In a few days the French put out to sea, with the intention of attacking the Spaniards within the harbour; but a furious storm overtook them, which lasted for more than two weeks, and wrecked every vessel; the Spaniards in the meantime lying in harbour comparatively safe. Melendez now marched his troops across the country, and suddenly made an attack upon the defenceless French settlement, putting to death all whom he could seize, men, women, and children, the aged and the sick; some few escaping, fled to the woods and afterwards took shelter on board the only two ships which had been spared by the tempest. The Spaniards, enraged that even a remnant had escaped, insulted and mangled the corpses of the dead. After these scenes of horror were completed, mass was performed, and the site of a church was selected on the very ground yet crimson and sodden with the blood of the inoffensive inhabitants.
The few who had escaped to the ships were in the utmost want of every necessary of life, worn out by fatigue, and destitute both of food and water. Melendez, who was aware of their wretched condition, promised them mercy if they would surrender themselves into his hands. Being men of truth themselves, they believed his words and capitulated. As they stepped on shore, however, their hands were at once tied behind them, and they were marched as prisoners into St. Augustine. A signal was given; and to the sound of drums and trumpets they were all massacred, with the exception of a few catholics and a few mechanics, who were reserved for slaves; and over their mangled remains was placed the inscription, “This is done not as unto Frenchmen, but as unto heretics.” Nine hundred true men, worshippers of God according to their protestant faith, are supposed to have perished on those shores, victims of bigotry.
The French government did not trouble itself about these things; the Huguenots and the French nation, however, resented them keenly. A bold soldier of Gascony, Dominic de Gourgues, a man whose life had been a series of adventures and hardships, sold his property to acquire the means of avenging the wrongs of his fellow-countrymen and believers. With one hundred and fifty men and three ships he embarked for Florida; they were but a handful against the Spanish power, but their object was not conquest—it was retributive justice, if not revenge. Like Melendez he came suddenly; and surprising two Spanish forts on St. John’s river, took them at once, together with a still larger fort on the spot where the unfortunate French settlement had stood. He executed summary justice, hung his prisoners on the trees, with this inscription, “I do this not as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers.” And the Indians, who had been ill-used both by the French and the Spaniards, looked on well pleased to see their enemies preying one on another.
Dominic de Gourgues, having avenged his countrymen, again disappeared with his ships, and France disavowing all cognisance of the circumstance, relinquished any claim to Florida; and Spain remained in possession. The Spanish dominion in America was magnificent. Cuba was the centre of the West Indian possessions. “From the remotest south-eastern cape of the Carribean,” says the historian. “along the whole shore, to the Cape of Florida, and beyond it, all was hers. The Gulf of Mexico lay embosomed within her territories.”
About the time when the impetuous Dominic de Gourgues returned to France from his swoop of vengeance in Florida, Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the most gallant spirits of the age, suddenly left his studies at Oxford to take part with the Huguenots in their struggles against the catholics. From his protestant friends he heard of the massacre which De Gourgues had avenged, and from that brave man himself, and his associates, learnt much also of the country where these scenes had occurred. The imagination of Raleigh was inflamed; on his return to England he found the same spirit afloat; a few of the unfortunate Huguenots had escaped to England, and their tale of wrong had interested even Queen Elizabeth herself. Hawkins, too, the slaver, who had relieved the famishing settlement, had much to tell of the wonderful regions where these things had been done; so had De Morgues, the landscape painter, who had fortunately escaped with, many sketches of its scenery. The leading minds of England were turned to Florida.
From the time of Cabot, England had never wholly given up her intercourse with the New World. English mariners, as well as French, frequented the fisheries of Newfoundland. Henry VIII. declared that he considered the discovery of the North “to be his charge and duty;” and Hakluyt records a wild sea-voyage, conducted by a man named Hore, in which marvellous things are told far outdoing those of the Ancient Mariner. The search for the north-western passage still continued; the fleets of Willoughby and Chancellor set sail. In the north their ships parted company. The fate of Willoughby was an early tragedy in those mournful and fatal seas. After a winter of great hardship, the vessels which went in search of him the following spring found him dead in his cabin, his journal open before him, containing a record of the ship’s sufferings to the very day of his death, and with his faithful crew lying dead around him. Chancellor, on the contrary, was driven in a north-eastern direction, and reached the harbour of Archangel, and thus the Russian nation, like another New World, emerged, as it were, into being. Joint-stock companies, for the discovery of unknown lands, were first formed in 1555. The marriage of Mary with Philip of Spain brought the magnificent discoveries and productions of that country into a closer proximity with England, and a desire to emulate the successes of Spain in the New World was excited.
The spirit of Elizabeth seconded that of her people. The nation had now assumed a more determined and a prouder front in their resentment of the attempt of Spain to render them an appendage to the Spanish crown, and by the successful struggle of protestantism against catholicism. England strengthened her navy; frequented the bays and banks of Newfoundland; sent out adventurers to Russia and Africa; endeavoured to reach Persia by land, and enlarged her commerce with the East, whilst her privateers lay in wait at sea for the rich galleons of Spain. The study of geography was universally cultivated, and books of travels and adventures by land and sea were eagerly read. Frobisher, the boldest mariner who ever crossed the ocean, set forth to discover the long-sought-for north-western, passage, and Queen Elizabeth waved her hand to him in token of favour, as he sailed down the Thames. Frobisher, like all the rest of the world, hoped to find gold. If the Spaniards had found gold in the south, England was confident of finding gold in the north. Elizabeth entered enthusiastically into the scheme of planting a colony among the wealthy mines of the polar regions, where gold, it was said, lay on the surface of the ground. Frobisher was followed by a second fleet, But they found only frost and icebergs.
Whilst Frobisher and his ships were thus vainly endeavouring to discover an el Dorado in the north, Sir Francis Drake was acquiring immense wealth as a freebooter on the Spanish main, and winning great glory by circumnavigating the globe, after having explored the north-western coast of America, as far north as the forty-third degree. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, also, a man of sound judgment and deeply religious mind, obtained a charter from Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, for the more rational purposes of colonisation. He set sail with three vessels, accompanied by his step-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh; but a series of disasters befell them; the largest vessel was wrecked, and a hundred perished, among whom was Parmenius, a Hungarian scholar, who had gone out as historian of the expedition. On the homeward voyage they were overtaken by a great storm. “We are as near to heaven on sea as on land,” said Sir Humphrey Gilbert, sitting abaft with a book in his hand. And the same night his little vessel went down, and all on board perished.
The brave spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh was not discouraged, though he deeply deplored the loss of his noble step-brother. He resolved now to secure to England those glorious countries where the poor French protestants had suffered so deeply; and a patent was readily granted, constituting him Lord Proprietary, with almost unlimited powers, according to the Christian protestant faith, of all land which he might discover between the 33rd and 40th degrees of north latitude. Under this patent, Raleigh despatched, as avant-courier ships, two vessels under the command of Philip Armidas and Arthur Barlow. In the month of July they reached the coast of North America, having perceived while far out at sea the fragrance as of a delicious garden, from the odoriferous flowers of the shore. Finding, after some search, a convenient harbour, they landed, and offering thanks to God for their safe arrival, took formal possession in the name of the queen of England.
The spot on which they landed was the island of Wocoken. The shores of this part of America are peculiar, inasmuch as, during one portion of the year, they are exposed to furious tempests, against which the low flat shore affords no defence of harbourage; in the summer season, on the contrary, the sea and air are alike tranquil, the whole presenting the most paradisaical aspect, whilst the vegetation is calculated to strike the beholder with wonder and delight. The English strangers beheld the country under its most favourable circumstances; the grapes being so plentiful that the surge of the ocean, as it lazily rolled in upon the shore, dashed its spray upon the clusters. “The forests formed themselves into wonderfully beautiful bowers, frequented by multitudes of birds. It was like a garden of Eden, and the gentle, friendly inhabitants appeared in unison with the scene. On the island of Roanoke they were received by the wife of the king, and entertained with Arcadian hospitality.”