THE MIVJZR AND ITS HISTORY.

England, Henry VIII. had suppressed the monasteries, burnt 3Tisher
and another bishop or two, and was getting his English reformation
and his harem effectively started. When De Soto stood on the banks
of the Mississippi, it -was still two years before Luther's death ; eleven
years before the burning of Servetus; thirty years before the St. Bar-
tholomew slaughter; Babelais was not yet published; ' Don Quixote'
was not yet written; Shakspeare was not yet born \ a hundred long

years must still elapse before

^ Englishmen would hear the

\ 3^-^iS^~ name of OEver Cromwell.

Unquestionably the dis-
covery of the Missis-
sippi is a datable fact

CLASSIFYING- THEIR OFF&PBING.

which considerably mellows and modifies
the shiny newness of our country, and
gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity.
De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buried in
it by his priests and soldiers. One would expect the priests and the
soldiers to multiply the river's dimensions by ten—the Spanish custom
of the day—and thus move other adventurers to go at once and ex-
plore it. On the contrary, their narratives when they reached home,
did not excite that amount of curiosity. The Mississippi was left un-
visited by whites during a term of years which seems incredible in
our energetic days. One may ' sense' the interval to his mind, after