THE BUILDING OF FORT CAROLINE.
FORT CAROLINE COMPLETED.
(Lemoyne, in De Bry.)
[Two pictures of Fort Caroline accompany the Brevis narratio of Lemoyne,—one the beginning of work upon it, and the other the completed structure, “a more finished fortification than could possibly have been constructed, but to be taken as a correct outline,” as Fairbanks (p. 54) presumes. The engraving of the completed fort is reproduced in Fairbanks’s St. Augustine, Stevens’s Georgia, etc. Another and better view of it, called “Arx Carolina—Charlesfort sur Floride,” was engraved at Leide by Vander Aa, but it is a question if it be truthful. No traces of the fort have ever been recorded by subsequent observers, but Fairbanks places it near a place called St. John’s Bluff, as shown in the accompanying map. Others have placed it on the Bell River (an estuary of the St. Mary’s River), at a place Called Battle Bluff. Cf. Carroll’s Hist. Coll., i. p. xxxvi.—Ed.]
Amid all this bustle and activity the Spaniards were startled by the appearance of two large French vessels[886] in the offing, evidently ready for action. It was no part of Menendez’ plan to engage them, and he waited till, about three in the afternoon, they bore away for the St. John’s. Then he prepared to land in person. As his boat left the vessel with banners unfurled, amid the thunder of cannon and the sounds of warlike music, Mendoza Grajales, the first priest of St. Augustine, bearing a cross, went down at the head of those on shore to meet the adelantado, all chanting the Te Deum. Menendez proceeded at once with his attendants to the cross, which he kissed on bended knee.
Formal possession of the land was then taken in the name of Philip II., King of Spain. The captains of the troops and the officers of the new colony came forward to take the oath to Peter Menendez de Aviles as governor, captain-general, and adelantado of Florida and its coasts under the patents of the Spanish King. Crowds of friendly Indians, with their chieftains, gathered around.
From them the Spanish commander learned that his position was admirably taken, as he could, at a short distance, strike the river on which the French lay, and descend it to assail them. Here then he resolved to make his position as strong as possible, till the rest of his armament arrived. His galleon “San Pelayo,” too large to enter the port, rode without, in danger from the sudden storms that visit the coast, and from the French. Putting on board some French prisoners whom he had captured in a boat, he despatched her and another vessel to Santo Domingo. He organized his force by appointing officers,—a lieutenant and a sergeant-major, and ten captains. The necessity of horses to operate rapidly induced him to send two of his lighter vessels to Havana to seek them there; and by this conveyance he addressed to Philip II. his first letter from Florida.[887]
The masts of his vessels could scarcely have vanished from the eyes of the Spanish force, when the French vessels appeared once more, and nearly captured Menendez himself in the harbor, where he was carrying to the shore, in the smaller vessels that he had retained, some artillery and munitions from the galleons. He escaped, however, though the French were so near that they called on him to surrender. And he ascribed his deliverance rather to prayer than to human skill; for, fierce seaman as he was, he was a man of deep and practical religious feeling, which influenced all his actions.