvised that fleet with motley sails which we have seen mooring off the island of Santa Rosa in the early days of October, its destination being Mexico—a destination, however, which was but another delusion that the winds and the waves were to dispel.

Narvaez found a grave in the maw of the sea, as did most of the remnant of his followers. Famine swept off others, leaving only four to reach Mexico after a land journey requiring years, marked by perils and sufferings incident to such a journey through a vast forest bounded only by the sea, intersected by great rivers, inhabited by savages, and infested by wild beasts. One of the survivors was CabeÇa de Vaca, the treasurer and historian of the expedition.

Twelve years elapsed after Narvaez discovered Pensacola Bay before the shadow of the white man’s sail again fell upon its waters. In January, 1540, Capitano Maldonado, who was the commander of the fleet which brought Fernando de Soto to the Florida coast, entered the harbor, gave it a careful examination, and bestowed upon it the name of Puerta d’ Anchusi, a name probably suggested by Ochus,^[1] which it bore at the time of his visit. In entering Ochus he ended a voyage westward, made in search of a good harbor, under the orders of Soto, who was at that time somewhere on the Florida coast to the westward of Apalachee.

Having returned to Soto, Maldonado made so favorable a report—the first official report—of the advantages of Puerta d’ Anchusi that Soto determined to make it his base of supply. He accordingly ordered Maldonado to proceed to Havana, and after having procured the required succors to sail to Puerta d’ Anchusi, where he intended to go himself, and there to await Maldonado’s return before he ventured into the interior; a prudent resolve, suggested possibly by the sight of the bones of Narvaez’s horses, which had been slain to furnish cordage and water-vessels for his fleet.

But the resolve was as brief as it was wise. A few days after Maldonado’s departure a captured Indian so beguiled Soto with tales of gold to be found far to the northeast of Apalachee, where he then was, that banishing all thoughts of Puerta d’ Anchusi from his mind, he began that circuitous march which carried him into South Carolina, northern Georgia, and Alabama, where he wandered in search of treasure until disappointment, wasted forces, and needed supplies again turned his march southward, and his thoughts to his rendezvous with Maldonado.

That rendezvous was to be in October, 1540. Faithful to instructions, Maldonado was at Puerta d’ Anchusi at the appointed time with a fleet bearing all the required supplies. But Soto did not keep the tryst. He was then at Mauvilla, or Maubila, supposed to be Choctaw Bluff, on the Alabama river, absorbed by difficulties and engaged in conflicts such as he had never before encountered. Through Indians they had communicated, and intense was the satisfaction of Soto and his command at the prospect of a relief of their wants, repose from their toils, and tidings of their friends and loved ones.

Soto, however, still ambitious of emulating the achievements of Cortez and Pizzaro, looked upon Puerta d’ Anchusi as only a base of supply and refuge for temporary repose, from which again to set out in search of his goal. But very different were the views of his followers. By eaves-dropping on a dark night behind their tents, he learned that to them Puerta d’ Anchusi was not to be a haven of temporary rest only, but the first stage of their journey homeward, where Soto and his fortunes were to be abandoned.

This information again banished Puerta d’ Anchusi from his thoughts under the promptings of pride, which impelled him to prefer death in the wilderness to the mockery and humiliation of failure. He at once resolved to march deeper into the heart of the continent, and, unconsciously, nearer to the mighty river in whose cold bosom he was to find a grave.

As in idea we go into the camp at Mauvilla, on the morning when the word of command was given for a westward march, we see depicted on the war-worn visages of that iron band naught but gloom and disappointment, as, constrained by the stern will of one man, they obediently fall into ranks without a murmur, much less a sign of revolt.

Again, if in fancy we stand on the deck of Maldonado’s ship at Puerta d’ Anchusi, we may realize the keen watchfulness and the deep anxiety with which day after day and night after night he scans the shore and hills beyond to catch a glint of spear or shield, or strains his ear to hear a bugle note announcing the approach of his brothers-in-arms. And only after long, weary months was the vigil ended, as he weighed anchor and sailed out of the harbor to go to other points on the Gulf shore where happily he might yet meet and succor his commander.

To this task did he devote himself for three years, scouring the Gulf coast from Florida to Vera Cruz, until the curtain of the drama was lifted for him, to find that seventeen months previously his long-sought chief had been lying in the depths of the Mississippi, and that a wretched remnant only of that proud host, which he had last seen in glittering armor on the coast of Florida, had reached Mexico after undergoing indescribable perils and privations.