Death of Nunez

There was no other way of escape from death than by the sea. Surmounting the greatest difficulties, they built some frail boats, and provisioned them with Indian corn. With this, and some water in half-tanned horse-hides, they embarked, and coasted toward the Mississippi. Their food and water soon failed, and their sufferings were horrible. One by one they died, when a storm--a "norther"--struck and dispersed the flotilla. The boat that bore Treasurer de Vaca was stranded on an island, and he and his companions were kindly treated by the Indians. Narvaez was never heard of afterward. De Vaca seems to have been the only Spaniard who survived and returned to Spain. After eight years of captivity amongst the Indians, he made his way on foot, from tribe to tribe, until he had crossed the continent, and arrived at a port occupied by his countrymen on the Gulf of California. Thence he made his way to Spain, where he appeared at the court as one risen from the dead. His narrative was soon published, and it was read with an appetite such as the most marvelous romance creates. His revelations of the heroism of Narvaez made the deeds of that adventurer compare favorably with those of Cortez and Pizarro. Narvaez had not only fought hostile men with a handful of followers, but he had fought the climate and topography of Florida. Cortez had struggled in a salubrious climate seven thousand feet above the sea, and Pizarro had marched into the country of the Incas of Peru over a splendid highway built by that extra-ordinary people along the summits of the Andes. Narvaez was never, probably, one hundred feet above tide-water, in Florida, and much of the time he was breathing the deadly malaria of the Everglades.