xt7t4b2x431p https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7t4b2x431p/data/mets.xml Page, Thomas Nelson, 1853-1922. 190618 books b92-230-31280747v13 English C. Scribner's sons, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Novels, stories, sketches, and poems of Thomas Nelson Page (vol. 13) text Novels, stories, sketches, and poems of Thomas Nelson Page (vol. 13) 1906 2002 true xt7t4b2x431p section xt7t4b2x431p

PLANTATION
EDITION
VOLUME XIII

The Old Virginian always "shaped up" and attended
church on Sunday.

This page in the original text is blank.

- THE NOVELS, STORIES,
SKETCHES AND POEMS OF
THOMAS NELSON PAGEZ

THE

OLD DOMINION

HER MAKING AND
MANNERS

HER

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK h A A 1909

All Riuhta Reserved

Orbirateb to
ROSEWELL PACE, ESQUIRE,
A Virginia country gentleman, who, by his
character, his unselfishness, his devotion to
duty, and his lifelong habit of s dng him lf
for others, has preserved in the present the
best traditions of the Old Dominion's past.

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PREFACE

IT has from a long time back been an author's
privilege to say a word more or less confidential
to his Reader before committing himself in cold
type to the Public. The author of these Essays
now avails himself of this privilege to express the
hope that whatever their faults may be, they may
lead some of his readers to turn for themselves
to the almost unknown page of their Country's
History: the Record of the early life of "The
Antient Dominion." Few know it now, yet no
page of the History of the Race will better repay
patient study; for none shines with more heroic
deeds, or more sublime fortitude and endeavor.
Her History belongs not to the present Virginia
alone. It is the heritage of every State carved
from the mighty empire once embraced within
her borders. Of the first six thousand settlers
who came over and seized and held this great
country for England and her People, nine out
of ten "left here their bodies in testimonie of
their mindes." But they left the Old Dominion
vii

PREFACE

founded, to be the foundation of a new Nation.
She brought forth in time a new Civilization
where Character and Courtesy went hand in
hand; where the goal ever set before the eye was
Honor, and where the distinguishing marks of the
life were Simplicity and Sincerity.
It was by no mere accident that Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Henry, Mason and
their like came from Tidewater and Piedmont,
Virginia. They were the proper product of her
distinctive Civilization, and were not uncommon
types of the Character she has given to her
Children.
The writer is under obligations to all the faith-
ful Historians who have in the past labored to
preserve and set forth the true History of Vir-
ginia as they were able to find it. And he espe-
cially wishes to record his debt to the pious labors
of the late Alexander Brown of Virginia, who de-
voted his life to the collection and publication of
the early records of the History of the Old Do-
minion. To his monumental work, "The Genesis
of the United States," every American Historian
must ever be indebted.
The fact that these Essays came in part from
addresses delivered before various Societies at
viii

PREFACE
different times will account for certain repetitions
in them. The author, however, hopes that this
repetition may not be frequent enough to prove
tedious, and, moreover, he feels that some facts
cannot be too often repeated.

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CONTENTS

CRAPTER PAGE
1. THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA ... . . . . 3
11. JAMESTOWN, THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE AMERI-
CAN PEOPLE ... . . . . . . . . . 59
111. COLONIAL LIFE.. .. . . . .. . .. . 137
IV. THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT ... . . 157
V. THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE UNIVERSITY OF
VIRGINIA .... . . . . . . . . . 203
VI. THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE DURING RECONSTRUC-
TION .... . . . . . . . . . . . 241
VII. THE OLD DOMINION SINCE THE WAR .. . . 289
VIII. AN OLD NEIGHBORHOOD IN VIRGINIA . . .. 341
IX. AN OLD VIRGINIA SUNDAY ........ 372

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ILLUSTRATIONS

THE OLD VIRGINIAN ALWAYS "SHAPED UP' AND
ATTENDED CHURCH ON SIJNDAY ... . . Frontspiece

FACING PAGE
THE OLD DORMITORIES ........... . . 228

CAME IN ABOUT THE TIME OF THE SECOND LESSON.
TO HEAR THE SERMON ........ . . . 390

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THE OLD DOMINION

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THE OLD DOMINION

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA
"Some tracks of Feeting they found upon a Sandy Bank."-
STRACHEY: FIRST TRAVAILS INTO VIRGINIA.
T O comprehend truly the achievement of
the settlement of Jamestown and what it
has signified to the world, and still signifies to-
day, if we but knew it, it is necessary to go back
among the forces that were at work in Western
Europe during the time when the Dark Ages
were giving way to the light of the New Learn-
ing. Many forces combined to produce the re-
sults, working with that patience which char-
acterizes the laws of Nature. The energies of
men had been engrossed by the exactions of
war, and of a civilization based on war. The
mind of man had been for ages monopolized
by war militant or spiritual. Person and intel-
lect alike lay under rule. Then gradually, after
3

THE OLD DOMINION
long lethargy, men began to think. Historians
wrote; poetssang; statesmenplanned; scientists
experimented. The mariner's compass, whether
brought by Marco Polo from the East, or in-
vented by the Neapolitan, Flavio Gioja, or by
some one else, came into use in Europe: other
nautical instruments were invented or improved.
Gunpowder was invented and gradually changed
the methods of war. The New Learning began
to sweep over Europe. The Art of printing
from movable types was invented. The ice was
broken up and the stream, long dammed, began
to flow. The Reformation came and men burst
the chains which had bound them.
The breaking up of the old conditions and re-
lations made necessary a great readjustment.
Two quite distinct peoples and civilizations were
found facing each other. The Latin race and
the civilization founded on the Civil Law and
the Roman Church were on one side; the Saxon
race and its civilization founded on the Com-
mon Law and a greatly modified Ecclesiastical
System were on the other.
Spain, fighting under the banner of the Cross,
was just freeing herself from the Mahometan,
and in the very year in which Columbus gave
her a new world, Castile achieved her final
4

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA

victory over the Moor. On the other hand,
the Moslem was strengthening himself on the
eastern frontier of Europe. The city of Con-
stantine, after a long st ruggle, fell before him
in 1453, and the Eastern Empire which had
been the asylum and nursery of civilization be-
came the prey of the Ottoman Turk. Her
trade, which had made Venice and Florence and
Genoa, was hemmed in on the eastward, and
the land which Marco Polo had visited was with
its fabulous wealth suddenly cut off.
Prince Henry, the Navigator, had set up his
observatory in Portugal, and drawn around him
the best cosmographers and navigators of the
world. Under his patronage bold Portuguese
and other mariners had coasted down the Afri-
can continent, and in 1486 Bartholomew Diaz
was blown so far south that when he turned to
strike the coast again he passed the southern
point without seeing it and turning north found
the land to the westward and himself on the
eastern coast.
Thus, the spirit of the age was alert, and in
the very moment of time came the Genoese
navigator who, on his first appearance in his-
tory, is described as "Christopher Columbus,
Stranger." He had conceived and worked out the
5

THE OLD DOMINION

noble idea that he could reach the East by sail-
ing boldly west, and he devoted his great powers
and his life to establish it in the minds of men.
The sphericity of the earth had been suggested
speculatively as far back as the time of Pythag-
oras; Plato, who seems to have contemplated
everything in the heavens above, and the earth
beneath and the waters under the earth, dis-
cussed it; Aristotle half taught it; and Ptolemy,
the geographer, laid it down as a probability.
Columbus probably did not even first among
Europeans touch this hemisphere; five hundred
years before his day, Eric the Red planted a
colony on the northeastern peninsula, and Lief,
his son, led explorers down to Vinland the Good,
somewhere on or near the north-eastern coast
of the United States. Eric's colonies throve for
four centuries and then perished, whilst the
story of Vinland was lost so utterly that no
memory of it remained except in the Sagas.
Other later bold adventurers touched on those
shores-possibly among them the Zenos of
Venus, whose map shows all the knowledge of
the earth known in their time.
Much has been made of late by certain
scholars of the new and so-called critical school,
out of these earlier voyagings of Scandinavian
6

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA
seamen, and the great Admiral has been even
a second time decried as an impostor; but the
difference between thenm and Columbus was
that they were bold seamen and captains, and
merely that, voyaging in distant seas in quest
of booty as others of their race had done often
before, whilst the great Admiral, with a high
prevision and a noble enthusiasm, after a life
devoted to the work, struck boldly out across
the globe on lines of navigation which he had
mapped for himself to find in unknown seas
the shores of a continent which was to enrich
and save Christendom. He had no dream of a
new continent; any more than had others who
for many years followed, in his wake; but he
braved the Sea of Darkness with all its terrors to
find by untried routes through unknown oceans
Cipango and Cathay. To set the egg up on end
was easy enough when once it had been done.
He was the man for the time; and the time
suited the man. Had he not discovered Amer-
ica barring his way he would have found the
Indies. And had not America been here it is
likely that European enterprise and force would
have made Asia their field, and so the history
of the world would still have been different.
He found a land, not that, indeed, he sought;
7

THE OLD DOMINION

but one richer than ever he dreamed Cathay to
be, and though, when he died, the records of his
town contain no mention of the fact, the half a
world he gave to Spain glorifies his memory four
hundred years afterward as the greatest human
benefactor the human race has known. He
alone of all men of his time had a right concep-
tion of the greatness of the work he was to ac-
complish. There is nothing finer than the story
of the interview between him and Isabella.: when
on her refusal to grant him all he demanded, and
it was a high demand, made as a king to a king,
he, on the eve of attaining all he had worked for,
striven for, pined for through long years of wait-
ing and struggling, turned his back on the Court
and set out to try once more a new king in a
new land. We know how he was recalled when
already on his way to leave Spain, and we know
how it is said Isabella pledged her jewels as se-
curity for the loan she raised to help him; we
know how he set his prows steadily to the West
and held them there alike against threats and
entreaties, and how he found not the Indies, in-
deed, but a land greater and richer and nobler
far; which, though he died in ignorance of the
greatness of his discovery, was the vastest fruit
that one man's genius ever produced.
8

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA

The Wars of the Roses had ended on Bosworth
field (August 22, 1485). The rival houses of
York and Lancaster which had torn England
for generations had been united, and for the
first time in many years England had peace
within her borders, and soon had time to apply
her energies to the Arts of Peace at home and
to preparation for war abroad.
The news of the discovery of new shores by
a Spanish navigator and their possession by
Spain stirred England and her awaking people,
as it did the nearer nations. Spain freed from
Moorish domination and claiming a new world
of fabulous wealth suddenly loomed up as the
greatest nation of the earth, and with Portugal
proceeded under arbitrament of the Holy See
to parcel out between them the unknown world.
Portugal already had a right under papal de-
crees to all heathen larLds discovered or to be
discovered east of a line of longitude one hundred
leagues west of the Azore Islands, and Spain had
obtained from the same authority the right of
discovery to the westward. Portugal procured
the shifting of this line to a point three hundred
leagues west of the islands, a circumstance to
which was due at a later date her claim to
Brazil.
9,

THE OLD DOMINION
The English had the blood of bold sailors in
her veins. Norseman and Dane had intermin-
gled with Celt and Saxon, and there was left,
if partly dormant, the undying spirit which had
flouted the fierce Baltic and in old days had
gone as far as Greenland to the north and Con-
stantinople to the south.
Spain's good fortune was viewed with envy,
her proud claims with jealousy. Bold navi-
gators were not wanting. Columbus, despair-
ing at one time of success in Spain, had sent
his brother, Bartholomew, to England to try his
fortune there, and he was there when Columbus
sailed from Palos. In the summer of 1480, ac-
cording to William of Worcester, two vessels
sailed to find the Island of Brazil, but put back
again by reason of foul weather. On the 21st
of January, 1496, Puebla, the Spanish Am-
bassador, informed his sovereigns that "a person
had come, like Columbus, to propose to the King
of England an enterprise like that of the Indies."
On the 28th of March the sovereigns instructed
him to warn Henry VII that such an enterprise
would be an infringement on the rights of Spain
and Portugal.
The Indies were the goal of all men's hopes,
and the idea of a north-west passage thither took
10

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA
firm hold in the minds of men, especially of
Englishmen.
On the 5th of March, 1496, a charter for dis-
covery and colonization was granted to John Cab-
ot and his three sons; as similar charters were
granted to Richard Warde and others; but in
order to be "without prejudice to Spain and Port-
ugal" these charters extended only east, north
and west of forty-four degrees north latitude.
John Cabot sailed with a fleet of five vessels
in the spring of 1497, one of which was com-
manded by his son, Sebastian, destined to be-
come even more famous than his illustrious
father, and explored the coast of New Found-
land, which they reached, according to Sebastian
Cabot's map, on June 24th, thus becoming the
first white men who ever touched the shores of
North America. They were back in England
again in August.
Sebastian Cabot, still seeking for the north-
west passage to India, the goal of all hopes,
sailed again the next year and penetrated that
Bay in which Henry Hudson, more than a cen-
tury later (1610), still looking for the unfound
passage to India, the E[ Dorado of the Arctic
Seas, was to be set adrift with his dying son,
and to which he was to give his name, a memorial
11

THE OLD DOMINION
of his romantic and pathetic fate. Having failed
to find the north-west passage, Cabot took
service with Spain, whose growing possessions
and power were making service under her the
ambition of all navigators.
The Island of Hispaniola was settled and
planted, and from this as a centre of the work
of new discovery, conquest and colonization
went rapidly on. Diego Columbus took pos-
session as Admiral and Governor of the Indies
in 1509, and he gave all his energies to the work.
In 1509 Ojeda and Nicuesa took possession of
Darien, which La Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci
had explored under Ojeda in 1505-7. In 1511
Diego Columbus sent Valasquez to conquer Cuba.
In 1513 Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of
Darien and waded into the new ocean which he
discovered on the other side. The stories of the
Incas and their wealth reached him, and a few
years later (1517) he had fitted out three ships
and was about to start southward, when he was
arrested on a charge of treason and put to death
by the bloody Pedrarias, Governor of Darien.
In the spring of 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon, a
brave soldier who had been with Columbus in
his second voyage, and had now got permission
to lead an expedition in search of the fabled
12

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA

Isle of Bimini and Fountain of Youth, told of
by Sir John Mandevil Le, set out to the west-
ward, and reaching a harbor on Easter day,
the Feast of Flowers, named the land Florida,
in honor of the day. He explored the land on
the east and the west, and found in some sort,
indeed, the fountain he sought, for though an
Indian arrow cut short his career, he still lives
in the perpetual youth of romance, the most at-
tractive character of all that time.
About this time, 1518, Grijaloa heard from a
tax-gatherer in Yucatan the story of his master,
Montezuma. This was the first time the new-
comers had found anything like the civilization
and wealth they had been dreaming of. As they
were still in Asia, this, of course, was the Great
Khan. Grijaloa bore the news to Cuba, and was
superseded for his reward, and the command of
the expedition that was sent out was given to
a young soldier of fortune who had been with
Valasquez in the Conquest of Cuba: Hernando
Cortez. By the end of 1521 Cortez had con-
quered Mexico and found the way to the con-
quest of all of what is now Central America,
justifying his proud rebuke to Philip II, that he
had given him more provinces than his father
had had cities.
]13

THE OLD DOMINION
In 1519 Alvarez de Pineda followed the west-
ern coast of Florida as far around as Tampico
in Mexico, where he met Cortez exploring that
land. Turning back he entered and spent six
weeks in exploring the lower Mississippi, and
seems to have been the first European to sail on
its waters.
In September, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set
out to circumnavigate the globe, and in the face
of starvation, desertion and mutiny, circumnavi-
gated it, the greatest feat ever accomplished by
a navigator, that of Columbus hardly excepted,
and verified his high boast to his mutinous lieu-
tenants that he would sail to India if he had to
gnaw the leather from his ships' yards. The great
navigator lost his life in the Philippine Islands
after he had traversed the unknown seas and
reached lands that were unknown; but his work
was accomplished and he had circled the earth.
In 1531 the Pizarros began the conquest of
Peru, and added to Spain the richest province
she had yet found: the province, indeed, which
was to be her chief source of wealth.
From this time it may well be believed that
all maritime nations were looking to the region
where the East met the West. It was just be-
ginning to dawn on men that the new Land was
14

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA
not Asia and the Indies at all, but a New
Continent which stretched across the track to
Asia; and enterprise began to be turned to the
work of finding a way through this land to far
Cathay. Bays and even rivers were explored
with the hope of discovering some passage.
Among the navigators who turned their at-
tention to this, the first was Lucas Vasquez
d'Ayllon; and he was the first that is certainly
known to have made any exploration of the
Coast of Virginia. In '1524 he sailed from His-
paniola, and it is claimed that he sailed into the
Chesapeake, and up the broad river which
poured its waters down almost opposite the
capes. Liking the country, he obtained a grant
from Charles V, and, returning in 1526, he is said
to have brought with him colonists and some
five hundred negro slaves, and to have begun
to found a town, which he called San Miguel,
on the banks of the river, near where the first
Anglo-Saxon settlement that was to live was to
be founded, almost a hundred years later. This
is the first reputed settlement of Virginia, and
the first importation of slaves within the bor-
ders of the present United States. He lost his
life and his colony failed. The evidence, how-
ever, is far from conclusive that this settlement
1 )

THE OLD DOMINION
was not much further south than the Chesa-
peake.
In 1525 Estevan Gomez, who had been one
of Magellan's pilots and had deserted him, is
said to have coasted from Labrador to Florida,
taking notes of capes and rivers. But by this
time the growing wealth and power of Spain
were beginning to excite the jealousy of other
countries, and they were looking with envious
eyes to the new and not very well defined pos-
sessions which she claimed.
More than one French navigator seems to
have preceded Gomez. Norman and Breton
fishermen were visiting the banks of New Found-
land regularly; and Spain's pretensions were be-
ginning to be the subject of more than question.
Bernal Diaz says that Francis I sent word to
his great rival Charles V to ask by what right
he and the King of Portugal undertook to claim
the earth. Had Adam made them his sole heirs
If so, why, produce the will, and meanwhile he
should feel at liberty to seize all he could get.
In 1523 Giovanni da Verraza, a Florentine by
birth, but in the service of France, captured the
treasure sent by Cortez to Charles V and next
year coasted from about Cape Fear to 50 degrees
north. Charles, however, so crippled Francis
16

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA

in the Italian Campaign (1525) that it was not
until ten years later that Jacques Cartier ex-
plored the lower St. Lawrence and founded
Montreal. It was now believed that the land
stretching from Labradcr to Darien was a nar-
row strip like the Isthmus itself and Spain bent
her energies to cross it. The first of her gallant
explorers to attempt it was Panfilo de Narvaez,
but the best known in history was Ferdinand
de Soto, who, in 1539, penetrated as far as the
Mississippi, on whose banks he died and in
whose waters his body was buried.
The penurious Henry VII had meantime
died (April 21, 1509) and been succeeded by
Henry VIII, married to the Spanish princess,
Catherine of Aragon, and one of the most not-
able monarchs in all history. A beast in his
personal tastes and private life, violating brutally
every law, human and divine, he was one of the
most able and powerful rulers of modern times.
To gratify his personal appetites he divorced his
Spanish wife, exploited the nascent Protestant-
ism of the English people, repudiated the Roman
Church, and slew all who opposed him; but he
laid the foundation of the English navy, and
once more established England as a great power.
The publication of "Utopia," by the first sub-
17

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ject in England, showed how the English mind
was working. The great intellect of Sir Thomas
More was already forecasting the establishment
of a mighty nation beyond the seas "where peace
and happiness, truth and justice, religion and
piety should be established for all generations."
In 1512 the Trinity House was founded by
Captain Thomas Spert as an "Association for
Piloting Ships," and it was incorporated in 1514.
In April, 1536, Master Robert Hore, of Lon-
don, sailed in John Cabot's track to New Found-
land, in two ships, with some twenty-five gentle-
men and ninety others, sailors, etc.
On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII
died, and his young son, Edward VI, succeeded
him. Strongly Protestant and under direction of
stout Protestant haters of Spain, he or his ad-
visers began to establish Protestantism in Eng-
land. They recalled Sebastian Cabot from Spain,
and proceeded to encourage the discovery of
new lands without reference to limits and claims
based upon papal decrees. The great associa-
tion was formed, known as "The Mysterie and
Company of Discoverie of Regions, Dominions,
Islands, and Places Unknown." It was to a
certain extent a re-issuance of the Charter of
1496 to John Cabot, but it no longer recognized
18

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA
even by implication the bounds fixed by the Pope,
as that did when it confined discoveries to lands
north, east and west of England.
Queen Mary succeeded Edward VI (July,
1553), after the sad little ten days' reign of that
sweetest and most pathetic of sovereigns, the
little Queen Jane. She married Philip II of
Spain (July 25, 1554) and with an earnest
woman's zeal gave her life to restoring England
to the Papacy. The dazzling richness of the
Spanish retinue of the bridegroom, and espe-
cially the wagon-loads of Spanish ingots hauled
through the streets of London on this occasion,
awakened the English people to a sudden realiza-
tion of the value of the prize Spain had seized.
It was an object-lesson which they never forgot.
On the 6th of July, 1555, Mary granted a sec-
ond charter to the Merchant Adventurers, con-
fining them, however, henceforth to the north,
north-east, and north-westward of England, thus
reasserting recognition of the papal decrees and
of the claims of Spain.
The spirit of discovery and adventure was,
however, now wide awake, and many merchant
adventurers visited the new world, and turning
southward inspected enviously the possessions
of the Spanish Crown. Their minds could not
19

THE OLD DOMINION
have been insensible to the contrast between the
rich possessions of Spain, with its fabulous El
Dorado, and the bleak and barren latitudes to
which they themselves were restricted. "Ad-
venture" then meant simply coming to, and
commerce was its great motive. The great
coiner of a golden language a generation later
showed the spirit of the age by putting in his
lover's mouth the words,
"But wert thou far as is that farthest sea,
I would adventure for such merchandise."

In 1555 Richard Eden published his "Decades
of the Newe Worlde or West India," the first
published collection of voyages in English. He
dedicated it to "Philip, King of England and
Spain."
Queen Mary, happily for the world, died (on
the 17th of November, 1558), and was succeeded
by the great Elizabeth. She was Protestant and
England was Protestant. With much of her
father's imperious nature, she meant that Eng-
land should be supreme and that she should be
supreme in England. She at once threw down
the gage. In her first Parliament (1559) a bill
was passed vesting in the Crown of England the
Supremacy claimed by the Pope; abolishing the
20

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA
Mass and declaring England Protestant. Eliza-
beth proceeded to enforce her claim. The ques-
tion passed from being one of religion only; it
became one of patriotism. She gathered about
her the ablest men of her realm, used them with
consumate art, governed them with extraordi-
nary ability and laid the foundation of Eng-
land's real greatness. The] fight between Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism was becoming
fiercer and fiercer. In France the Huguenots were
making fast progress; in the Low Countries the
fight was yet more bitter. Spain was the head of
the Catholic powers. Elizabeth made England
the head of the Protestant powers. Spain became
her rival and enemy; and the whole trend of
English opinion and endeavor was to surpass
and overcome this mighty enemy. Elizabeth em-
ployed all her arts to win. She encouraged the
Huguenots here, the Orange States there; she,
with the same plan, even entertained proposals
of marriage, playing her royal game with royal
deception, and always with an eye to England's
and her own aggrandizement.
The struggle between Protestantism and Ro-
man Catholicism was now to add a new inter-
est to the new land. The great Coligny was
the first to attempt to found a Protestant State
21

THE OLD DOMINION

on this continent. In 1555 he sent out a small
colony of Huguenots under Nicholas de Ville-
gagnon who, striking south, started a settlement
on the present site of Rio de Janeiro. Theo-
logical disputes, however, soon divided his peo-
ple; Villegagnon returned to France to maintain
his side, and the Portuguese massacred the rem-
nant. Coligny's next attempt was on the coast of
Florida under one Jean Ribault. Ribault took
out a small advance party, who on May 1, 1555,
reached land in what is now South Carolina, and
started a colony at the present Port Royal.
Leaving thirty men there under a commander,
Ribault returned to France to bring out the rest
of the settlers, but was driven by the breaking
out of the war between the Huguenots and the
Guises to England, where he published in 1563
his account of Terra Florida.
In 1564, peace having been patched up, an
expedition came out under R6ne de Laudonniere,
a noble kinsman of Coligny. Meantime, the
colony left at Port Royal had broken up. They
had pillaged and maltreated the Indians, after
the old custom, until the latter had turned on
them; then mutiny had broken out: they had
killed their commander and set to sea in a small
ship which they had. Their provisions had
22

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA

given out and they had already resorted to
cannibalism when an English ship rescued the
survivors and brought them to England.
Laudonniere's expedition turned further south
and landed on the St. John's River in Florida,
at the mouth of which stream they built a fort
and laid out a town, called Fort Caroline, after
Charles IX.
This settlement is of special interest to us, be-
cause on its fate in some sort hinged the
subsequent history of this country. It was a
large and well-equipped expedition; but con-
sisted mainly of soldiers and gentlemen advent-
urers who had come in search of gold and were
unaccustomed to work. They explored and
searched for gold, and, finding none, presently
some of them fell to mutiny and, becoming
''a gang of malcontents," stole a couple of
pinnaces and went off to Cuba, where they capt-
ured a Spanish boat, but were presently obliged
to put ashore for provisions. Here they were
seized, and in hopes of saving their necks
they gave full information as to the unknown
colony on the St. John's. The news created
much excitement. Word that the Huguenots
were attempting to seize Florida, was sent to
Spain and caused a furore there. It so happened
23

THE OLD DOMINION

that about this time Philip II had found the man
just fitted to his hand in Pedro Menendez d'Ar-
villes, a man who was (to quote Fiske) "an ad-
mirable soldier and a matchless liar; brave as a
mastiff, savage as a wolf." Menendez had just
persuaded Philip to let him go to Florida to con-
vert the Indians. The news of Laudonniere's
colony enraged him. Both as Frenchmen and
heretics they were the enemies of Spain and of the
Lord. He would root them out. Rumor had
added to the report that Ribault was about to
take out reinforcements and supplies; so no time
was to be lost. Menendez increased his force
and set sail from Cadiz on the 29th of June,
1565. Meantime, the colony on the St. John's had
gone through the common hardships of all such
colonies; the strong hand of Laudonniere had
quelled mutiny, but starvation was staring them
in the face, when, on the 3rd of August, Sir John
Hawkins, cruising in the Spanish Main, found
them and offered to take them home. This
Laudonniere refused, and, leaving them such pro-
vision as he could of bread and wine, and one of
his ships to use at their need, the Englishman
cruised on. The rumor heard in Spain was
true, and, on the 28th of August, Ribault arrived
with three hundred men and abundant supplies.
24

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICA

When, therefore, on the 3rd of September, afte