|
Huguenot nobles, adventurers, and everything except farmers,
had
come, through improvidence, discontent, rebellion, and gold-seeking,
to a point where famine stared them in the face.
Hawkins treated them with kindness, furnished them with
provision, and left them a ship for their return to France, taking
Laudonniere's bill for payment. He had hardly left and they
were still waiting for a favorable wind to embark when Ribaut
came with relief, and the settlement was in the way of becoming
permanent; but within a week from Ribaut's arrival another fleet
appeared. They had been betrayed to Spain by the court party
at home and the Spanish admiral, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, had
been sent out against them. He slaughtered the whole colony with-
out quarter, cruelly and, the French claim, treacherously. A hand-
ful alone escaped, among them Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, the
artist of the expedition. Le Moyne had been left with the sick and
disabled, and on the Spanish attack fled to the woods, from whence
he saw a comrade (who, in desperation, had given himself up to the
Spaniards) hewn to pieces before his eyes. He finally succeeded in
reaching the coast, and was picked up by one of the small vessels
which had escaped and was brought to England. It is interesting to
add that two years afterward a simple gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan,
Dominique de Gourgues, neither powerful nor rich, but fired with
wrath at the cruelty of the Spaniards and the apathy of the court,
raised at his own costs three small vessels and a handful of men,
sailed for Florida, enlisted the Indians (who were friendly to the
French), and after succeeding in his desperate venture and com-
pletely exterminating the Spanish colony, returned home, leaving
the ruins of the settlement to the aborigines.
In the second of the Voyages, published by De Bry, in
1591,
may be found the Brevis
Narratio of Le Moyne's experiences, illus-
trated with copper plates by De Bry after his drawings. The engrav-
ing is of good commercial quality, but there is not much art in the
compositions nor (though figures of turkeys and alligators give some
local color) is there much to distinguish the country and its inhabit-
ants from Thracia or Cathay as shown in similar publications of
the time. Even the portrait from life of the great King Saturiona,
except for his scanty attire and plentiful painting or tattooing,
shows
|