eril of the time. He would fain build up a city
of refuge for the persecuted sect. Yet Gaspar de Coligny, too high in
power and rank to be openly assailed, was forced to act with caution. He
must act, too, in the name of the Crown, and in virtue of his office of
Admiral of France. A nobleman and a soldier,--for the Admiral of France
was no seaman,--he shared the ideas and habits of his class; nor is there
reason to believe him to have been in advance of others of his time in a
knowledge of the principles of successful colonization. His scheme
promised a military colony, not a free commonwealth. The Huguenot party
was already a political, as well as a religious party. At its foundation
lay the religious element, represented by Geneva, the martyrs, and the
devoted fugitives who sang the psalms of Marot among rocks and caverns.
Joined to these were numbers on whom the faith sat lightly, whose hope was
in commotion and change. Of these, in great part, was the Huguenot
noblesse, from Conde, who aspired to the crown,--

"Ce petit homme tant joli,
Qui toujours chante, toujours rit,"--

to the younger son of the impoverished seigneur whose patrimony was his
sword. More than this, the restless, the factious, the discontented began
to link their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve confiscation
of the bloated wealth of the only rich class in France. An element of the
great revolution was already mingling in the strife of religions.

America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken
over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea. A land of romance, of
adventure, of gold.

Fifty-eight years later, the Puritans landed on the sands of Massachusetts
Bay. The illusion was gone,--the _ignis-fatuus_ of adventure, the dream of
wealth. The rugged wilderness offered only a stern and hard-won
independence. In their own hearts, not in the promptings of a great leader
or the patronage of an equivocal government, their enterprise found its
birth and its achievement. They were of the boldest, the most earnest of
their sect. There were such among the French disciples of Calvin; but no
Mayflower ever sailed from a port of France. Coligny's colonists were of a
different stamp, and widely different was their fate.

An excellent seaman and stanch Protestant, John Ribaut of Dieppe,
commanded the expedition. Under him, besides sailors, were a band of
veteran soldiers, and a few young nobles. Embarked