ST. AUGUSTINE FOUNDED-THE HUGUENOTS PERISH. 19

the enterprise. All the sailors and soldiers the commander required; whole families, of all classes-mechanics, and common laborers, Jesuits, and priests, -combined to make up the expedition. It was a quick passage; but a tempest scattered the fleet, and it was only with a third part of his forces that the commander reached Porto Rico.

Melendez had determined to found a city in the beginning, and construct strong fortifications. Without waiting for the rest of his fleet, he sailed for the coast of Florida. He gained the first sight of it on the day of the great, and perhaps most venerated of the Fathers of the Christian church; and landing on the site of his contemplated city, he named the spot St. Augustine, and commenced his work. Philip was proclaimed monarch of all North America; and, in the midst of imposing religious ceremonies, the foundations of the oldest city in the United States were laid.

Ribault, who was informed of the arrival of Melendez, put to sea, to meet him; but an autumn gale swept his fleet in an utter wreck on the coast. Melendez marched, with the chief part of his garrison, through the forests and marshes to the St. Johns, and falling upon the defenceless colony, doomed its people to promiscuous massacre. Neither the aged, the sick, the mother, nor the infant, were spared. Laudonnier and a few of his companions fled to the forest; but, starvation staring them in the face, most of them returned under a promise of clemency, and surrendered themselves to the enemy, only to be instantly murdered, while the remaining fragment reached the seaside. The carnage had already been sanctified by the celebration of mass. A cross was raised over the site of the massacre, and for a Christian church the very ground was dedicated which was still smoking with the blood of the little Huguenot colony.

A proclamation was then made by Melendez, inviting all the French, e.nbracing the sailors of the shipwrecked fleet and the colonists who had fled, to come back, trusting to his mercy: and in their desperation they all responded. They numbered nearly one thousand, as they gathered on the banks of the river. But no faith was to be kept with a Heretic. With their hands bound behind them, they were started for St. Augustine. As the sad procession was reaching its destination, at a given signal of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards fell upon their victims, and put them to death. A few Catholics were saved, with some mechanics, who were instantly made slaves; the rest were all massacred, 'not as Frenchmen,' says the Spanish account, but as Lutherans.'

Thus perished the Huguenot colony, and with it, the first attempt to rescue North America from the barbarism of the Savage, and the degradation of a bigoted faith.'

The Huguenots and the French nation did not share the indifference of the court. Dominic de Gourgnes-a bold soldier of Gascony, whose life had been a series of adventures, now employed in the army against Spain, now a prisoner and a galley-slave among the Spaniards, taken by the Turks with the vessel in which he rowed, and redeemed by the commander of the Knights of Malta-burned with a desire to avenge his own wrongs and the honor of his country. The sale of his property, and the contributions of his friends, furnished the means of equipping three ships,

in which, with one hundred and fifty men, he, on the twenty-second of August, 1567, embarked for Florida to destroy and revenge. He surprised two forts near the mouth of the St. Matheo; and, as terror magnifie the number of his followers, the consternation of the Spaniards enabled him to gain possession of the larger establishment, near the spot which the French colony had occupied. Too weak to maintain his position, he, in May, 1568, hastily weighed anchor for Europe, having first hanged his prisoners, upon the trees, and placed over them the inscription: "I do not this as unte

20

ENGLAND'S THRONE UNDER ELIZABETH.

After this atrocious victory, Melendez sent an expedition north to Chesa peake Bay, with the design of establishing another colony, and taking posses sion of the territory. But he had already reached the limits which destiny had assigned to the progress of Spanish dominion in that direction. He returned to Spain, stripped of his fortune, but greeted with the honors of a triumph.

The fate of the Florida colony excited little sympathy at the Court of Charles IX. Forty years were still to pass before England was to found her first permanent colony in North America; and Spain was left in quiet possession of her territories in the New World. Cuba was the centre of her American dominion, which extended undisputed over the tropical archipelago, and the shores of the neighboring continent-including Florida, and the vast regions to the north and west; Mexico, Central America, and the Isthmus between the two oceans, and the circumjacent coasts; while the vast expanse of the Gulf of Mexico was embraced by her encircling empire. Over this vast dominion her flag was to remain waving for two hundred and fifty years.

SECTION SECOND.

PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS-THE BEGINNING OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION.

NEARLY eighty years went by after the discovery of the continent of North America by Cabot, before England was ready to undertake its colonization. For carrying out such a work—one that was to have so much to do with the well-being of mankind, and the development of modern civilization,—the period had now come. A sovereign was on the throne of England, whose genius and ambition were to mark a new period in the advancement of that country, and cover her reign with a splendor unequalled by any woman who had swayed a sceptre since the time of Zenobia.' Around her throne were gathered some of the greatest men of modern times. Cecil was lending to her counsels the might of his wisdom; Bacon, the interpreter of all science. and the greatest of all the historians of learning, was doing a larger share than falls to the lot of many men, to add splendor to an age; while Shakespeare, the poet of all time, was shedding the radiance of his genius over that wonderful period.

Walter Raleigh.—But one name was to become dearer to Americans than all. The most brilliant of courtiers, and among the most gifted of men; magnetic in his sympathy with the new thoughts that were agitating the mind

Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers." The natives, who had been ill-treated both by the Spaniards and the French, enjoyed the consolation of seeing their enemies butcher one another.-Bancroft, vol. 1. pp. 72-3.

1 Portrait of Queen Elizabeth when she was twentythree years old, by Micheli, the Venetian Minister: "The Princess is as beautiful in mind as she is in body, though her countenance is rather pleasing from its expression, than beautiful. She is large and well

made, her complexion clear, and of an olive tint. Her eyes are fine, and her hands, on which she prides herself, small and delicate. She has an excellent genius, with much address and self-command, as was abund antly shown in the severe trials to which she was ex posed in the earlier part of her life. In her temper she is haughty and imperious-qualities inherited from her father, King Henry VIII., who, from her resemblance to himself, is said to have regarded her with peculiar fondness."-Prescott's Philip II., vol. i. p. 278,

BEGINNING OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION.

21

of Europe; a companion of a congenial spirit, Henry of Navarre, with whom, under the great Coligny, he had studied the art of war; fired by a loftier ambition than the men around him, and capable of deeds more exalted than any of his contemporaries; he had from the beginning a most complete vision of the field of England's future achievements on the Western Continent. He was also ready to embark his all in the enterprise of establishing her power, and making her civilization shine on these distant shores. If Wickliff was appropriately called the morning star of the Reformation, in the brave and illuminated Sir Walter Raleigh young America found her prophetic impersonation.

The free mind of Raleigh never was bound by the fetters of the past: his eagle eye was always on the future. Casting the superstitions of his time behind him, his heart, which was all a-glow with the spirit of a generous humanity, greeted the new light of the Reformation which had already illumined the shores of England. He was in brain and heart a thorough Protestant. A companion in the field and at Court with Henry of Navarre, who was to be the great champion for a while, at least, of the cause of the Huguenots, all his indignation was roused at the massacre of Coligny's friends in Florida, and the brutal extermination of his ill-fated colony. Returning to England, he spread something of his own enthusiasm through the Court of Elizabeth, who had already learned in person all that could be told of the southern coast of the United States, from the helpless men who had been saved on the ocean by the little bark that bore them to England. The queen had also become familiar with the reports of Hawkins, who had befriended the French settlers on the river May, while artistic illustration was thrown over the whole subject by the French painter, De Morgues, who had, under the patronage of Raleigh, completed a series of pictures from the drawings made by him on the coast. These pictures were taken by Raleigh to England, and representing with vividness of color borrowed from birds, and flowers, and skies, all the striking aspects of the country, they lent their gentle ministry to inflame the fancy, and warm the heart of the virgin queen.

The learning and patience of Bancroft, which found so fortunate an ally in his genial style, have given to Americans the best fruits of his exhaustive investigations.' He shows how slowly the idea was developed of planting agricultural colonies in the temperate regions of America. One of the chief obstacles it had to encounter was the belief, which outlived the dying hours of Columbus and for a long time filled the common mind, that America was only a portion of the great Asiatic continent. Henry VII. being a Catholic, 1 The expeditions of the Cabots, though they had revealed a continent of easy access, in a temperate zone, had failed to discover a passage to the Indies. and their fame was dimmed by that of Vasco da Gama, whose achievement made Lisbon the emporium of Europe. Thorn and Eliot of Bristol, visited Newfoundland probably in 1502; in that year savages in wild attire were exhibited to the king; but North America as yet invited no colony, for it promised no sudden wealth, while the Indies more and more inflamed commercial cupidity. In March, 1501, Henry VII. granted an exclusive privilege of trade to a company composed half of Englishmen, half of Portuguese, with leave to sail towards any

point in the compass, and the incidental right to inhabit the regions which should be found; there is, however, no proof that a voyage was made under the authority of this commission. In December of the following year, a new grant in part to the same patentees, promised a forty years' monopoly of trade, an equally wide scope for adventure, and larger favor to the alien associates; but, even these great privileges seem not to have beer followed by an expedition. The only connection which as yet existed between England and the New World was with Newfoundland and its fisheries.-Bancroft, vol. i. p. 75.

22 HOW ENGLAND BEGAN TO COLONIZE THE NEW WORLD.

was obliged, in some sort, to recognize the paramount title of Spain to North America, which she had received from the Pope. He cultivated the Spanish alliance with a view to the projected marriage of his son and successor with Catherine of Aragon, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. But the subsequent repudiation of Catherine bringing the political alliance to an end, left Henry VIII. free to display the banner of St. George wherever he liked, and some encouragement was given to the cultivation of English commerce; especially the fisheries of Newfoundland, which were favored by the first Act of Parliament which makes any reference to America.

The English were now beginning to assert their supremacy as sailors on perilous seas, from the heart of the Tropics to the gates of the Pole. Poor 'bloody Mary' of England had indeed chosen the King of Spain for a husband; but the alliance had soon ended, and for a long time peaceful intercourse between these two rival maritime nations was suspended by the wreck of the grand Armada off the coast of England, and the triumph of Protestantism, which breathed a new and loftier spirit through the nation.

But the old vision of the North-western Passage to Asia still haunted the dreams of all the navigators of Europe. Pondering for many years on the scheme for its discovery, that famous seaman, Martin Frobisher, discouraged by no refusal to his implorations in any or all quarters, at last found a hearing with Dudley, Earl of Warwick, to whom he said, 'The only thing of the world yet left undone, by which a noble minde might be made famous and fortunate, is the discovery of the North western Passage.' And that great nobleman enabled him to fit out two little barks, of twenty, and five-and-twenty tons, with a pinnace of ten only; and with these he started from London [June 8th]. The Court went to see the tiny fleet drop down the Thames; and Queen Elizabeth from the bank waved a farewell token to this bold rover of the seas.

Little could be expected from this cockleshell expedition. The first storm swallowed up the pinnace; the crew of the Michael turned her prow back, in fright, to England: but the unterrified Frobisher went on his way unattended to the shores of Labrador. Entering an inlet, he mistook the opening of Hudson's Bay-of which he was the real discoverer-for the long sought passage between Asia and America, and he believed that by sailing onward he would strike the Pacific. But this bold expedition ended only in taking some of the rocks and rubbish of the region on board, to make the Queen of England's claim to the sovereignty of the territory good; and in showing to his countrymen one native, which, after the style of the age, he considered it necessary to steal, to give éclat to his expedition.

But he was gratified by having the jewellers of London announce that the stones he had brought back contained gold. This inflamed the cupidity of the merchants. They offered to purchase a lease of the new lands from the Queen, with the idea of working them for gold. The rush to join the new expedition was unprecedented. Even the Queen caught the fever, and contributed one ship at her own expense, going into partnership with the concern.