Throughout the era of original American discovery and coast exploration, the returning mariners had agreed in describing the region to the north of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea as utterly lacking in indications of accumulated riches, inhabited only by savage races who possessed no gold and silver or other valuable propexerty,*enjoyed no civilization, offered no commodities to commerce the chase, and could comcept the ordinary products of the soil and substanti farther wealth al municate nothing definite respecting more to the west. The ancient civilizations of Mexico, Central America, and rem having been subverted by the Spanish conquist adores, and their stores of precious metals largely absorbed, it was fondly hoped that the unpenetrated wilds of the north might contain new realms with similar abundant treasures. Narvaez, in 1528, and De Soto, in 1539, led finely appointed expeditions from the Florida coast into the interior in quest of the imagined eldorados-- emprises which proved absolutely barren of encouraging results and from which only a few miserable survivors returned to tell the disillusionizing tale of dreadful wilderness marches, appalling sufferings, and fruitless victories over wretched tribes owning no goods worth carrying away. The impressive record of these disastrous failures, in connection with the uniformly unflattering accounts of the lands farther north, deterred all The poverty of European nations from like pompous adventurings. the native inhabitants of North America saved them from the swift fate which overtook the rich peoples of the south, and for a century preserved them even from intrusion, except of the most fugitive kind. This fact of their complete poverty is by far the most conspicuous