so great diligence that on the 20th day of September five boats were finished. Each was 22 cubits in length and caulked with the fibre of the palmito. We pitched them with a certain resin, made from pine trees by a Greek named Don Theodoro.

From the same husk of the palmito, and from the tails and manes of the horses, we made rope and rigging. From our shirts, we made sails. From the savins growing there, we made the oars that appeared to us requisite.

Such was the country into which our sins had cast us, that only by very great search could we find stone for ballast and anchors, since in it all we had not seen one. We flayed the horses, taking the skin from their legs entire and tanned them to make bottles wherein to carry water.

During this time some went gathering shell-fish in the coves and creeks of the sea. The Indians twice attacked them and killed ten men in sight of the camp, without our being able to afford succor. We found their corpses traversed from side to side with arrows. Even though some had on good armor, it did not give them adequate protection or security against the nice and powerful archery of which I have spoken.

According to the declaration of our pilots under oath, we had traveled 280 leagues or thereabout from the entrance to which we had given the name Bahia de la Cruz to this place. Over all that region we had not seen a single mountain, and had no information of any whatsoever.

Before we embarked there died more than 40 men of disease and hunger, without enumerating those destroyed by the Indians. By the 22nd of the month of September, the horses had been consumed, only one remaining.

On that day we embarked in the following order: in the boat of the Governor went 49 men; in another, which he gave to the Comptroller and the Commissary, went as many others; the third he gave to Captain Alonzo del Castillo and Andres Dorantes, with 48 men; and another he gave to the captains, Tellez and Penalosa, with 47 men. The last was given to the Assessor and myself, with 49 men.

After the provisions and clothes had been taken in, not over a span of the gunwales remained above water. More than this, the boats were so crowded that we could not move. So much can necessity do that it drove us to hazard our lives in this manner, running into a turbulent sea with not a single one who went having a knowledge of navigation.

The haven we left bears the name of Bahia de Caballos (Bay of Horses). We passed waist deep in water through sounds without seeing any sign of the coast. At the close of the seventh day, we came to an island near the main. My boat went first, and from her we saw Indians approaching in five canoes which they abandoned and left in our hands upon finding that we were coming after them. The other boats passed ahead and stopped at some houses on the island. There we found many dried mullet and roes which were a great relief in our distress.

After taking these things we went on. Two leagues thence we discovered a strait which the island makes with the land. This we named Sant Miguel for having passed through it on his day.

Coming out, we went to the coast. There, with the canoes I had taken, we somewhat improved the boats -- making waist-boards and securing them so that the sides rose two palms above the water. This done, we returned to move along the coast in the direction of the River Palmas (west). Our hunger and thirst continually increased.

Our scant subsistence was getting near the end, and the water was out. The bottles made from the legs of the horses, having soon rotted, were useless. Sometimes we entered coves and creeks that lay far in, and found them all shallow and dangerous. Thus we journeyed along them 30 days.

Narvaez and his men extricated themselves from the seemingly endless swamps of Florida only to die in the treacherous waters of the Gulf. Nunez and his comrades made it back to civilization after four years of wandering among the Indians of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Their adventures constitute one of the great epics of American history stranger than fiction.

Dona Narvaez' year-long search for her husband or other members of his expedition found no one. Indeed, additional men were lost in the effort. One of these, Juan Ortiz, was captured by blood-thirsty Indians when he went ashore to examine a scrap of paper held aloft by a stick on the beach.

Ortiz lived as a slave among the Indians until he was rescued ten years later by Hernando de Soto who was the next adelantado to attempt colonization of Florida.