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succeeded in restoring order.
But the love of his
native land is a passion easily revived in the breast a Frenchman; and the company resolved to embark in such a brigantine as they could themselves construct.
Intoxicated with joy at the thought of returning home,
they neglected to provide sufficient stores; and they were overtaken by famine at sea, with its attendant crimes.
A small English bark at length boarded their vessel, and, setting the most feeble on shore upon the coast of
France, carried the rest to the queen of
England.
Thus fell the first attempt of
France in
French Florida, near the southern confines of
South Carolina.
The country was still a desert.
1
After the treacherous peace between Charles IX.
and the Huguenots,
Coligny renewed his solicitations for the colonization of
Florida.
The king gave consent; three ships were conceded for the service; and
Laudonniere, who, in the former voyage, had been upon the
American coast, a man of great intelligence, though a seaman rather than a soldier, was appointed to lead forth the colony.
Emigrants readily appeared; for the climate of
Florida was so celebrated, that, according to rumor, the duration of human life was doubled under its genial influences;
2 and men still dreamed of rich mines of gold in the interior.
Coligny was desirous of obtaining accurate descriptions of the country; and James le
Moyne, called De Morgues, an ingenious painter, was commissioned to execute colored drawings of the objects which might engage his curi-
osity A voyage of sixty days brought the fleet, by the way of the Canaries and the Antilles, to the shores
