dome, honest sobrietie, and modest grauitie." The chief of a neighboring tribe was "gratious and courteous," and "one of the tallest men and best proportioned that may bee founde;" his wife a model as a princess, a woman, and a mother, endowed with great beauty, "of virtuous countenance and modest gravity," having in her train five graceful daughters, well brought up, "taught well and straightly." That they none of them wore much if any clothing perhaps added to rather than took from the glamour of this arcadian picture. Life, too, as seemed fitting, was prolonged in this land where the men were noble and brave, the women beautiful, and all nature bountiful. The father of a chief was found whose descendants were counted to the fifth generation. How old the sire was is not stated; but his venerable son numbered two hundred and fifty years, and both expected, unless cut off by a violent death, to live thirty or forty years longer. Laudonnière, after sailing a few leagues along the coast, returned to the River of May without going to Port Royal, having heard, no doubt, either from the Indians or before leaving France, of the abandonment of Charles Fort. He determined to settle on the May, rather than at Port Royal, as "it was much more needfull to plant in places plentifull of victual, than in goodly havens, faire, deepe, and pleasant to the view."

Building of Fort Caroline.

The spot chosen was just above what is now known as St. John's Bluff, on the bank of the river.1 At break of day, the trumpet sounded to assemble the people; a Psalm of thanksgiving was sung; the blessing of God was asked upon their enterprise, and then all fell to work with shovels, cuttinghooks and hatchets.

The fort was in the shape of a triangle, fronting the river, with the bluff on one side, a marsh on the other, and the woods in the rear. It was finished in a few days, with the aid of Satouriona's people, and was named Fort Caroline, in honor of the king, Charles IX. of France.

1 Parkman's Pioneers of New France. Fairbanks' History of St. Augustine.

1564.]

CUPIDITY OF THE FRENCHMEN.

199

The greed

silver.

They could handle the shovel to build fortifications, but not to till the ground. As in the first colony, no seed was planted; the only harvest thought of was gold and silver. The experience of the unfortunate Port Royalists profited them nothing; if they considered at all the advantage which numbers gave them, it was only that they would be able to explore the farther, and use them, if need be, in the subjection of the Indians, in acquiring the wealth they hoped to find. Expeditions were sent from time to time into the interior, always with the same purpose. Everywhere gold and silver were asked for; everywhere was the same answer: it was some for gold and chief beyond who had them in plenty, and against that particular chief the informant was always anxious to commence hostilities with the aid of the Frenchmen. There was no fable telling of gold that they were not eager to swallow. It was "good newes at Fort Caroline that there were certain Indians who covered" their brests, armes, thighes, legs, and foreheads, with large plates of gold and silver," as protective armor, and that "the height of two foot of gold and silver," would be the booty that might be taken from the least of the petty chiefs of that people. Two Spaniards were brought to the Fort from the Gulf coast, where they had been shipwrecked fifteen years before; they reported that the king of that country "had great store of gold and silver, so farre forth that in a certaine village he had a pit full thereof, which was at the least as high as a man, and as large as a tunne;" that "the common people of the countrey also had great store thereof;" that "the women going to dance, did weare about their girdles plates of gold as broad as a sawcer, and in such number that the weight did hinder them to dance at their ease; and that the men ware the like also." While the cupidity of the Frenchmen was inflamed with such stories, there could be no useful industry and no steady discipline. Promises to the chiefs of rendering aid in their attacks upon their neighbors, were kept or broken, as either course seemed most likely to further the search for treasure. It was a trial of cunning with the native chiefs, in which, on the whole, the savages came off the best; for they were sometimes enabled, by the help of the Christians, to add to their store of scalps, while the promised riches which the Christians coveted, were still to be got by some new expedition. "The mountaine of Apalichi," which they soon learned to believe was the source of the precious metals they were in search of, seemed after every fight to be as distant as ever.

CHAPTER IX.

FRENCH AND SPANISH COLONISTS IN FLORIDA.

PLOTS AGAINST THE FRENCH GOVERNOR LAUDONNIÈRE. - OPEN MUTINY IN HIS COLONY. - FIGHT WITH INDIANS. - VISIT OF AN ENGLISH FLEET TO PORT ROYAL. - ARRIVAL OF RIBAULT WITH A FLEET OF SEVEN SHIPS. CRUSADE OF Pedro MENENDEZ AGAINST HERETICS. HIS ATTACK ON FORT CAROline. SLAUGHTER OF RIBAULT AND HIS MEN BY THE SPANIARDS. FOUNDING OF THE FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.-INDIGNATION OF THE FRENCH AT THE SPANISH ATROCITIES. DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES GOES TO FLORIDA. — HE MAKES ALLIES OF THE SAVAGES. — ATTACK ON THE SPANISH FORT. THE BLOODY RETALIATION. A SPANISH MISSION ON THE RAPPAHANNOCK.

Insubordina

Caroline.

DISAPPOINTMENT in these extravagant hopes and ill-directed efforts soon led to the inevitable results. Discontent and insubordination showed themselves in the fort; Laudonnière was blamed tion in Fort for want of energy and enterprise, and a plot was formed to depose him and even to take his life. One La Roquette pretended to have discovered by magic a mine of gold and silver, far up the river, which he promised should yield ten thousand crowns each to the soldiers who should take it, besides a reserve of fifteen hundred thousand for the king. Genre, a trusted friend of Laudonnière, was, with Roquette, the head of this conspiracy, and many of the soldiers were fascinated with the old delusion in fresher and more captivating colors than ever. But to reach this wonderful mine it was necessary first to dispose of the captain; for he held the key of the store-house, was rigidly economical of provision, was obeyed and trusted by many of the soldiers, and was an obstacle generally in the way of any plan whereby every man in the colony was to do just as he pleased without regard to anybody else. It was proposed to the apothecary to give him enough arsenic or quicksilver "to make mee," says Laudonnière himself," pitch ouer the pearch; "the master of the fire-works was asked to put a keg of gunpowder under his bed. But neither proposition found favor in the eyes of those scrupulous officers; exposure speedily followed, and the conspirators were punished on the spot or sent back to France.

But the fire was only smothered, not extinguished. Other mal

1564.]

A PIRATICAL VOYAGE.

201

The muti

the ships.

contents soon after stole two small vessels, the only ones the colony possessed for excursions into the interior, and made off to the West India Islands for a piratical voyage on their own neers seize account. Two other and larger vessels were built as soon as possible, but were no sooner ready for sea than they also were seized, the mutineers, this time, being strong enough to imprison Laudonnière and compel him to sign a roving commission authorizing them to make a cruise among the Spanish colonies. By robbing churches and seizing treasure-ships they hoped to so enrich themselves as to be independent even of government at home, if their acts should be repudiated. But the fate which so often followed buccaneers attended them. They soon quarrelled over the booty they easily acquired;

three of the vessels finally fell into the hands of the Spaniards; the fourth, steered by a pilot who, with some of the sailors, had been compelled against his will to go in her, was brought back by his skillful management to Fort Caroline, when Laudonnière had the satisfaction of seizing the ringleaders and punishing them with death.

In the spring a new enemy beset them, whose coming should have been foreseen "ignominious hunger." The provisions they brought

Famine attacks the

with them were exhausted, and they could no longer rely upon the stock of corn and beans which the Indians had laid up for winter use, as they parted unwillingly with any portion of colony. their small remainder. Trinkets and clothing, with which they had become familiar, diminished in value in the eyes of the savages, and they knew from experience how to measure with accuracy the wasting corn-heaps by the months still to elapse before the ripening of the new corn. Less thoughtful than the Indians, the colonists had provided for no scarcity, and looked forward to no harvest, depending alone upon succor from France, as their unfortunate countrymen had done before them. Day by day, they climbed the hill and scanned the horizon in vain for a sight of the returning ships; and day by day their flesh wasted away, their bones pierced the skin, and hardly strength was left them to gather sorrel and dig the few edible roots they could find in the woods wherewith to keep the life in their miserable bodies. Driven to this extremity they clamored to be led back to France, though not one of their two or three small vessels was large enough to carry the whole company, or fit to encounter the perils of such a voyage.

It was the time of planting, and they could as easily have waited for the ripening of fruit and grain and have thus made themselves self-sustaining and independent of all outside aid for the future, as provide for the three months it would take to build another ship. But they thought of nothing, cared for nothing, but to get away. A new ship, therefore, must be built, and they devoted such strength as they had left to that work. Meantime, they were in want of food. Foraging expeditions among the Indians only ended in disappointment; the hungry crowd surrounded Laudonnière, demanding that he should seize one of the neighboring chiefs and hold him to be ransomed in corn and other provision. "Shall it not be lawful for vs," they said, "to punish them for the wrong they doe unto vs, beside that we know apparently how little they respect vs." The wrongs were that the Indians were too prudent to part with the stores which were hardly sufficient for their own support till the new corn was fit to gather; the want of respect was the unconcealed contempt they felt for these civilized paupers who permitted themselves to be reduced to this pitiful extremity.

Injustice to

The remedy proposed did not commend itself to Laudonnière's judgment, but he was compelled to yield to the clamor around him. Outina, one of their kings, was seized amid the lamentations the Indians. of the women and the cries for vengeance from the men of his tribe. The treacherous act, as Laudonnière 'expected, failed to arouse either the fears or the generosity of the Indians; but it in