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Ayllon failed the first European attempt to colonize Florida/Carolina

Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121

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After considerable delay Ayllon himself sailed for his new government early in June, 1526, with three large vessels, 600 persons of both sexes, including priests and physicians, and 100 horses. They reached the North American coast at the mouth of a river calculated by them to be in north latitude 33° 40', and they called it the Jordan—from the name of one of Ayllon's captains, it is said. Here, however, Ayllon lost one of his vessels, and his interpreters, including Francisco of Chicora, deserted him. Dissatisfied with the region in which he had landed and obtaining news of one better from a party he had sent along the shore, Ayllon determined to remove, and he seems to have followed the coast. The explorers are said to have continued for 40 or 45 leagues until they came to a river called Gualdape, where they began a settlement, which was called San Miguel de Gualdape. The land hereabout was ilat and full of marshes. The river was large and well stocked with fish, but the entrance was shallow and passable only at high tide. The colony did not prosper, the weather became severe, many sickened and died, and on October 18, 1526, Ayllon died also. Trouble soon broke out among the surviving colonists and finally, in the middle of a severe winter, those that were left sailed back to Hispaniola.2

Such are the principal facts concerning the first Spanish explorations and attempts at colonization upon the coast of the Carolinas.