The power within us

A retelling of one of the most heroic and soul-stirring adventures in the history of America. Four centuries ago a shipwrecked sailor, Cabeza de Vaca, reported to his king on the dangers and hardships which he and his companions faced in the trek from Florida to the Pacific. It was a story of disaster in Spanish colonial history; yet in the world of the individual it was a story of triumph. The weather-beaten explorer, lost in a thorny land among copper-colored savages and facing a blank future, discovered religion to be a reality of which he had never dreamt. He helped when he had no means of helping. He gave when he had nothing to give. His plight was hopeless but he set in motion a train of thought and action which saved him. Cabeza de Vaca's mystical feeling about the increase in life in a man in danger, from effort, from taking thought of his fellows, lies between the lines of his guarded report for the royal ear.--Jacket flap