and
mother he had lived for awhile with his mother's people in Navarre, and
since they were poor and bread was hard to come by he had run away the
year before and found his way to Paris, where Dominic de Gourgues had
found him. If the Huguenots had a safe home he might be able to repay
the kindness of his cousins. Meanwhile the country, the wild creatures,
the copper-colored people and the hard work of landing colonists and
supplies were full of interest and excitement for Pierre.

Satouriona, the Indian chief, showed the French officers the pillar
which Ribault's party had set up on their previous visit to mark their
discovery. The faithful savages had kept it wreathed with evergreens
and decked with offerings of maize and fruits as if it were an altar.

Unfortunately not all the colonists were of heroic mind. Most who had
left France to seek their fortunes were merchants, craftsman and young
Huguenot noblemen whose swords were uneasy in time of peace. French
farm-laborers were mainly serfs on Catholic estates, and landowners did
not wish to come to the New World. Thus the people of the settlement
were city folk with little experience or inclination for cultivating the
soil. The Indians grew tired of supplying the wants of so large a number
of strangers. Quarrels arose among the French. A discontented group of
adventurers mutinied and went off on a wild attempt at piracy. They
plundered two ships in the Spanish Indies and were caught by the Spanish
governor. The twenty-six who escaped his clutches fled back to the fort,
which Laudonniere had built and named Carolina. His faithful lieutenant
La Caille arrested them and dragged them to judgment. "Say what you
will," said one of the culprits ruefully, "if Laudonniere does not hang
us I will never call him an honest man." The four leaders were promptly
sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to shooting. After
that order reigned, for a time.

Some of the tradesmen ranged the wilderness, bringing back feather
mantles, arrows tipped with gold, curiously wrought quivers of beautiful
fur, wedges of a green stone like beryl. There were reports of a gold
mine somewhere in the northern mountains. Ribault did not return with
the expected supplies, the Indians had mostly left the neighborhood, and
misery and starvation followed, for the game, like the Indians fled the
presence of the white men. The Governor began to think of crowding the
survivors into the two littl