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Page 4
France was torn asunder by civil war, and had no leisure to think of
an insignificant settlement beyond the Atlantic. No supplies came to
the settlers, and they could not live forever on the bounty of their
savage neighbors. The settlers decided to return home. To do this it
was needful to build a bark with their own hands from the scanty
resources which the wilderness offered. Whatever might have been the
failings of the settlers, they certainly showed no lack of energy or
of skill in concerting means for their departure. They felled the
trees to make planks, moss served for calking, and their shirts and
bedding for sails, while their Indian friends supplied cordage. When
their bark was finished they set sail. Unluckily in their impatience
to be gone, they did not reckon what supplies they would need. The
wind, at first favorable, soon turned against them, and famine stared
them in the face. Driven to the last resort of starving seamen, they
cast lots for a victim, and the lot, by a strange chance, fell upon
the very man whose punishment had been a chief count against De
Pierria. Life was supported by this hideous relief, till they came in
sight of the French coast. Even then their troubles were not over. An
English privateer bore down upon them and captured them. The miseries
of the prisoners seem, in some measure, to have touched their enemies.
A few of the weakest were landed on French soil. The rest ended their
wanderings in an English prison.
The needs of the abandonment of the colony did not reach France till
long after the event. Before its arrival a fleet was sent out to the
relief of the colony. Three ships were dispatched, the largest of a
hundred and twenty tons, the least of sixty tons, under the command of
Ren� Laudonni�re, a young Poitevin of good birth. On their outward
voyage they touched at Teneriffe and Dominica, and found ample
evidence at each place of the terror which the Spaniards had inspired
among the natives. In June the French reached the American shore south
of Port Royal. As before, their reception by the Indians was friendly.
Some further exploration failed to discover a more suitable site than
that which had first presented itself, and accordingly a wooden fort
was soon built with a timber palisade and bastions of earthen work.
Before long the newcomers found that their intercourse with the
Indians was attended with unlooked-for difficulties. There were three
tribes of importance, each under the command of a single chief, and
all more or less hostile to the other. In the South the power of the
chiefs seems to have been far more dreaded, and their influence over
the national policy more authoritative than among the tribes of New
England and Canada. Laudonni�re, with questionable judgment, entangled
himself in these Indian feuds, and entered into an offensive alliance
with the first of these chiefs whom he encountered, Satouriona....
A new source of trouble, however, soon beset the unhappy colonists.
Their quarrels had left them no time for tilling the soil, and they
were wholly dependent on the Indians for food. The friendship of the
savages soon proved but a precarious means of support. The dissensions
in the French camp must have lowered the new-corners in the eyes of
their savage neighbors. They would only part with their supplies on
exorbitaut terms. Laudonni�re himself throughout would have adopted
moderate and conciliatory measures, but his men at length became
impatient and seized one of the principal Indian chiefs as a hostage
for the good behavior of his countrymen. A skirmish ensued, in which
the French were victorious. It was clear, however, that the settlement
could not continue to depend on supplies extorted from the Indians at
the point of the sword. The settlers felt that they were wholly
forgotten by their friends in France, and they decided, tho with heavy
hearts, to forsake the country which they had suffered so much to
win....
Just, however, as all the preparations for departure were made, the
long-expected help came. Ribault arrived from France with a fleet of
seven vessels containing three hundred settlers and ample supplies.
This arrival was not a source of unmixed joy to Laudonni�re. His
factious followers had sent home calumnious reports about him, and
Ribault brought out orders to send him home to stand his trial.
Ribault himself seems to have been easily persuaded of the falsity of
the charges, and prest Laudonni�re to keep his command; but he, broken
in spirit and sick in body, declined to resume office.
All disputes soon disappeared in the face of a vast common misfortune.
Whatever internal symptoms of weakness might already display
themselves in the vast fabric of the Spanish empire, its rulers showed
as yet no lack of jealous watchfulness against any attempts to rival
her successes in America. The attempts of Cartier and Roberval[3] had
been watched, and the Spanish ambassador at Lisbon had proposed to the
King of Portugal to send out a joint armament to dispossess the
intruders. The king deemed the danger too remote to be worth an
expedition, and the Spaniards unwillingly acquiesced. An outpost of
fur traders in the ice-bound wilderness of Canada might seem to bring
little danger with it. But a settlement on the coast of Florida,
within some eight days' sail of Havana, with a harbor whence
privateers might waylay Spanish ships and even attack Spanish
colonies, was a rival not to be endured. Moreover, the colonists were
not only foreigners but Huguenots, and their heresy served at once as
a pretext and stimulus to Spanish zeal.
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