77-88, 101-143.] [Illustration: The kind of cities found by Marcos and Coronado in the Rio Grande valley.] [Illustration: CORONADO'S EXPEDITION 1540] %13.

The Spaniards on the Mississippi.%--In 1537 De Soto was appointed governor of Cuba, with instructions to conquer and hold all the country discovered by Narvaez.

On this mission he set out in May, 1539, and landed at Tampa Bay, on the west coast of our state of Florida.

He wandered over the swamps and marshes, the moss-grown jungles, and the forests of the Gulf states, and spent the winter of 1541 near the Yazoo River.

Crossing the Mississippi in the spring of 1542 at the Chickasaw Bluffs, he wandered about eastern Arkansas, till he died of fever, and was buried in the Mississippi.