drid to throw
himself on the royal clemency.

His petition was most graciously received. Philip restored his command,
but remitted only half his fine, a strong presumption of his guilt.

Menendez kissed the royal hand; he had still a petition in reserve. His
son had been wrecked near the Bermudas, and he would fain go thither to
find tidings of his fate. The pious King bade him trust in God, and
promised that he should be despatched without delay to the Bermudas and
to Florida with a commission to make an exact survey of those perilous
seas for the profit of future voyagers; but Menendez was ill content
with such an errand. He knew, he said, nothing of greater moment to His
Majesty than the conquest and settlement of Florida. The climate was
healthful, the soil fertile; and, worldly advantages aside, it was
peopled by a race sunk in the thickest shades of infidelity. "Such
grief," he pursued, "seizes me, when I behold this multitude of wretched
Indians, that I should choose the conquest and settling of Florida above
all commands, offices, and dignities which your Majesty might bestow."
Those who think this hypocrisy do not know the Spaniard of the sixteenth
century.

The King was edified by his zeal. An enterprise of such spiritual and
temporal promise was not to be slighted, and Menendez was empowered to
conquer and convert Florida at his own cost. The conquest was to be
effected within three years. Menendez was to take with him five hundred
men, and supply them with five hundred slaves, besides horses, cattle,
sheep, and hogs. Villages were to be built, with forts to defend them;
and sixteen ecclesiastics, of whom four should be Jesuits, were to form
the nucleus of a Floridian church. The King, on his part, granted
Menendez free trade with Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Spain, the
office of Adelantado of Florida for life, joined to the right of naming
his successor, and large emoluments to be drawn from the expected
conquest.

The compact struck, Menendez hastened to his native Asturias to raise
money among his relatives. Scarcely was he gone, when tidings for the
first time reached Madrid that Florida was already occupied by a colony
of French Protestants, and that a reinforcement, under Ribaut, was on
the point of sailing thither. A French historian of high authority
declares that these advices came from the Catholic party at the French
court, in whom all sense of the national interest and honor was
smothere