all the houses being thatched.  Undismayed at this calamity, the Spaniards repaired to their alarm posts, and Soto issuing out in his escaupil or cotton armour, mounted his horse and went to attack the Indians, being the first to kill one of the assailants with his spear; as upon all occasions of danger he gave a wonderful example of cool and intrepid courage.  Some sick Spaniards and several horses were burnt on this occasion; but Captain Andres de Vasconcelos with four horsemen fell with such fury on the enemy that he forced them to retire.  Soto, being eager to slay an Indian who particularly distinguished himself in this action, leaned forwards so much that he and the saddle fell off; but being bravely rescued by his men, he mounted again and returned to the fight.  At length after two hours hard fighting, the Indians were constrained to fly, and were pursued as far as they could be seen by the light from the burning houses, after which Soto sounded a retreat.  In this fatal night, the Spaniards lost forty men and fifty horses, twenty of them being burnt.  All the swine likewise perished in the fire, except a few that broke out of an enclosed yard.  During this engagement prodigious shots of arrows were made by the Indians, one of which pierced through both shoulder-blades of a horse, and came out four fingers breadth on the opposite side.

[Footnote 168:  This word seems to have almost the same sound with Chicasaw, and Soto may on his present return into the interior have crossed the river Yazous, which flows into the Missisippi in lat. 32 deg. 30’ N. a short way above the Natches.—­E.]

Soto now thought proper to remove the army to a town named Chicacolla, about a league from that which had been burnt; and, having fortified these new quarters, the Spaniards were obliged to make new saddles, spears, targets and clothes, to supply the places of those which had been burnt.  The clothes were made of goats skins[169].  At this place the Spaniards spent the rest of the winter, during which they suffered extreme hardships for want of clothes, as the weather was excessively cold.  Being sensible that they had done much harm to the Spaniards in the late night attack, the Indians returned again to make a similar attempt; but their bow-strings being wetted by violent rain, they withdrew, as was learnt from an Indian prisoner.  They returned however every night to alarm the Spaniards, of whom they always wounded some; and though the cavalry scoured the country every day four leagues round, they could meet none of the natives, so that it was wonderful how they should come nightly from so great a distance.

[Footnote 169:  More probably of deer skins found in the Indian towns, as goats certainly were not among the indigenous animals of North America.—­E.]