In the year 1562 a cloud of black and deadly portent was thickening over
France. Surely and swiftly she glided towards the abyss of the religious
wars. None could pierce the future; perhaps none dared to contemplate it:
the wild rage of fanaticism and hate, friend grappling with friend,
brother with brother, father with son; altars profaned, hearthstones made
desolate; the robes of Justice herself bedrenched with murder. In the
gloom without lay Spain, imminent and terrible. As on the hill by the
field of Dreux, her veteran bands of pikemen, dark masses of organized
ferocity, stood biding their time while the battle surged below, then
swept downward to the slaughter,--so did Spain watch and wait to trample
and crush the hope of humanity.
In these days of fear, a Huguenot colony sailed for the New World. The
calm, stern man who represented and led the Protestantism of France felt
to his inmost heart the peril of the time. He would fain build up a city
of refuge for the persecuted sect. Yet Gaspar de Coligny, too high in
power and rank to be openly assailed, was forced to act with caution. He
must act, too, in the name of the Crown, and in virtue of his office of
Admiral of France. A nobleman and a soldier,--for the Admiral of France
was no seaman,--he shared the ideas and habits of his class; nor is there
reason to believe him to have been in advance of others of his time in a
knowledge of the principles of successful colonization. His scheme
promised a military colony, not a free commonwealth. The Huguenot party
was already a political, as well as a religious party. At its foundation
lay the religious element, represented by Geneva, the martyrs, and the
devoted fugitives who sang the psalms of Marot among rocks and caverns.
Joined to these were numbers on whom the faith sat lightly, whose hope was
in commotion and change. Of these, in great part, was the Huguenot
noblesse, from Condé, who aspired to the crown,--
"Ce petit homme tant joli,
Qui toujours chante, toujours rit,"--
to the younger son of the impoverished seigneur whose patrimony was his
sword. More than this, the restless, the factious, the discontented began
to link their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve confiscation
of the bloated wealth of the only rich class in France. An element of the
great revolution was already mingling in the strife of religions.
America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken
over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea. A land of romance, of
adventure, of gold.
Fifty-eight years later, the Puritans landed on the sands of Massachusetts
Bay. The illusion was gone,--the _ignis-fatuus_ of adventure, the dream of
wealth. The rugged wilderness offered only a stern and hard-won
independence. In their own hearts, not in the promptings of a great leader
or the patronage of an equivocal government, their enterprise found its
birth and its achievement. They were of the boldest, the 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, John 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 proportions 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. Soon they descried a jutting point, which they
called French Cape, perhaps one of the headlands of Matanzas Inlet. They
turned their prows northward, skirting 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, alive with leaping 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. Corslet 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
were in full paint, in honor of the occasion, and in a most friendly mood.
With their squaws and children, they presently drew near, and, strewing
the earth with laurel-boughs, sat down among the Frenchmen. The latter
were much pleased with them, and Ribaut gave the chief, whom he calls the
king, a robe of blue cloth, worked in yellow with the regal fleur-de-lis.
But Ribaut and his followers, just escaped from the dull prison of their
ships, were intent on admiring the wild scenes around them. Never had they
known a fairer May-Day. The quaint old narrative is exuberant with
delight. The quiet air, the warm sun, woods fresh with young verdure,
meadows bright with flowers; the palm, the cypress, the pine, the
magnolia; the grazing deer; herons, curlews, bitterns, woodcock, and
unknown water-fowl that waded in the ripple of the beach; cedars bearded
from crown to root with long gray moss; huge oaks smothering in the
serpent folds of enormous grape-vines: such were the objects that greeted
them in their roamings, till their new-found land seemed "the fairest,
fruitfullest, and pleasantest of al the world."
They found a tree covered with caterpillars, and hereupon the ancient
black-letter says,--"Also there be Silke wormes in meruielous number, a
great deale fairer and better then be our silk wormes. To bee short, it is
a thing vnspeakable to consider the thinges that bee seene there, and
shalbe founde more and more in this incomperable lande."
Above all, it was plain to their excited fancy that the country was rich
in gold and silver, turquoises and pearls. One of the latter, "as great as
an Acorne at ye least," hung from the neck of an Indian who stood near
their boats as they reëmbarked. They gathered, too, from the signs of
their savage visitors, that the wonderful land of Cibola, with its seven
cities and its untold riches, was distant but twenty days' journey by
water. In truth, it was on the Gila, two thousand miles off, and its
wealth a fable.
They named the river the River of May,--it is now the St. John's,--and on
its southern shore, near its mouth, planted a stone pillar graven with the
arms of France. Then, once more embarked, they held their course
northward, happy in that benign decree which locks from mortal eyes the
secrets of the future.
Next they anchored near Fernandina, and to a neighboring river, probably
the St. Mary's, gave the name of the Seine. Here, as morning broke on the
fresh, moist meadows hung with mists, and on broad reaches of inland
waters which seemed like lakes, they were tempted to land again, and soon
"espied an innumerable number of footesteps of great Hartes and Hindes of
a wonderfull greatnesse, the steppes being all fresh and new, and it
seemeth that the people doe nourish them like tame Cattell." By two or
three weeks of exploration they seem to have gained a clear idea of this
rich semi-aquatic region. Ribaut describes it as "a countrie full of
hauens riuers and Ilands of such fruitfulnes, as cannot with tongue be
expressed." Slowly moving northward, they named each river, or inlet
supposed to be a river, after the streams of France,--the Loire, the
Charente, the Garonne, the Gironde. At length, they reached a scene made
glorious in after-years. Opening betwixt flat and sandy shores, they saw a
commodious haven, and named it Port Royal.
On the twenty--seventh of May they crossed the bar, where the war-ships of
Dupont crossed three hundred years later.[1] They passed Hilton Head,
where Rebel batteries belched their vain thunder, and, dreaming nothing of
what the rolling centuries should bring forth, held their course along the
peaceful bosom of Broad River. On the left they saw a stream which they
named Libourne, probably Skull Creek; on the right, a wide river, probably
the Beaufort. When they landed, all was solitude. The frightened Indians
had fled, but they lured them back with knives, beads, and
looking-glasses, and enticed two of them on board their ships. Here, by
feeding, clothing, and caressing them, they tried to wean them from their
fears, but the captive warriors moaned and lamented day and night, till
Ribaut, with the prudence and humanity which seem always to have
characterized him, gave over his purpose of carrying them to France, and
set them ashore again.
[Footnote 1: The following is the record of this early visit to
Port Royal, taken from Ribaut's report to Coliguy, translated and
printed in London in 1563:--
"And when wee had sounded the entrie of the Chanell (thanked be
God), wee entered safely therein with our shippes, against the
opinion of many, finding the same one of the fayrest, and greatest
Hauens of the worlde. Howe be it, it must be remembred, least men
approaching neare it within seven leagues of the lande, bee
abashed and afraide on the East side, drawing toward the
Southeast, the grounde to be flatte, for neuerthelesse at a full
sea, there is eurey where foure fathome water keeping the right
Chanel."
Ribaut thinks that the Broad River of Port Royal is the _Jordan_
of the Spanish navigator Vasquez de Ayllon, who was here in 1520,
and gave the name St. Helena to a neighboring cape (_La Vega,
Florida del Inca_). The adjacent district, now called St. Helena,
is the Chicora of the old Spanish maps.]
Ranging the woods, they found them full of game, wild turkeys and
partridges, bears and lynxes. Two deer, of unusual size, leaped up from
the underbrush. Crossbow and arquebuse were brought to the level; but the
Huguenot captain, "moved with the singular fairness and bigness of them,"
forbade his men to shoot.
Preliminary exploration, not immediate settlement, had been the object of
the voyage, but all was still rose-color in the eyes of the voyagers, and
many of their number would fain linger in the New Canaan. Ribaut was more
than willing to humor them. He mustered his company on deck, and made them
a stirring harangue: appealed to their courage and their patriotism, told
them how, from a mean origin, men rise by enterprise and daring to fame
and fortune, and demanded who among them would stay behind and hold Port
Royal for the king. The greater part came forward, and "with such a good
will and joly corage," writes the commander, "as we had much to do to stay
their importunitie." Thirty were chosen, and Albert de Pierria was named
to command them.
A fort was forthwith begun, on a small stream called the Chenonceau,
probably Archer's Creek, about six miles from the site of Beaufort. They
named it Charlesfort, in honor of the unhappy son of Catherine de Médicis,
Charles IX., the future hero of St. Bartholomew. Ammunition and stores
were sent on shore, and, on the eleventh of June, with his diminished
company, Ribaut, again embarking, spread his sails for France.
From the beach at Hilton Head Albert and his companions might watch the
receding ships, growing less and less on the vast expanse of blue,
dwindling to faint specks, then vanishing on the pale verge of the waters.
They were alone in those fearful solitudes. From the North Pole to Mexico
no Christian denizen but they.
But how were they to subsist? Their thought was not of subsistence, but of
gold. Of the thirty, the greater number were soldiers and sailors, with a
few gentlemen, that is to say, men of the sword, born within the pale of
nobility, who at home could neither labor nor trade without derogation
from their rank. For a time they busied themselves with finishing their
fort, and, this done, set forth in quest of adventures.
The Indians had lost all fear of them. Ribaut had enjoined upon them to
use all kindness and gentleness in their dealing with the men of the
woods; and they more than obeyed him. They were soon hand and glove with
chiefs, warriors, and squaws; and as with Indians the adage that
familiarity breeds contempt holds with peculiar force, they quickly
divested themselves of the prestige which had attached at the outset to
their supposed character of children of the sun. Goodwill, however,
remained, and this the colonists abused to the utmost
Roaming by river, swamp, and forest, they visited in turn the villages of
five petty chiefs, whom they called kings, feasted everywhere on hominy,
beans, and game, and loaded with gifts. One of these chiefs, named
Audusta, invited them to the grand religious festival of his tribe.
Thither, accordingly, they went. The village was alive with preparation,
and troops of women were busied in sweeping the great circular area,
surrounded by the lodges, where the ceremonies were to take place. But as
the noisy and impertinent guests showed disposition to undue merriment,
the chief shut them all in his wigwam, lest their gentile eyes should
profane the mysteries. Here, immured in darkness, they listened to the
howls, yelpings, and lugubrious songs that resounded from without. One of
them, however, by some artifice, contrived to escape, hid behind a bush,
and saw the whole solemnity: the procession of the medicine-men and the
bedaubed and befeathered warriors; the drumming, the dancing, the
stamping; the wild lamentation of the women, as they gashed the arms of
the young girls with sharp mussel-shells and flung the blood into the air
with dismal outcries. A scene of ravenous feasting followed, in which the
French, released from durance, were summoned to share.
Their carousal over, they returned to Charlesfort, where they were soon
pinched with hunger. The Indians, never niggardly of food, brought them
supplies as long as their own lasted; but the harvest was not yet ripe,
and their means did not match their good-will. They told the French of two
other kings, Ouadé and Couexis, who dwelt towards the South, and were rich
beyond belief in maize, beans, and squashes. Embarking without delay, the
mendicant colonists steered for the wigwams of these potentates, not by
the open sea, but by a perplexing inland navigation, including, as it
seems, Calibogue Sound and neighboring waters. Arrived at the friendly
villages, on or near the Savannah, they were feasted to repletion, and
their boat laden with vegetables and corn. They returned rejoicing; but
their joy was short. Their storehouse at Charlesfort, taking fire in the
night, burned to the ground, and with it their newly acquired stock. Once
more they set forth for the realms of King Ouadé, and once more returned
laden with supplies. Nay, more, the generous savage assured them, that, so
long as his cornfields yielded their harvests, his friends should not
want.
How long this friendship would have lasted may well be matter of doubt.
With the perception that the dependants on their bounty were no demigods,
but a crew of idle and helpless beggars, respect would soon have changed
to contempt and contempt to ill-will. But it was not to Indian war-clubs
that the embryo colony was to owe its ruin. Within itself it carried its
own destruction. The ill-assorted band of landsmen and sailors, surrounded
by that influence of the wilderness which wakens the dormant savage in the
breasts of men, soon fell into quarrels. Albert, a rude soldier, with a
thousand leagues of ocean betwixt him and responsibility, grew harsh,
domineering, and violent beyond endurance. None could question or oppose
him without peril of death. He hanged a drummer who had fallen under his
displeasure, and banished La Chère, a soldier, to a solitary island, three
leagues from the fort, where he left him to starve. For a time his
comrades chafed in smothered fury. The crisis came at length. A few of the
fiercer spirits leagued together, assailed their tyrant, and murdered him.
The deed done, and the famished soldier delivered, they called to the
command one Nicholas Barré, a man of merit. Barré took the command, and
thenceforth there was peace.
Peace, such as it was, with famine, homesickness, disgust. The rough
ramparts and rude buildings of Charlesfort, hatefully familiar to their
weary eyes, the sweltering forest, the glassy river, the eternal silence
of the wild monotony around them, oppressed the senses and the spirits.
Did they feel themselves the pioneers of religious freedom, the
advance-guard of civilization? Not at all. They dreamed of ease, of home,
of pleasures across the sea,--of the evening cup on the bench before the
cabaret, of dances with kind damsels of Dieppe. But how to escape? A
continent was their solitary prison, and the pitiless Atlantic closed the
egress. Not one of them knew how to build a ship; but Ribaut had left them
a forge, with tools and iron, and strong desire supplied the place of
skill. Trees were hewn down and the work begun. Had they put forth, to
maintain themselves at Port Royal, the energy and resource which they
exerted to escape from it, they might have laid the cornerstone of a solid
colony.
All, gentle and simple, labored with equal zeal. They calked the seams
with the long moss which hung in profusion from the neighboring trees; the
pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians made for them a kind of
cordage; and for sails they sewed together their shirts and bedding. At
length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe floated on the waters of the
Chenonceau. They laid in what provision they might, gave all that remained
of their goods to the delighted Indians, embarked, descended the river,
and put to sea. A fair wind filled their patchwork sails and bore them
from the hated coast. Day after day they held their course, till at length
the favoring breeze died away and a breathless calm fell on the face of
the waters. Florida was far behind; France farther yet before. Floating
idly on the glassy waste, the craft lay motionless. Their supplies gave
out. Twelve kernels of maize a day were each man's portion; then the maize
failed, and they ate their shoes and leather jerkins. The water-barrels
were drained, and they tried to slake their thirst with brine. Several
died, and the rest, giddy with exhaustion and crazed with thirst, were
forced to ceaseless labor, baling out the water that gushed through every
seam. Head-winds set in, increasing to a gale, and the wretched
brigantine, her sails close-reefed, tossed among the savage billows at the
mercy of the storm. A heavy sea rolled down upon her, and threw her on her
side. The surges broke over her, and, clinging with desperate gripe to
spars and cordage, the drenched voyagers gave up all for lost. At length
she righted. The gale subsided, the wind changed, and the crazy,
water-logged vessel again bore slowly towards France.
Gnawed with deadly famine, they counted the leagues of barren ocean that
still stretched before. With haggard, wolfish eyes they gazed on each
other, till a whisper passed from man to man, that one, by his death,
might ransom all the rest. The choice was made. It fell on La Chère, the
same wretched man whom Albert had doomed to starvation on a lonely island,
and whose mind was burdened with the fresh memories of his anguish and
despair. They killed him, and with ravenous avidity portioned out his
flesh. The hideous repast sustained them till the French coast rose in
sight, when, it is said, in a delirium of insane joy, they could no longer
steer their vessel, but let her drift at the will of the tide. A small
English bark bore down upon them, took them all on board, and, after
landing the feeblest, carried the rest prisoners to Queen Elizabeth.
Thus closed another of those scenes of woe whose lurid clouds were thickly
piled around the stormy dawn of American history.
It was but the opening act of a wild and tragic drama. A tempest of
miseries awaited those who essayed to plant the banners of France and of
Calvin in the Southern forests; and the bloody scenes of the religious war
were acted in epitome on the shores of Florida.
* * * * *