On his release he prepared to sail to the Bermudas to seek for his son Juan, who had been shipwrecked in the previous year. At that time the French Huguenots were engaged in endeavouring to plant a colony in Florida. As the country had been explored by the Spaniards they claimed it as theirs, and its position on the track of the home-coming trade of Mexico rendered its possession by any other power highly dangerous. Philip II. endeavoured to avert the peril by making an "asiento" or contract with Avilés, by which he advanced 15,000 ducats to the seaman, and constituted him proprietor of any colony which he could establish in Florida, on condition that the money was repaid. The contract was signed on the 20th of March 1565. Avilés sailed on the 28th of July of the same year with one vessel of 600 tons, ten sloops and 1500 men. On the 28th of August he entered and named the Bay of St Augustine, and began a fort there. He took the French post of Fort Caroline on the 20th of September 1565, and in October exterminated a body of Frenchmen who, under the Huguenot Jean Ribault, had arrived on the coast of Florida to relieve their colony. The Spanish commander, after slaying nearly all his prisoners, hung their bodies on trees, with the inscription, "Not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans." A French sea-captain named Dominique de Gourgues revenged the massacre by capturing in 1568 Fort San Mateo (as the Spanish had renamed Fort Caroline), and hanging the garrison, with the inscription, "Not as Spaniards but as murderers." Till 1567 Avilés remained in Florida, busy with his colony. In that year he returned to Spain. He made one more voyage to Florida, and died on the 17th of September 1574. Avilés married Maria de Solis, when very young, and left three daughters. His letters prove him to have been a pious and high-minded officer, who never imagined that he could be supposed by any honest man to have gone too far in massacring the Frenchmen, whom he regarded as pirates and heretics.
See The Spanish Settlements within the Present Limits of the United States, Florida, 1562-1574, by Woodbury Lowery (New York, 1905).
(D. H.)
AVILÉS, or San Nicolás de Avilés (the Roman Flavionavia), a seaport of northern Spain, in the province of Oviedo; on the Bay of Avilés, a winding inlet of the Bay of Biscay, 24 m. by rail W. of Gijón. Pop. (1900) 12,763. Avilés is a picturesque and old-fashioned town, containing several ancient palaces and Gothic churches. The bay, which is crossed by a fine bridge at its narrow landward extremity, is the headquarters of a fishing fleet, and a port of call for many coasting vessels. Coal from the Oviedo mines is exported coastwise, and in 1904 the shipments from Avilés for the first time exceeded those from Gijón, reaching a total of more than 290,000 tons. Glass and coarse linen and woollen stuffs are manufactured; and there are valuable stone quarries in the neighbourhood.
AVIZANDUM (from Late Lat. avizare, to consider), a Scots law term; the judge "makes avizandum with a cause," i.e. takes time to consider his judgment.
AVLONA (anc. Aulon; Ital. Valona; Alb. Vliona), a town and seaport of Albania, Turkey, in the vilayet of Iannina. Pop. (1900) about 6000. Avlona occupies an eminence near the Gulf of Avlona, an inlet of the Adriatic, almost surrounded by mountains. The port is the best on the Albanian coast, and the nearest to Italy. It is protected by the island of Saseno, the ancient Saso, and by Cape Glossa, the northernmost headland of the Acroceraunian mountains. It is regularly visited by steamers from Trieste, Fiume, Brindisi, and other Austro-Hungarian and Italian ports, as well as by many small Greek and Turkish coasters. The cable and telegraph line from Otranto, in Italy, to Constantinople, has an important station here. The town is about 1½ m. from the sea, and has rather a pleasant appearance with its minarets and its palace, surrounded with gardens and olive-groves. Valonia, a material largely used by tanners, is the pericarp of an acorn obtained in the neighbouring oak-woods, and derives its name from Valona. The surrounding district is mainly agricultural and pastoral, producing oats, maize, cotton, olive oil, cattle, sheep, skins, hides and butter. All these commodities are exported in considerable quantities, besides bitumen, which is obtained from a mine worked by a French
company. The imports are woollen and cotton piece-goods, metals and petroleum.
Avlona played an important part in the wars between the Normans and the Byzantines, during the 11th and 12th centuries. In 1464 it was taken by the Ottomans; and after being in Venetian possession in 1690, was restored to them in 1691. In 1851 it suffered severely from an earthquake.
AVOCA, or Ovoca, VALE OF, a mountain glen of county Wicklow, Ireland, in the south-eastern part of the county, formed by the junction of the small rivers Avonmore and Avonbeg, which, rising in the central highlands of the county, form with their united waters the Ovoca river, flowing south and south-east to the Irish Sea at Arklow. The vale would doubtless rank only as one among the many beautiful glens of the district, but that it has obtained a lasting celebrity through one of the Irish Melodies of the poet Thomas Moore, in which its praises are sung. It is through this song that the form "Avoca" is most familiar, although the name is locally spelt "Ovoca." The glen is narrow and densely wooded. Its beauty is somewhat marred by the presence of lead and copper mines, and by the main line of the Dublin & South Eastern railway, on which Ovoca station, midway in the vale, is 42¾ m. south of Dublin. Of the two "meetings of the waters" (the upper, of the Avonmore and Avonbeg, and the lower, of the Aughrim with the Ovoca) the upper, near the fine seat of Castle Howard, is that which inspired the poet. At Avondale, above the upper "meeting," by the Avonmore, Charles Stewart Parnell was born.
AVOCADO PEAR, the fruit of the tree Persea gratissima, which grows in the West Indies and elsewhere; the flesh is of a soft and buttery consistency and highly esteemed. The name avocado, the Spanish for "advocate," is a sound-substitute for the Aztec ahuacatl; it is also corrupted into "alligator-pear." Avocato, avigato, abbogada are variants.