at the orders issued, to set
at liberty all the Indians who had been wrongfully enslaved. One
powerful colonist alone refused to obey: Mem de Sa ordered his house to
be surrounded and instantly levelled with the ground. Such an act was
certainly calculated to inspire the Indians with confidence in his good
intentions towards them, at the same time that his vigorous measures to
punish them for any infraction of their engagements kept them in awe.

Meantime an adventurer of no ordinary stamp, had formed a settlement in
the finest harbour of Brazil, namely, that of Rio de Janeiro. Nicholas
Durand de Villegagnon was a native of Provins en Brie, and a Knight of
Malta. In 1648, he had been employed by Mary of Guise, at the entreaty
of the French court, to convey her daughter the young Queen of Scots to
France: in 1651 he was engaged in the defence of Malta, against the
Pacha Sinan and the famous Dragut Reis, and two years afterwards
published an account of that campaign. Having visited Brazil in 1558,
Villegagnon could not be insensible to the advantages that must arise to
France from having a settlement there; and, on his return to Europe, he
made such representations at court of these advantages, that Henry II.
gave him two vessels, each of 200 tons, and a store ship of 100 tons, to
convey the adventurers who might wish to leave France, and who at that
time were numerous. Villegagnon, wishing to make use of Coligny's
interest, gave out that the new settlement was to be a refuge for the
persecuted Hugonots, and this answered the double purpose of securing
the Admiral's friendship, and gaining a number of respectable colonists.
With these he reached Rio de Janeiro, and made his first settlement in a
low rock at the mouth of the harbour, where there is now a small fort
called the Laje, but finding it not sufficiently elevated to resist the
high tides, he pitched on an island within the harbour, where there is
only one landing place, and whose form and situation is singularly
adapted for safety, especially against such enemies as the Indians.
Those, however, of the Rio had been long accustomed to trade with the
French, who, if they had not taught them, had at least encouraged them,
to hate the Portuguese, whom Villegagnon flattered himself that he
should be able to keep aloof by the assistance of the Savages.

Meantime Coligny had exerted himself to send out assistance of every
kind; provisions, recruits[12], and protestant mi