in an enchanted world. Stalwart natives, whom Laudonniere,
one of the officers, describes as "mighty and as well shapen and
proportioned of body as any people in the world," greeted them
hospitably.[1] Overhead was the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation,
giant oaks festooned with gray moss trailing to the ground and towering
magnolias opening their great white, fragrant cups. No wonder they
thought this newly discovered land the "fairest, fruitfullest, and
pleasantest of all the world." One of the Indians wore around his neck
a pearl "as great as an acorne at the least" and gladly exchanged it
for a bauble. This set the explorers to inquiring for gold and gems,
{69} and they soon gathered, as they imagined, from the Indians' signs
that the "Seven Cities of Cibola" [2]--again the myth that had led
Coronado and his Spaniards to bitter disappointment!--were distant only
twenty days' journey. Of course, the natives had never heard of Cibola
and did not mean anything of the kind. The explorers soon embarked and
sailed northward, exploring the coast of Georgia and giving to the
rivers or inlets the names of rivers of France, such as the Loire and
the Gironde.

On May 27 they entered a wide and deep harbor, spacious enough, it
seemed to them, "to hold the argosies of the world." A royal haven it
seemed. Port Royal they named it, and Port Royal it is called to this
day. They sailed up this noble estuary and entered Broad River. When
they landed the frightened Indians fled. Good reason they had to dread
the sight of white men, for this was the country of Chicora (South
Carolina), the scene of one of those acts of brutal treachery of which
the Spaniards, of European nations, were the most frequently all guilty.

Forty-two years before, Lucas Vasquez de {70} Ayllon, a high official
of San Domingo, had visited this coast with two vessels. The simple
and kindly natives lavished hospitality on the strangers. In return,
the Spaniards invited them on board. Full of wondering curiosity, the
Indians without suspicion explored every part of the vessels. When the
holds were full of sight-seers, their hosts suddenly closed the hatches
and sailed away with two ship-loads of wretched captives doomed to toil
as slaves in the mines of San Domingo. But Ayllon's treachery was well
punished. One of his vessels was lost, and on board the other the
captives refused food and mostly died before the end of the voyage. On
his revisit