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

all crowded with men. René de Laudonnière held command. He was of a noble race of Poitou, attached to the House of Chatillon, of which Coligny was the head; pious, we are told, and an excellent ma

med beard, wears a thoughtful and somewhat pensive look,

eir destruction, smiled now on Condé, now on Guise,-gave ear to the Cardinal of Lorraine, or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore Beza. Coligny was again strong at Court. He used his opportunity, and solicited with success the means of renewing his enterprise of colonization. With pains and zeal, men were mustered for the work. In name, at least, they were all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the staple of the projected colony was unsound: soldiers, paid out of the royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a s

ruled some thirty villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy colors. They crowded around the voyage

the mystic emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground before it; for with an affectionate and rev

round the reed-grown shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests. Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs, the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy distance, the softened green

at length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years. Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first, shrunken to a mere anatomy, and "seeming to be rather a dead carkeis than a living body." "Also," pursues the history, "his age was so great th

along the neighboring coasts. Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream. The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no sound bene

r task. Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the riv

the river side the defences were a palisade of timber. On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth, and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine. Within was a spacious para

Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his likeness from memory,-a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed, blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated himself on the ground "like a monke

and forests around the upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of "King Potanou," whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more advanced than that of the wan

und. They were inclosed with palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length. Remains

like other wild American tribes, they abounded in "medicine-men,"

chief of the nation. In the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords, vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these tribes are now extinct, and

t, Ottigny, went up the river in a sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter going forth, says Laudonnière, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a

the change since Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks earlier studded the verdant dome with silver

outstretched his hideous length, or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat

ith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the woods. Then, landing, he approached t

e river to pursue the adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay betwixt them and the g

he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina, lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent and eager, strove

ief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the imaginary Thimagoa as th

realm, they had mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred men. And now, when all was ready,

covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers, bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy, distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then besprinkled the assembly wi

s and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a pole before the royal lodge, and when

r they had shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonnière, at the head of twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-ho

sent presents to the fort; but the outrage rankl

ere showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a ra

live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,-where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable dise

ing 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 supp

na's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached the hostile district, the

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 hea