Peter Martyr and Oviedo, got from him at first hand and preserved for us these earliest tales of Carolina.

According to Francisco the natives of Chicora were white, with brown hair hanging to their heels. In the country there were pearls and other precious stones. There were domesticated deer, which lived in the houses of the natives and generously furnished them milk and cheese. The people were governed by a giant king called Datha, whose enormous size was not natural but had been produced by softening and stretching his bones in childhood. He told, too, of a race of men with inflexible tails, "like the tailed Englishmen of Kent,' says a Spanish humorist. "This tail was not movable like those of quadrupeds, but formed one mass, as is the case with fish and crocodiles, and was as hard as bone. When these men wished to sit down, they had consequently to have a seat with an open bottom; and if there were none, they had to dig a hole. more than a cubit deep to hold their tails and allow them to rest." If any one be disposed to doubt these stories let him ponder well what Peter Martyr says: "Each may accept or reject my account as he chooses. Envy is a plague natural to the human race, always seeking to depreciate and to

Ayllón anchored his ships at the mouth of a river, probably the Cape Fear, which, with romantic optimism, he named the Jordan. In making port he lost one of his ships with its cargo, and this led to the construction on the spot of an open boat with one mast, to be propelled by both oars and sail. Here we have the first shipbuilding of record in the United States. From this place exploring parties went out by sea and others pushed a short way inland. A misfortune now befell Ayllón. His interpreter, the romancer, Francisco Chicorana, seized the opportunity so long waited for and deserted to his people. Ayllón was thus unable to talk to the Chicorans and convince them of his friendly intent. This region, however, about a dangerous harbor, looked uninviting, and no more was needed than the news of a pleasanter land, brought by returning explorers, to start Ayllón and his colonists southward. Down the coast they all went to the mouth of the Pedee River - the Gualdape, Ayllón called it- and there began the settlement of San Miguel de Gualdape.

But the settlement came quickly to grief. The blasts of an exceptionally cold winter struck down many of the colonists. Provisions gave out. The settlers were too weakened by exposure and disease

to catch the fish which abounded in the river. Ayllón himself sank under the hardship and privation; and, on St. Luke's Day, October 18, 1526, he died. Quarrels ensued among the survivors. Mutineers under an ambitious officer imprisoned the lieutenant who succeeded Ayllón in command; and, in turn, negro slaves rose and fired the house of the usurper. Indians, encouraged by the domestic imbroglio, made attacks and killed some of the Spaniards. It was now resolved to abandon the colony and return to Santo Domingo. About a hundred and fifty enfeebled and destitute men and women set sail in midwinter, towing after them the body of their dead commander in the one-masted craft they had built. As they made their slow way homeward, seven men were frozen to death on board one of the ships. The icy winds and sea, which lashed the small vessels about and took the lives of these emaciated sailors, took also their toll of the dead. The boat bearing Ayllón's body was swept away; and, weighted full with water, it sank, says Oviedo the historian, in "the sepulchre of the ocean-sea where have been and shall be put other captains and governors."

Florida and Chicora: these were still but names, but names now heightened in romance by the