They
were of the boldest and most earnest of their sect. There were such
among the French disciples of Calvin; but no Mayflower ever sailed from
a port of France. Coligny's colonists were of a different stamp, and
widely different was their fate.

An excellent seaman and stanch Protestant, Jean Ribaut of Dieppe,
commanded the expedition. Under him, besides sailors, were a band of
veteran soldiers, and a few young nobles. Embarked in two of those
antiquated craft whose high poops and tub-like porportions are
preserved in the old engravings of De Bry, they sailed from Havre on
the eighteenth of February, 1562. They crossed the Atlantic, and on the
thirtieth of April, in the latitude of twenty-nine and a half degrees,
saw the long, low line where the wilderness of waves met the wilderness
of woods. It was the coast of Florida. They soon descried a jutting
point, which they called French Cape, perhaps one of the headlands of
Matanzas Inlet. They turned their prows northward, coasting the fringes
of that waste of verdure which rolled in shadowy undulation far to the
unknown West.

On the next morning, the first of May, they found themselves off the
mouth of a great river. Riding at anchor on a sunny sea, they lowered
their boats, crossed the bar that obstructed the entrance, and floated
on a basin of deep and sheltered water, "boyling and roaring," says
Ribaut, "through the multitude of all kind of fish." Indians were
running along the beach, and out upon the sand-bars, beckoning them
to land. They pushed their boats ashore and disembarked,--sailors,
soldiers, and eager young nobles. Corselet and morion, arquebuse and
halberd, flashed in the sun that flickered through innumerable leaves,
as, kneeling on the ground, they gave thanks to God, who had guided
their voyage to an issue full of promise. The Indians, seated gravely
under the neighboring trees, looked on in silent respect, thinking that
they worshipped the sun. "They be all naked and of a goodly stature,
mightie, and as well shapen and proportioned of body as any people in ye
world; and the fore part of their body and armes be painted with pretie
deuised workes, of Azure, red, and blacke, so well and so properly as
the best Painter of Europe could not amende it." With their squaws and
children, they presently drew near, and, strewing the earth with laurel
boughs, sat down among the Frenchmen. Their visitors were much pleased
with them, and Ribaut gave the chief, wh