[Sidenote:  Spaniards and Frenchmen.]

[Sidenote:  End of the French settlement, 1565. Explorers, 159-166.]

20.  The Spaniards in Florida, 1565.—­For this purpose the Spaniards sent out an expedition under Menendez (Ma-nen’-deth).  He sailed to the River of May and found Ribault there with a French fleet.  So he turned southward, and going ashore founded St. Augustine.  Ribault followed, but a terrible storm drove his whole fleet ashore south of St. Augustine.  Menendez then marched over land to the French colony.  He surprised the colonists and killed nearly all of them.  Then going back to St. Augustine, he found Ribault and his shipwrecked sailors and killed nearly all of them.  In this way ended the French attempts to found a colony in Carolina and Florida.  But St. Augustine remained, and is to-day the oldest town on the mainland of the United States.

CHAPTER 3

PIONEERS OF ENGLAND

[Sidenote:  Hawkins’s voyages, 1562-67.]

21.  Sir John Hawkins.—­For many years after Cabot’s voyage Englishmen were too busy at home to pay much attention to distant expeditions.  But in Queen Elizabeth’s time English seamen began to sail to America.  The first of them to win a place in history was John Hawkins.  He carried cargoes of negro slaves from Africa to the West Indies and sold them to the Spanish planters.  On his third voyage he was basely attacked by the Spaniards and lost four of his five ships.  Returning home, he became one of the leading men of Elizabeth’s little navy and fought most gallantly for his country.

[Illustration:  SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.]

[Sidenote:  Drake on the California coast, 1577-78. Source-Book, 9.]

22.  Sir Francis Drake.—­A greater and a more famous man was Hawkins’s cousin, Francis Drake.  He had been with Hawkins on his third voyage and had come to hate Spaniards most vigorously.  In 1577 he made a famous voyage round the world.  Steering through the Straits of Magellan, he plundered the Spanish towns on the western coasts of South America.  At one place his sailors went on shore and found a man sound asleep.  Near him were four bars of silver.  “We took the silver and left the man,” wrote the old historian of the voyage.  Drake also captured vessels loaded with gold and silver and pearls.  Sailing northward, he repaired his ship, the Pelican, on the coast of California, and returned home by the way of the Cape of Good Hope.

[Sidenote:  Ralegh and his colonies. Eggleston, 13-17; Explorers, 177-189.]

23.  Sir Walter Ralegh.—­Still another famous Englishman of Elizabeth’s time was Walter Ralegh.  He never saw the coasts of the United States, but his name is rightly connected with our history, because he tried again and again to found colonies on our shores.  In 1584 he sent Amadas and Barlowe to explore the Atlantic seashore of North America.  Their reports were so favorable that he sent a strong colony to settle on Roanoke Island in Virginia, as he named that region.  But the settlers soon became unhappy because they found no gold.  Then, too, their food began to fail, and Drake, happening along, took them back to England.