lthough
colonial lodgments were impracticable on its far off shores, it
nevertheless permitted the establishment of factories which served, in
the unfrequent commerce of those ages, as almost regal intermediaries
between Europe and Asia.

But the Western World was both nearer, and, for a while, more alluring
to avarice and enterprise. It was not a civilized, populous, and warlike
country like the East, but it possessed the double temptation of wealth
and weakness. The fertility of the West Indies, the reports of
prodigious riches, the conquests of Cortez and Pizzaro, the emasculated
semi-civilization of the two Empires, which, with a few cities and royal
courts, combined the anomaly of an almost barbarous though tamely
tributary people--had all been announced throughout Europe. Yet, the
bold, brave and successful Spaniard of those days contrived for a long
while to reap the sole benefit of the discovery. What he effected was
done by _conquest_. _Colonization_, which is a gradual settlement,
either under enterprise or persecution, was to follow.

The conquest and settlement of the Southern part of this continent are
so well known, that it is needless for me to dwell on them; but it is
not a little singular that the very first effort at what may strictly be
called colonization, within the present acknowledged limits of the
United States, was owing to the spirit of persecution which was so rife
in Europe.

The Bull of the Pope, in its division of the world, had assigned America
to Spain. Florida, which had been discovered by Ponce de Leon, and the
present coast of our Republic on the Gulf of Mexico, were not, in the
sixteenth century, disputed with Spain by any other nation. Spain
claimed, however, under the name of Florida, the whole sea-coast as far
as Newfoundland and even to the remotest north, so that, so far as
_asserted_ ownership was involved, the whole of our coast was Spanish
domain.

The poor, persecuted, weather-beaten Huguenots of France, had been
active in plans of Colonization for escape from the mingled imbecility
and terrorism of Charles IX. They saw that it was not well to stay in
the land of their birth. The Admiral de Coligny, one of the ablest
leaders of the French Protestants, was zealous in his efforts to found a
Gallic empire of his fellow subjects and sufferers on this continent. He
desired, at least, a refuge for them; and in 1562, entrusted to John
Ribault, of Dieppe, the command of an exped