the best friends of the United States, like Cairnes
and Gasparin, have testified much interest in its progress. An English
periodical of considerable merit noticed at some length "Mr. Pierce's
Ten Thousand Clients." In Parliament, Earl Russell noted it in its
incipient stage, as a reason why England should not intervene in
American affairs. The "Revue des Deux Mondes," in a recent number,
characterizes the colony as "that small pacific army, far more important
in the history of civilization than all the military expeditions
despatched from time to time since the commencement of the civil war."

* * * * *

No little historical interest covers the region to which this account
belongs. Explorations of the coast now known as that of the Carolinas,
Georgia, and Florida, involving the rival pretensions of Spain and
France, were made in the first half of the sixteenth century. They were
conducted by Ponce de Leon, Vasquez, Verrazani, and Soto, in search of
the fountain of perpetual youth, or to extend empire by right of
discovery. But no permanent settlement by way of colony or garrison was
attempted until 1562.

In that year,--the same in which he drew his sword for his faith, and
ten years before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in which he fell the
most illustrious victim,--Admiral Coligny, the great Protestant chief,
anxious to found beyond the seas a refuge for persecuted Huguenots,
fitted out the expedition of Jean Ribault, which, after a voyage of over
three months across the ocean and northward along the coast, cast anchor
on May 27th in the harbor of Port Royal, and gave it the name which it
retains to this day. That year was also to be ever memorable for another
and far different enterprise, which was destined to be written in dark
and perpetual lines on human history. Then it was that John Hawkins
sailed for Africa in quest of the first cargo of negroes ever brought to
the New World. The expedition of Ribault was the first visit of
Europeans to Port Royal or to any part of South Carolina, and the
garrison left by him was the first settlement under their auspices ever
made on this continent north of Mexico. There is not space or need to
detail here the mutiny and suffering of this military colony, their
abandonment of the post, the terrible voyage homeward, or the
perseverance of Coligny in his original purpose. Nor is it within the
compass of this narrative to recount the fortunes o