[In the July number of this magazine is a sketch of the attempt of the Huguenots, under the auspices of Coligny, to found a colony at Port Royal.  Two years later, an attempt was made to establish a Protestant community on the banks of the River St. John’s, in Florida.  The following paper embodies the substance of the letters and narratives of the actors in this striking episode of American history.]

CHAPTER I.

On the 25th of June, 1564, a French squadron anchored a second time off the mouth of the River of May.  There were three vessels, the smallest of sixty tons, the largest of one hundred and twenty, all crowded with men.  Rene de Laudonniere held command.  He was of a noble race of Poitou, attached to the House of Chatillon, of which Coligny was the head; pious, we are told, and an excellent marine officer.  An engraving, purporting to be his likeness, shows us a slender figure, leaning against the mast, booted to the thigh, with slouched hat and plume, slashed doublet, and short cloak.  His thin oval face, with curled moustache and close-trimmed beard, wears a thoughtful and somewhat pensive look, as if already shadowed by the destiny that awaited him.

The intervening year since Ribaut’s voyage had been a dark and deadly year for France.  From the peaceful solitude of the River of May, that voyager returned to a land reeking with slaughter.  But the carnival of bigotry and hate had found a respite.  The Peace of Amboise had been signed.  The fierce monk choked down his venom; the soldier sheathed his sword; the assassin, his dagger; rival chiefs grasped hands, and masked their rancor under hollow smiles.  The king and the queen-mother, helpless amid the storm of factions which threatened their destruction, smiled now on Conde, now on Guise,—­gave ear to the Cardinal of Lorraine, or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore Beza.  Coligny was again strong at Court.  He used his opportunity, and solicited with success the means of renewing his enterprise of colonization.  With pains and zeal, men were mustered for the work.  In name, at least, they were all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the staple of the projected colony was unsound:  soldiers, paid out of the royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a swarm of volunteers from the young Huguenot noblesse, whose restless swords had rusted in their scabbards since the peace.  The foundation-stone was left out.  There were no tillers of the soil.  Such, indeed, were rare among the Huguenots; for the dull peasants who guided the plough clung with blind tenacity to the ancient faith.  Adventurous gentlemen, reckless soldiers, discontented tradesmen, all keen for novelty and heated with dreams of wealth,—­these were they who would build for their country and their religion an empire beyond the sea.