There they constructed seven large boats, and in July following embarked in them. On reaching the Gulf of Mexico, they crawled cautiously along its sinuous coast, until the twentieth of September, when, half naked and almost famished, they reached a white settlement near the mouth of the Panueo River, about thirty miles north of Tampico.
While the Spaniards were making these useless discoveries of the southern regions of our Republic along the Gulf of Mexico, the French fitted out several expeditions to explore the coast between the peninsula of Florida and the banks of Newfoundland. John Verrazzani, a celebrated Florentine navigator, proceeded to America with a squadron of four ships, under {xxxii}the auspices of Francis the First of France, in 1523. Three of his vessels were so damaged by a storm that they were sent hack; in the fourth, he proceeded on his voyage.
Weathering a terrible tempest, he reached our coast near the mouth of Cape Fear River, in North Carolina. He explored the whole coast, from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia, and taking formal possession of the country in the name of the French king, he called it New France, the title held by Canada while it remained in possession of the French. Verrazzani was followed, the next year, by Cartier (also in the service of the French king), who discovered the Gulf and River St. Lawrence; and soon afterward by the Lord of Roberval, a wealthy nobleman, who proposed to plant a colony in the New World. Roberval failed in his undertaking, and returned to France. He sailed on another voyage, and was never heard of afterward. Other efforts at settlement along the southern coasts were made by the French, but were unsuccessful. A Protestant French colony, planted in Florida, was destroyed by the Spaniards in 1564, and over the dead bodies of the Huguenots the murderers placed the inscription, "We do this not as unto Frenchmen, but as unto Heretics." In 1567, De Gourgues, a Gascon soldier, fitted out an expedition at his own expense, to avenge this out rage. He surprised the Spanish forts erected near St. Augustine, and hung the soldiers of the garrison upon the trees. Over them he placed the inscription, "I do this not as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers." Thus white people were exterminated by white people, and Indians again possessed the land.
The history of the early discoveries in North America forms a wonderful chapter in the great chronicle of human progress and achievements, and in its details there are narratives of adventure, prowess, love, and all the elements of romance, more startling and attractive than the most brilliant conceptions of the imagination ever evolved. The story of the progress of settlements which followed is equally marvelous and attractive. These tempt the pen on every side, but as they are connected only incidentally with my subject, I pass them by with brevity of notice. In the preceding pages I have taken a very brief survey of events in the progress of discovery which opened the way to settlements in the New World; a brief survey of the progress of settlements will be found interwoven with the records upon the pages which follow. They are all united by the often invisible threads of God's providence; and each apparently insignificant event in the wondrous history of our continent is a link as important in the great chain of human deeds, directed by divine intelligence, as those which arrest the attention and command the admiration of the world. Never was this truth oftener and more strikingly illustrated than in our history of the war for independence; and the student of that history, desirous of understanding its true philosophy, should make himself familiar with the antecedents which have a visible relation thereto.
** See page 178, vol. i.