Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

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Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in
grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and
far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and
shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending
shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here
the rich _gordonia_, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to
drink at the stealing brook. Here the _halesia_ hangs out its silvery
bells, the purple clusters of the _wistaria_ droop from the supporting
bough, and the coral blossoms of the _erythryna_ glow in the shade
beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall
spires of the _yucca_, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like
the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry _ixia_.

Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At
first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached
the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning
the post of honor to their French allies.

An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian
town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise
daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded
strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their
foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled
them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences.
The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered
the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the
band returned triumphant.

CHAPTER II.

In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and
parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes
had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers
had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a
hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and
nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating
alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and
inveighed against the commandant.

Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be
made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he
said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with
Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as
good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La
Roche Ferriere to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept
here, digging at the works?

Of La Roche Ferriere and his adventures, more hereafter. The young
nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own
expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in
impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony--unlike the
former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The
adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet
there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to
complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them.
The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonniere, whose greatest
errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,--fatal
defects in his position.

The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette,
who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver,
high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand
crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for
Laudonniere, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally
in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonniere's confidants, who, still
professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by
him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the
conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with
them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time
wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant.
About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to
his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him
to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his
shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of
gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's
machinations reaching the ears of Laudonniere, the culprit fled to the
woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his
commander.

Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,--the third, the Breton,
remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the
opportunity to send home charges against Laudonniere of peculation,
favoritism, and tyranny.

Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer,
had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the
tenth of November, Laudonniere persuaded him to carry home seven or
eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in
their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined
with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonniere's two pinnaces,
and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a
small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by
famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their
peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and
purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the
thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.

On a Sunday morning, Francis de la Caille came to Laudonniere's
quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come
to the parade-ground. He complied, and, issuing forth, his inseparable
Ottigny at his side, saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and
gentlemen-volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre
countenance. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of
the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with
protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work,
starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners
should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise
along the Spanish main in order to procure provision by purchase "or
otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn
buccaneers.

Laudonniere refused, but assured them, that, so soon as the defences of
the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for
the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then
building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for
provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to
content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot
thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the
affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the
brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.

A severe illness again seized Laudonniere and confined him to his bed.
Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the
best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of
good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up
a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed
the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le
Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that
he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who
escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty
men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door.
Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and
crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and
cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonniere's breast, and demanded leave
to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his
presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with
oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters,
carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed
him to the ship anchored in the river.

Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they
disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on
pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all
the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the
conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated
West-India cruise, which he required Laudonniere to sign. The sick
commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first
refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did
not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length
yielded.

The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels
on which the carpenters had been for some time at work. In a fortnight
they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon,
munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join
the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on
one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the
midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved:
first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly,
vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set
sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling
them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their
triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.

They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonniere was gladdened
in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac,
who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was
reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted;
but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger
was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to
replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse
with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of
March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was
hovering off the coast. Laudonniere sent to reconnoitre. The stranger
lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine,
manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to
make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonniere
sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his
little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her
to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and
taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and
drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told.
Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they
took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next
fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village
of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly
reembarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the
governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last,
and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom;
but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating
for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which
his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his
wife. Whence it happened that at daybreak three armed vessels fell upon
them, retook the prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but
twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their brigantine, fled out to
sea. Among these was the ringleader, Fourneaux, and, happily, the pilot,
Trenchant. The latter, eager to return to Fort Caroline, whence he had
been forcibly taken, succeeded during the night in bringing the vessel
to the coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and consternation of the
discomfited pirates, when they saw their dilemma; for, having no
provision, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They
chose the latter alternative, and bore away for the St. John's. A few
casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternized
by the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine
mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they
enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the
commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either
side.

"Say what you like," said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the
defence, "but if Laudonniere does not hang us all, I will never call him
an honest man."

They had some hope of gaining provision from the Indians at the mouth of
the river, and then patting to sea again; but this was frustrated by La
Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was called near Fort Caroline,
and all were found guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sentenced to
be hanged.

"Comrades," said one of the condemned, appealing to the soldiers, "will
you stand by and see us butchered?"

"These," retorted Laudonniere, "are no comrades of mutineers and
rebels."

At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to
shooting.

A file of men; a rattling volley; and the debt of justice was paid. The
bodies were hanged on gibbets at the river's mouth, and order reigned at
Fort Caroline.

CHAPTER III.

While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferriere had been sent out as
an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and
restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have
reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort
mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows
tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and
other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the
quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster
three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a
hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains,
and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A
humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had
been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under
Laudonniere. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a
privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic,
became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter,
and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged
towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains
with a hatchet.

During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral
brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the
Indians,--in other words, were not clothed at all,--and their uncut hair
streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those
among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose
domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power.
In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a
hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent
reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with
power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to
hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year
he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the
sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that
of the River Caloosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua,
dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of
wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But, as the bride, with
her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen
band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an
island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the
warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness,
espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved them above all
measure."

Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for
ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou,
again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus
reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom
gold-mines of Appalachec. Ottigny set forth on this fool's-errand with
thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thimagoa and thirty Frenchmen
took up their march through the pine-barrens. Outina's conjurer was of
the number, and had well-nigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on
Ottigny's shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous
grimaces, howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic
frenzy, and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther
would be destruction. Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's
sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward,
and soon encountered Potanou with all his host. Le Moyne drew a picture
of the fight. In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with
a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the
plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard
his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him
with his sword. The arquebuse did its work: panic, slaughter, and a
plentiful harvest of scalps. But no persuasion could induce Outina to
follow up his victory. He went home to dance around his trophies, and
the French returned disgusted to Fort Caroline.

And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their
folly. Conquest, gold, military occupation,--such had been their aims.
Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were
consumed; the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were
hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his
tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in
their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their
only hope.

May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his
companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery
borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the
homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn,
dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay
stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some
were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the
meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal.
Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they
dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining
their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.

Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity,
let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their
eyes have pierced the future.

The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought
in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
"Oftentimes," says Laudonniere, "our poor soldiers were constrained to
give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish:
then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat."

The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed
the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the
Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish
brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were
insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of
reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered
pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the
timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the
Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered
two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.

The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result
was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose
villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted. Ottigny
and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a
different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.

Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonniere,
and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and
extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from
his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear
the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty,
in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself.
Outina's landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village,
surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and
howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats. Here,
anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the
price of his ransom.

The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging
from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and
troops of women gathered at the water's edge with moans, outcries, and
gestures of despair. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from
their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the
captive would be put to death.

Laudonniere waited two days, then descended the river. In a rude chamber
of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while
before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his
woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey,
tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonniere to give the prisoner into
his hands. Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate
freedom on payment of the ransom.

Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for,
despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new
chief. Party-strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and some for
an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne. Outina chafed in his
prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his
over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of
promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.

At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St.
John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's
principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also
the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at
the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers
for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of
corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonniere yielded,
released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were
fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detachment of
arquebusiers, set forth to receive the promised supplies, for which,
from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. Arrived at
the village, they filed into the great central lodge, within whose dusky
precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber,
forum, banquet-hall, dancing-hall, palace, all in one, the royal
dwelling could hold half the population in its capacious confines. Here
the French made their abode. Their armor buckled, their
arquebuse-matches lighted, they stood, or sat, or reclined on the
earthen floor, with anxious eyes watching the strange, dim scene, half
lighted by the daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex
of the roof. Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, quivers at their
backs, bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the
shadow beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and
malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors were
mustering fast. The village without was full of them. The French
officers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in
collecting the promised ransom. The answer boded no good, "Our women are
afraid, when they see the matches of your guns burning. Put them out,
and they will bring the corn faster."

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