the soil, building villages, and on the
best possible terms with the natives. Spain was at
the time at peace with France; we are, therefore, to
suppose that it was in pursuance of the great crusade,
in which they might feel secure of the secret, if not
the confessed, sympathy of the Guises, that a powerful
Spanish fleet bore down upon this settlement. The
French made no resistance, and they were seized and
flayed alive, and their bodies hung out upon the trees,
with an inscription suspended over them, "Not as
Frenchmen, but as heretics." At Paris all was sweetness
and silence. The settlement was tranquilly
surrendered to the same men who had made it the
scene of their atrocity; and two years later, 500 of
the very Spaniards who had been most active in the
murder were living there in peaceable possession, in
two forts which their relation with the natives had
obliged them to build. It was well that there were
other Frenchmen living, of whose consciences the Court
had not the keeping, and who were able on emergencies
to do what was right without consulting it. A certain
privateer named Dominique de Gourges, secretly armed
and equipped a vessel at Rochelle, and, stealing across
the Atlantic and in two days collecting a strong party
of Indians, he came down suddenly upon the forts,
and, taking them by storm, slew or afterwards hanged
every man he found there, leaving their bodies on the
trees on which they had hanged the Huguenots, with
their own inscription reversed against them,--"Not as
Spaniards, but as murderers." For which exploit, well
deserving of all honest men's praise, Dominique de
Gourges had to fly his country for his life; and, coming
to England, was received with honourable welcome by
Elizabeth.

It was at such a time, and to take their part amidst
such scenes as these, that the English navigators
appeared along the shores of South America, as the armed
soldiers of the Reformation, and as the avengers of
humanity; as their enterprise was grand and lofty, so
was the manner in which they bore themselves in all
ways worthy of it. They were no nation of saints,
in the modern sentimental sense of that word; they
were prompt, stern men--more ready ever to strike
an enemy than to parley with him; and, private
adventurers as they all were, it was natural enough
that private foolishness and private badness should be
found among them as among other mortals. Every
Englishman who had the means was at liberty