y towards the Indians, and they followed the worst
possible course with them. They wholly neglected tillage, and so were in
constant peril of starvation. They were lawless and disorderly in their
fellowship, and were always at the mercy of conspirators among
themselves.

Beginning about the year 1550, and embracing the quarter of a century
following, there transpired on the coast of Florida a series of acts of
mingled heroism and barbarity not easily paralleled in any chapter of
the world's history. Menendez, under his commission as Adelantado,
having effected the first European settlement in North America at St.
Augustine, and the French having established a river fort named
Caroline, the struggle which could not long have been deferred was
invited. We have here a double narrative. While the French commander,
Ribaut, is shipwrecked in an enterprise by sea against St. Augustine,
Menendez, by land, after a most harassing tramp through forest and
swamp, successfully assails Fort Caroline. Though he has pledged his
honor to spare those who surrendered to his mercy, he foully breaks his
pledge, as no faith was to be kept with heretics. A brutal massacre,
which shocked even his Indian allies, signalized his victory. An
inscription on the trees under which he slaughtered his victims
announced that vengeance was wreaked on them, "not as Frenchmen, but as
heretics."

These atrocities were in their turn avenged, after a similar fashion and
in the same spirit, by Dominique de Gourgues. It is doubtful whether he
was a Huguenot; but he felt, as the French monarch and court did not,
the rankling disgrace of this bloody catastrophe. An intense hater of
the Spaniards, he gave his whole spirit of chivalry and prowess, in the
approved fashion of the age, to avenge the insult to France. Providing
himself with three small vessels, navigable by sail or oar, he gathered
a fit company for his enterprise; but not till well on his way did he
reveal to them his real purpose, in which they proved willing
coadjutors. He found the Spaniards at their forts had alienated the
Indians, who readily leagued with him. By a bold combination and a
fierce onslaught he carries the Spanish works, and retaliates on his
fiendish and now cowering prisoners by hanging them, "not as Spaniards,
but as traitors, robbers, and murderers." De Gourgues came to do this,
not to make another attempt for a permanent settlement in the interest
of France. He therefore destr