As respects the bastion which I left begun, if laboring on it have been neglected, or perhaps discontinued, with the idea that the fabric is not now needed, you, Gentlemen, will favor me by having it finished, since every day brings change. Although no occasion should arise for its employment, the erection is provident for the well being and safety of the town. This act will yield me in-creased satisfactions through your very noble personages. That our Lord may guard and increase your prosperity is my wish and your deserving.

In this town and Port of Espiritu Santo, in the Province of Florida, July the 9th in the year 1539.

The servant of you, Gentlemen,
El Adelantado Don Hernando De Soto

The original of this letter has been lost. The document quoted here is a copy which accompanied a letter from the Licentiate Bartholome Ortiz at Santiago, Cuba, on Nov. 8, 1539, to the Emperor and the Council of the Indias.

As Soto feared, his subordinates stopped work on the Santiago fortifications the instant his back was turned. The licentiate's letter was an excuse for himself. While he was sick in bed for three months, said Ortiz, the City Board ordered the assessments for the fort to cease and attention directed to "following up of the wild Indians."

TRANSLATION ANALYSIS

In Soto's letter we learn several important facts about his landing site.

Despite Anasco's early reconnaissance, the expedition missed the port entrance by four or five leagues, and the pilots were unable to recognize any land marks. Exasperated, Soto led a scouting party of two small boats to search for their predetermined destination.

Heretofore, scholars translated the word "decaidos" as "having fallen below" or "to the leeward" of the port. This implies that Soto stopped short some 13 miles south of his goal. The root word, in English, is "decay" and is often used in the sense of "diminish." The International Spanish-English Dictionary, however, states that the word is used "in the maritime sense as drifting off course."

Thus, we can safely deduce only that Soto missed his mark and may have dropped anchor either north or south of the harbor entrance.

Early Spanish explorers knew that if they sailed from Havana toward the North Star they

would find good water through the Florida island chain and strike the nearest deepwater port of Charlotte Harbor - San Carlos Bay.

A compass course north from Havana, though, would differ. Mariners of those days had not yet discovered that the magnetic lines of force which control compasses vary throughout the world. Magnetic variation at the longitude of west coast Florida is slight and wavers over the centuries. The deviation today is 1°30' towards the west. Rolfe Schell concludes from a study made by W. Van Bemmelen in 1899 of agonic variations in 1600 that Soto had to contend with a compass deviation of 2° east.

The longitude of Havana is 82°20', approximately that of Stump Pass south of Englewood. A compass course which was 2° east of north -- uncorrected by astronomical observation -- would have brought Soto's fleet to anchor south of Sanibel Island. If the magnetic variation was the same as today, Soto would have ended up at Tam-pa Bay and 25 leagues farther north than the distance determined beforehand by Pilot Anasco.

Soto's description of the landfall, therefore, is not conclusive; and we must find additional evidence.

The word "boca" in the key paragraph of Soto's letter is used most often to mean "mouth" and is treated as a synonym for harbor "entrance." Another common meaning is "opening," and probably is more applicable in the maritime sense. For example, the narrow channel from the Caribbean Straits -- then called Bahama Channel -- to the Gulf of Mexico at Marquesas Keys was shown on all the old Spanish maps as Boca Grande.

Soto wrote that entering the harbor's boca required care which contributed to an unexpected delay. This would not have been noteworthy if the entrance was wide and deep.

On balance it would seem that Soto's boca was not the spacious Carlos Bay or the wide, main channel of Tampa Bay. It could be the Boca Grande pass into Charlotte Harbor, so named from the earliest maps to the present. It also could be the narrow, southernmost Passage Key Inlet to Tampa Bay. We would have to assume in this case that Soto's scouting party had failed to find, or ignored, the obviously better main channels.

Though other chroniclers of the expedition described its landing place as a "baya" or "bahia," Soto referred to it as an "ancon" within