ale-oil. Disease broke out,
and, before spring, killed one third of the colony. The rest would have
quarrelled, mutinied, and otherwise aggravated their inevitable woes,
but disorder was dangerous under the iron rule of the inexorable
Roberval. Michel Gaillon was detected in a petty theft, and hanged. Jean
de Nantes, for a more venial offence, was kept in irons. The quarrels of
men and the scolding of women were alike requited at the whipping-post,
"by which means," quaintly says the narrative, "they lived in peace."

Thevet, while calling himself the intimate friend of the Viceroy, gives
a darker coloring to his story. He says that, forced to unceasing
labor, and chafed by arbitrary rules, some of the soldiers fell under
Roberval's displeasure, and six of them, formerly his favorites, were
hanged in one day. Others were banished to an island, and there kept in
fetters; while, for various light offences, several, both men and women,
were shot. Even the Indians were moved to pity, and wept at the sight of
their woes.

And here, midway, our guide deserts us; the ancient narrative is broken,
and the latter part is lost, leaving us to divine as we may the future
of the ill-starred colony. That it did not long survive is certain. The
King, in great need of Roberval, sent Cartier to bring him home, and
this voyage seems to have taken place in the summer of 1543. It is said
that, in after years, the Viceroy essayed to repossess himself of his
Transatlantic domain, and lost his life in the attempt. Thevet, on
the other hand, with ample means of learning the truth, affirms that
Roberval was slain at night, near the Church of the Innocents, in the
heart of Paris.

With him closes the prelude of the French-American drama. Tempestuous
years and a reign of blood and fire were in store for France. The
religious wars begot the hapless colony of Florida, but for more than
half a century they left New France a desert. Order rose at length
out of the sanguinary chaos; the zeal of discovery and the spirit of
commercial enterprise once more awoke, while, closely following, more
potent than they, moved the black-robed forces of the Roman Catholic
reaction.

CHAPTER II.

1542-1604.

LA ROCHE.--CHAMPLAIN.--DE MONTS.

Years rolled on. France, long tossed among the surges of civil
commotion, plunged at last into a gulf of fratricidal war. Blazing
hamlets, sacked cities, fields steaming with slaughter, profaned altars,
and ravi