r that ambitious people, since
the time of Cartier, had never abandoned their schemes of seizing this
portion of the dominions of the King of Spain. Five hundred soldiers and
one hundred sailors must, he urges, take possession, without delay, of
Port Royal and the Chesapeake.

Preparation for his enterprise was pushed with a furious energy. His
force amounted to two thousand six hundred and forty-six persons, in
thirty-four vessels, one of which, the San Pelayo, bearing Menendez
himself, was of more than nine hundred tons' burden, and is described as
one of the finest ships afloat. There were twelve Franciscans and eight
Jesuits, besides other ecclesiastics; and many knights of Galicia,
Biscay, and the Asturias bore part in the expedition. With a slight
exception, the whole was at the Adelantado's charge. Within the first
fourteen months, according to his admirer, Barcia, the adventure cost
him a million ducats.

Before the close of the year, Sancho de Arciniega was commissioned to
join Menendez with an additional force of fifteen hundred men.

Red-hot with a determined purpose, he would brook no delay. To him, says
the chronicler, every day seemed a year. He was eager to anticipate
Ribaut, of whose designs and whose force he seems to have been informed
to the minutest particular, but whom he hoped to thwart and ruin by
gaining Fort Caroline before him. With eleven ships, then, he sailed
from Cadiz on the 29th of June, 1565, leaving the smaller vessels of his
fleet to follow with what speed they might. He touched first at the
Canaries, and on the eighth of July left them, steering for Dominica. A
minute account of the voyage has come down to us from the pen of
Mendoza, chaplain of the expedition, a somewhat dull and illiterate
person, who busily jots down the incidents of each passing day, and is
constantly betraying, with a certain awkward simplicity, how the cares
of this world and the next jostle each other in his thoughts.

On Friday, the twentieth of July, a storm fell upon them with appalling
fury. The pilots lost head, the sailors gave themselves up to their
terrors. Throughout the night, they beset Mendoza for confession and
absolution, a boon not easily granted, for the seas swept the crowded
decks in cataracts of foam, and the shriekings of the gale in the
rigging drowned the exhortations of the half-drowned priest. Cannon,
cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard, and the chests of the
sailors wo