volume, nothing of much
importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just
alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means
within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

To those who have aided him with information and documents, the
extreme slowness in the progress of the work will naturally have caused
surprise. This slowness was unavoidable. During the past eighteen years,
the state of his health has exacted throughout an extreme caution in
regard to mental application, reducing it at best within narrow and
precarious limits, and often precluding it. Indeed, for two periods,
each of several years, any attempt at bookish occupation would have been
merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kindred sources has
also retarded the work, since it has never permitted reading or
writing continuously for much more than five minutes, and often has not
permitted them at all. A previous work, "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," was
written in similar circumstances.

The writer means, if possible, to carry the present design to its
completion. Such a completion, however, will by no means be essential
as regards the individual volumes of the series, since each will form
a separate and independent work. The present work, it will be seen,
contains two distinct and completed narratives. Some progress has been
made in others.

Boston. January 1,1865.

Part One

HUGOENOTS IN FLORIDA

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE

HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.

The story of New France opens with a tragedy. The political and
religious enmities which were soon to bathe Europe in blood broke out
with an intense and concentrated fury in the distant wilds of Florida.
It was under equivocal auspices that Coligny and his partisans essayed
to build up a Calvinist France in America, and the attempt was met by
all the forces of national rivalry, personal interest, and religious
hate.

This striking passage of our early history is remarkable for the
fullness and precision of the authorities that illustrate it. The
incidents of the Huguenot occupation of Florida are recorded by eight
eye-witnesses. Their evidence is marked by an unusual accord in respect
to essential facts, as well as by a minuteness of statement which
vividly pictures the events described. The following are the principal
authorities consulted for the main body of the narrative.

Ribauld, 'The Whole and True Discovery