etter to Philip the Second. His head was
hewn into four parts, one of which was displayed on the point of a lance
at each corner of Fort St. Augustine. Great fires were kindled, and the
bodies of the murdered burned to ashes.

Such is the sum of the French accounts. The charge of breach of faith
contained in them was believed by Catholics as well as Protestants;
and it was as a defence against this charge that the narrative of the
Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good
sense and courage were both reputed high, should have submitted himself
and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety, is
scarcely credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a bigot so
savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim,
current among certain casuists of the day, that faith ought not to be
kept with heretics.

It was night when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine. There were
some who blamed his cruelty; but many applauded. "Even if the French had
been Catholics,"--such was their language,--"he would have done right,
for, with the little provision we have, they would all have starved;
besides, there were so many of them that they would have cut our
throats."

And now Menendez again addressed himself to the despatch, already
begun, in which he recounts to the King his labors and his triumphs, a
deliberate and business-like document, mingling narratives of butchery
with recommendations for promotions, commissary details, and petitions
for supplies,--enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of encroachment which
his successful generalship had brought to naught. The French, he says,
had planned a military and naval depot at Los Martires, whence they
would make a descent upon Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce
de Leon, whence they could threaten Vera Cruz. They had long been
encroaching on Spanish rights at Newfoundland, from which a great arm of
the sea--doubtless meaning the St. Lawrence--would give them access to
the Moluccas and other parts of the East Indies. He adds, in a later
despatch, that by this passage they may reach the mines of Zacatecas
and St. Martin, as well as every part of the South Sea. And, as already
mentioned, he urges immediate occupation of Chesapeake Bay, which, by
its supposed water communication with the St. Lawrence, would enable
Spain to vindicate her rights, control the fisheries of Newfoundland,
and thwart her rival in vast desi