Another prominent road led directly from Tampa Bay to Apalache. It picked its way around coastal marshes and crossed the Suwannee at Old Town, which was an important Indian settlement.

It is here that many students believe Narvaez crossed the Suwannee. Some think Soto may have built a bridge nearby, though this would have taken him around the edge of Potano territory or missed it entirely.

Ocala, that Indian village famous for its association with water -- perhaps Silver Springs -- is shown with its military designation of Ft. King on the 1838 military map. This locality has not wandered much from its Indian beginning and is, therefore, considered a Soto reference point.

The Camino Real is shown once again utilizing the natural bridge of the Santa Fe River which from time to time flows underground for some distance. This also was the location of well known Indian farming grounds.

The war department map of 1846 gives us a good look at the Charlotte Harbor area from where Soto may have set out. A river and creek flowing into Charlotte Harbor at nearly the same place are both named Myakka. Pronunciation of this name sounds very much like the Spanish version of Soto's Indian friend Mococo (mah-ka-ka).

Just north of Charlotte Harbor is Funnee Okko Pokee, a Seminole word meaning "bone heap in a marsh." It is tempting to consider this the site of an old burial mound, or even the above-ground ossuary once guarded by Ortiz.

Still farther north is a pond or spring flowing into a small lake with an island in the center, perhaps artificially built. Such construction was a favorite type of Indian cemetery. It is named Kotok Taikee in Seminole, or Island Lake. The overflow empties into Peas Creek, now corrupted to Peace River, after the black-eyed peas cultivated by aborigine Floridians. These features might correspond to Rabbit Lake and St. Johns Lake of the Soto accounts, but so would the lower and upper lakes of the Myakka river and the two ponds at the head of Myakkahatchee Creek.

Northeast of Charlotte Harbor is a great plain, on the eastern edge of which are two large hills or mounds and a spring of Good Water. The latter was carefully noted for field commanders needing to refresh their troops. This locality may be the Plain of Guacata mentioned by Fonteneda, and the Plain of Guacoco (pronounced goo-ah-ka-ka in Spanish) encountered by Soto

early in his march. If so, then the hills and spring, which probably supported an Indian settlement, might correspond to Luca where Soto waited in vain for Chief Urriparacoxi.

THE SECRET CANAL

Of interest to the adventures of Menendez, a few years after Soto, is the piece of Old Canal shown leading from the now-drained Lake Flirt. The canal was necessary because the Caloosahatchee River was a vast, wet marsh at its head, fed by overflow from Lake Okeechobee. In periods of drought the marsh became little more than a bog.

Menendez had heard of the artificial waterway which even in dry years permitted the Calusa to paddle their dugouts all the way from Carlos Bay, up the Caloosahatchee River, across Lake Okeechobee, and down the Miami River to Tequesta village on Biscayne Bay.

Menendez very much wanted to find a passage through the Florida peninsula that would avoid the dangerous trip through the Bahama Channel. Though the adelantado cajoled and threatened various Calusa chiefs, none would reveal their canal.

Modern surveyors have found the secret waterway, now dry, near Moore Haven. It was a shallow ditch just large enough for a canoe and appears to have linked Lake Flirt with Fisheating Creek near the mysterious Ft. Center mounds.

The site is named for a military fort built there during the Seminole War. The fort has long since decayed, but the more ancient mounds remain. They are unique in that the largest mound is surrounded by a large, circular earthwork or "sun circle" and six equally spaced ancillary mounds.

The Calusa and related tribes worshipped the sun, and it is believed they came to the Ft. Center mounds for religious rites which included human sacrifice and special treatment of dead bodies. Corpses were placed on a platform over a sacred pond. In time the platform decayed, plunging bones and grave goods into muck below.

The University of Florida began archeological excavations of the mounds in 1962. After a six-year study, the results were published by Dr. William H. Sears in his book "Fort Center." The quality, type and number of ceremonial artifacts uncovered substantiates the paramount role the mounds must have played in the Calusa culture.

Some Soto researchers believe the Ft. Center mounds may be either Luca or the abode of the elusive Chief Urruparacoxi.