more with him and five
hundred ducats than with another man and five thousand, he having been
the most able and experienced mariner of the day for knowing the
navigation of the coasts of India and Florida." Above the heap of
corpses, before committing them to the flames, Menendez placed this
inscription: "Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics."

Three years later, on the same spot on which the _adelantado_ had heaped
up the victims of his cruelty and his perfidy lay the bodies of the
Spanish garrison. A Gascon gentleman, Dominic de Gourgues, had sworn to
avenge the wrongs of France; he had sold his patrimony, borrowed money of
his friends, and, trusting to his long experience in navigation, put to
sea with three small vessels equipped at his expense. The Spaniards were
living unsuspectingly, as the French colonists had lately done; they had
founded their principal settlement at some distance from the first
landing-place, and had named it St. Augustine. De Gourgues attacked
unexpectedly the little fort of San-Mateo; a detachment surrounded in the
woods the Spaniards who had sought refuge there; all were killed or
taken; they were hanged on the same trees which had but lately served for
the execution of the French. "This I do not as to Spaniards, but as to
traitors, thieves, and murderers," was the inscription placed by De
Gourgues above their heads. When he again put to sea, there remained not
one stone upon another of the fort of San-Mateo. France was avenged.
"All that we have done was done for the service of the king and for the
honor of the country," exclaimed the bold Gascon as he re-boarded his
ship. Florida, nevertheless, remained in the hands of Spain; the French
adventurers went carrying elsewhither their ardent hopes and their
indomitable courage.

For a long while expeditious and attempts at French colonization had been
directed towards Canada. James Cartier, in 1535, had taken possession of
its coasts under the name of New France. M. de Roberval had taken
thither colonists agricultural and mechanical; but the hard climate,
famine, and disease had stifled the little colony in the bud; religious
and political disturbances in the mother-country were absorbing all
thoughts; it was only in the reign of Henry IV., when panting France,
distracted by civil discord, began to repose, for the first time since
more than a century, beneath a government just, able, and firm at the
same time, that zeal for distant e