of 1528, and a French tradition was that piles of bones on Dauphine Island were remains of his men. Here, or in Pensacola Bay, De Soto's admiral, Maldonado, waited for De Soto, and here he certainly touched later in search of his lost master.
The famous expedition of De Soto crossed the Mobile River basin at right angles, but the itinerary is uncertain. The Spaniards did not care enough to map it intelligently, and the Indians, according to the proverb, could tell no tales.
It is doubtful, indeed, if De Soto came much within a hundred miles of the present site of Mobile, although early French tradition makes him to have crossed somewhere near the later settlement of Mobile Indians, about Mount Vernon landing.
In 1558 was made the careful exploration by Bazares, who proceeded from Mexico eastward towards peninsular Florida. Two bays he named Bas Fonde and Filipina. One was Mobile, and it was probably that called Filipina. The object was settlement, and the next year Tristan de Luna occupied the country with fifteen hundred colonists and explored the interior by Nanipacna and Cosa, up to the gold
