Pioneers of France in the New World | Page 7

are the following--Barcia (Cardenas y Cano),
Ensayo Cronologico para la Historia General de la Florida (Madrid,
1723). This annalist had access to original documents of great interest.
Some of them are used as material for his narrative, others are copied
entire. Of these, the most remarkable is that of Solis de las Meras,
Memorial de todas las Jornadas de la Conquista de la Florida.
Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Relacion de la Jornada de Pedro
Menendez de Aviles en la Florida (Documentos Ineditos del Archivo
de Indias, III. 441). A French translation of this journal will be found in
the Recueil de Pieces sur let Floride of Ternaux-Compans. Mendoza
was chaplain of the expedition commanded by Menendez de Aviles,
and, like Solfs, he was an eye-witness of the events which he relates.
Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Siete Cartas escritas al Rey, Anos de 1565
y 1566, MSS. These are the despatches of the Adelantado Menendez to
Philip the Second. They were procured for the writer, together with
other documents, from the archives of Seville, and their contents are
now for the first time made public. They consist of seventy-two closely
written foolscap pages, and are of the highest interest and value as
regards the present subject, confirming and amplifying the statements
of Solis and Mendoza, and giving new and curious information with
respect to the designs of Spain upon the continent of North America.
It is unnecessary to specify the authorities for the introductory and

subordinate portions of the narrative.
The writer is indebted to Mr. Buckingham Smith, for procuring copies
of documents from the archives of Spain; to Mr. Bancroft, the historian
of the United States, for the use of the Vicomte de Gourgues's copy of
the journal describing the expedition of his ancestor against the
Spaniards; and to Mr. Charles Russell Lowell, of the Boston
Athenaeum, and Mr. John Langdon Sibley, Librarian of Harvard
College, for obliging aid in consulting books and papers.

HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.

CHAPTER I
.
1512-1561.
EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE.
Towards the close of the fifteenth century, Spain achieved her final
triumph over the infidels of Granada, and made her name glorious
through all generations by the discovery of America. The religious zeal
and romantic daring which a long course of Moorish wars had called
forth were now exalted to redoubled fervor. Every ship from the New
World came freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry
to shame; and to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of
wonder and mystery, of vague and magnificent promise. Thither
adventurers hastened, thirsting for glory and for gold, and often
mingling the enthusiasm of the crusader and the valor of the
knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates.
They roamed over land and sea; they climbed unknown mountains,
surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the sultry intricacies of tropical
forests; while from year to year and from day to day new wonders were
unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new regions of gold and pearl,
and barbaric empires of more than Oriental wealth. The extravagance
of hope and the fever of adventure knew no bounds. Nor is it surprising
that amid such waking marvels the imagination should run wild in
romantic dreams; that between the possible and the impossible the line
of distinction should be but faintly drawn, and that men should be
found ready to stake life and honor in pursuit of the most insane
fantasies.
Such a man was the veteran cavalier Juan Ponce de Leon. Greedy of

honors and of riches, he embarked at Porto Rico with three brigantines,
bent on schemes of discovery. But that which gave the chief stimulus to
his enterprise was a story, current among the Indians of Cuba and
Hispaniola, that on the island of Bimini, said to be one of the Bahamas,
there was a fountain of such virtue, that, bathing in its waters, old men
resumed their youth.[FN#1] It was said, moreover, that on a
neighboring shore might be found a river gifted with the same
beneficent property, and believed by some to be no other than the
Jordan.[FN#2] Ponce de Leon found the island of Bimini, but not the
fountain. Farther westward, in the latitude of thirty degrees and eight
minutes, he approached an unknown land, which he named Florida, and,
steering southward, explored its coast as far as the extreme point of the
peninsula, when, after some farther explorations, he retraced his course
to Porto Rico.
Ponce de Leon had not regained his youth, but his active spirit was
unsubdued.
Nine years later he attempted to plant a colony in Florida; the Indians
attacked him fiercely; he was mortally wounded, and died soon
afterwards in Cuba. [FN#3]
The voyages of Garay and Vasquez de Ayllon threw new light on the
discoveries of