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whose village possessed not only supplies of
maize, but small amounts of gold among a
storeof linens and feather headdresses the
Spaniards suspected were from Mexico. The
Timucua, who were eager for the Spaniards
to leave, told the intruders that there was
much gold in the province of Apalache in
northwestern Florida.
Narváez immediately marched toward
Apalache, ordering his ships to sail parallel to
the coast. This plan was adopted over the
objections of Cabeza de Vaca and others, who
warned of the danger of heading into strange
territory with few supplies, no interpreter, and
no permanent base to which they could
return if the ships and the overland expedition
lost contact with one another.
Narváez reached Apalache, the area
around what is nowTallahassee, seven weeks
later. His men were starving and sore from
carrying armor and equipment over miles of
rough trails. “But,” Cabeza de Vaca later
recorded, “to find ourselves at last where we
desired to be and where we had been assured
somuch food and gold would be had, made us
forget a great part of our labor and weariness.”
Despite his discomfort, Cabeza de Vaca
observed his surroundings. He later portrayed
the houses, terrain, trees, climate, and native
wildlife, including the first European descrip-
tion of the opossum:The animals we saw there were three kinds
of deer, rabbits and hares, bears and lions
and other wild beasts, among them one that
carries its young in a pouch on its belly as
long as the young are small, until they are
able to look for food, and even then, when(^82) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
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