Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

il.

CHAPTER the Indians were ready to revenge the wrongs they had suffered upon every white man who fell into their power, and that hence came occasional murders and massacres on their part?

But even these fears and antipathies were overcome by the attractions of traffic. The Europeans were ready to barter looking-glasses, beads, trinkets, knives, and hatchets for furs and skins. This trade gradually increased, and the use of articles of European manufacture began to be introduced into North America, and the primitive habits of the natives to be somewhat modified thereby, long before any European settlements were permanently established on the coast.

CHAPTER III.

CAROLINA. COLONY OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. NEW MEXICO.
VIRGINIA. ACADIE. NEW FRANCE. NEW NETHERLAND.

III.

DURING the period embraced in our first chapter, that CHAPTER great religious revolution had occurred which divided Western Europe into the two hostile and violent parties of Protestants and Catholics a revolution not without very important influences on the colonization of North America.

The first attempt at a lodgment within the limits of what are now the United States, with colonization, not conquest, as its principal object, was made by French Protestants called Huguenots, who constituted at that time a formidable party, embracing, besides a large body of the nobility, no small portion of the intelligent and industrious class, especially in the south of France.

The plan of an American settlement was patronized by the Admiral de Coligny, celebrated in French history as one of the ablest leaders of the Protestants. An attempt- 1555– ed settlement in Brazil having proved a failure, John Ri- 57. bault was presently sent with two ships on a voyage of ex- 1562. ploration to Florida. He discovered the River St. John's, May. which he named the River of May; and, following the coast toward the north, entered a spacious inlet, which he called Port Royal, a name it has ever since retained. On an island in this harbor he built a fort called CAROLINA, after Charles IX., then king of France-a name extended afterward to the circumjacent territory, and still retained by two of the United States.

CHAPTER

III.

The twenty-six men left by Ribault, while he returned for supplies, lonely tenants of a desolate coast, became 1562. discontented and uneasy, notwithstanding the hospitality of the neighboring Indians. The attempt of the commandant to repress this feeling provoked a mutiny, in which he was killed. With such materials as they had, the home-sick colonists built and rigged a small bark, in which they set sail for France. But their provisions failed, and they were reduced to the terrible expedient of feeding on the flesh of one of their companions. At length they were picked up by an English vessel, some of them landed on the coast of France, and the others carried to England.

Ribault, on his return to France, had found that kingdom distracted and attention occupied by civil war, then first breaking out between the Huguenots and the Catholics. Peace was presently patched up, and two years. 1564. after the scheme of settlement was renewed. Three ships, furnished by the French government, were placed under the command of Laudonière, one of Ribault's companions in the former voyage. Le Moyne, a draftsman and painter, whose sketches, made upon the spot, were afterward engraved and published, accompanied the expediJune. tion. Laudonière landed his people at the River of May, where he built a fort, called, also, Carolina. But these colonists, like their predecessors, were an unruly set. Under pretense of searching for provisions, some of them seized two small vessels belonging to the colony, with which they sailed to cruise against the Spaniards, whose ships from Mexico and the West Indies offered tempting prizes to freebooters. They took two or three small Spanish vessels, but escaped with difficulty from a superior force at Jamaica, and returned to Fort Carolina, where the ring-leaders were tried and executed. In distress for

III.

food, of which their store was consumed, the colonists CHAPTER had made up their minds to abandon the settlement, when they were visited by Sir John Hawkins, an En- 1564. glish adventurer, on his way home from the Spanish West Indies, where he had just sold, at a great profit, a second cargo of slaves, kidnapped on the coast of Africa. Hawkins appears to have been the first Englishman who engaged in this detestable traffic. Moved by religious sympathy, he supplied the French colonists with provisions, and even gave them a vessel, in which they were just about to embark for France, when Ribault arrived, August. bringing with him a recruit of colonists, men, women, and children, abundance of provisions, and a supply of tools, seeds, and other necessaries.

But Ribault soon found himself attacked by a formidable enemy. This French settlement of Carolina was an intrusion on Florida, as claimed by the Spaniards. The French colonists, or some of them, had taken and plundered two Spanish vessels. They were heretics also; and as religious sympathy had impelled the slavetrader Hawkins to assist them, religious antipathy aroused Don Pedro Menendez for their destruction. Like so many other Spanish adventurers, having amassed a fortune in America, Menendez was disposed to spend it on new enterprises, and he had lately entered into an agreement with Philip II. for the conquest and occupation of Florida. He undertook to invade that country at his own expense, with a force of at least five hundred men, to expel the French, to subdue the natives, and to establish a colony. He was to be governor for life, and, besides an annual salary chargeable on the colonial revenue, was to enjoy certain commercial privileges, and to share the perquisites appertaining to the crown. He was also to receive, as his private property, a tract of land

III.

CHAPTER Seventy-five miles square in the immediate neighborhood of the first settlement. At least five hundred colonists 1564. were to be sent out at once, of whom not less than one hundred were to be married men. Twelve priests were to accompany the colony, and Menendez was to supply it with five hundred negro slaves.

The cry of "Death to the Huguenots" gave a religious zest to this enterprise. Besides three hundred soldiers furnished by the king, twenty-two hundred volunteers, priests, sailors, laborers, mechanics, women, and children, embarked on the expedition at the expense of Menendez. But the fleet was scattered by storms, and the leader arrived at Porto Rico with only one third of his company. Without waiting for the rest, he sailed at once for Florida, and in a few days saw its low and dangerous shore, swept by the rapid current of the Gulf Stream. KeepSept. 1. ing to the north, he presently entered an inlet and haven, which he called St. Augustine, in commemoration of having first seen the land two days before, on the anniversary of that saint. Still keeping north in search of the French settlement, he presently discovered Ribault's vessels, recently arrived; but, apprehensive of his object, of which Ribault had received some intimation before leaving France, they cut their cables and put to sea. Menendez then returned to the harbor he had found, landed his colonists, and, having taken possession of the country in the name of Philip II., proceeded to mark out a city, to which he gave also the name of St. Augustine. That city, though it never attained any considerable population, still exists, by many years the oldest European town in the United States. Built of stone in the solid Spanish fashion, some houses are still standing, reputed almost coeval with its foundation.

Ribault presently collected his ships and sailed to at

« ПредишнаНапред »