or guide.
Religious enthusiasm is not miraculously fed by ravens in the
wilderness. Coligny's emigrants were improvident or careless settlers.
Their supplies wasted. They were not only gratified by the sudden relief
from royal oppression, but the removal of a weight, gave room for the
display of that secret avarice, which, more or less, possesses the
hearts of all men. They had heard of the Spaniard's success, and were
seized with a passion for sudden wealth. They became discontented with
the toil of patient labor and slow accretion. Mutiny ripened into
rebellion. A party compelled Laudonniere to suffer it to embark for
Mexico; but its two vessels were soon employed in piratical enterprises
against the Spaniards. Some of the reckless insurgents fell into the
hands of the men they assailed, and were made prisoners and sold as
slaves, while the few who escaped, were, on their return, executed by
orders of Laudonniere.

The main body of the colonists who had either remained true to their
duty or were kept in subjection, had, meanwhile, become greatly
disheartened by these occurrences and by the failing supplies of their
settlement, when they were temporarily relieved by the arrival of the
celebrated English adventurer--Sir John Hawkins. Ribault soon after came
out from France to take command, and brought with him new emigrants,
seeds, animals, agricultural implements, and fresh supplies of every
kind.

These occurrences, it will be recollected, took place in Florida, within
the ancient claim of Spain. It is true that the country was a
wilderness; but Spain still asserted her dominion, though no beneficial
use had been made of the neglected forest and tangled swamp. At this
epoch, a certain Pedro Melendez de Aviles--a coarse, bold, bloody man,
who signalized himself in the wars in Holland against the Protestants,
and was renowned in Spanish America for deeds which, even in the loose
law of that realm, had brought him to justice, was then hanging about
the Court of Philip II. in search of plunder or employment. He perceived
a tempting "mission" of combined destruction and colonization in the
French Protestant settlement in Florida; and, accordingly, a compact was
speedily made between himself and his sovereign, by which he was
empowered, in consideration of certain concessions and rights, to invade
Florida with at least five hundred men, and to establish the Spanish
authority and Catholic religion.

An expedition, numbe