Chap. II.} 1564 |
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of Florida.
The harbor of Port Royal, rendered gloomy
by recollections of misery, was avoided; and after searching the coast, and discovering places which were so full of amenity, that melancholy itself could not but change its humor, as it gazed, the followers of Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the River May. They sung a psalm of thanksgiving, and gathered courage from acts of devotion.
The fort now erected was also named Carolina.
The result of this attempt to procure for France immense dominions at the south of our republic, through the agency of a Huguenot colony, has been very frequently narrated:1 in the history of human nature it forms a dark picture of vindictive bigotry.
The French were hospitably welcomed by the natives; a monument, bearing the arms of France, was crowned with laurels, and its base encircled with baskets of corn.
What need is there of minutely relating the simple manners of the red men; the dissensions of rival tribes; the largesses offered to the strangers to secure their protection or their alliance; the improvident prodigality with which careless soldiers wasted the supplies of food; the certain approach of scarcity; the gifts and the tribute levied from the Indians by entreaty, menace, or force?
By degrees the confidence
1 There are four original accounts by eye-witnesses: Laudonniere, in Hakluyt, III. 384—419: Le Moyne, in De Bry, part II., together with the Epistola Supplicatoria, from the widows and orphans of the sufferers, to Charles IX.; also in De Bry, part II: Challus, or Challusius, of Dieppe, whose account I have found annexed to Calveto's Nov. Nov. Orb. Hist. under the title De Gallorum Expeditione in Floridam, 433—469: and the Spanish account by Solis de las Meras, the brother-in-law and apologist of Melendez, in Ensayo Cronologico, 85—90. On Solis, compare Crisis del Ensayo, 22, 23. I have drawn my narrative from a comparison of these four accounts; consulting also the admirable De Thou, a genuine worshipper at the shrine of truth, l. XLIV.; the diffuse Barcia's Ensayo Cronologico, 42—94; the elaborate and circumstantial narrative of Charlevoix, N. Fr. i. 24—106; and the account of L'Escarbot, i. 62—129. The accounts do not essentially vary. Voltaire and many others have repeated the sale.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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