Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character, would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord-Mayor's table.

After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord-Mayor's table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.

During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair. When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated the principal guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears,) ending in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord-Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"—giving a sort of sentimental twang to the two words,—"and sends it round among you!" And forthwith the loving-cup—several of them, indeed, on each side of the tables—came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.

The fashion of it is thus. The Lord-Mayor, standing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically, both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine. Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their neighbors,—a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup, and had no occasion for another,—ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended for any better purpose.

The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof, together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast; then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England.

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country, which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and commercial"—I question whether those two adjectives were ever before married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord—"the literary and commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat as follows.

All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North, at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions. At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the world—our own country and France—that can put England into this singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government (for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no pretence whatever for active resentment.

Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his Lordship. He meant well by all parties,—himself, who would share the glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an heroic opportunity,—his own country, which would continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with and wear.

As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held—at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or no—was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic an attitude.

* * * * *



THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.

I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch, approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.

With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean, shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.

I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified; for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.[10] The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall eventually find the solution of this mystery.

[Footnote 10: For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's Ichnology of New England. Boston, 1858. 4to.]

It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that, in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms, it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials. To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.

The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together in our days.

* * * * *

The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns. This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations. During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand, were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined, crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must, of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the organic world in the Jurassic epoch.

At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are, however, much more extensively known, on account of the large collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of these animals except the head,—neither the backbone nor the limbs; so that little is known of their general structure.



The Ichthyosauri (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at the neck and continue to the tail, and there is no distinction between head and neck, as in most Reptiles, but a continuous outline, as in Fishes. They had four limbs, not divided into fingers, but forming mere paddles. Yet fingers seem to be hinted at in these paddles, though not developed, for the bones are in parallel rows, as if to mark what might be such a division. The back-bones are short, but very high, and the surfaces of articulation are hollow, conical cavities, as in Fishes, instead of ball-and-socket joints, as in Reptiles. The ribs are more complicated than in Vertebrates generally: they consist of several pieces, and the breast-bone is formed of a number of bones, making together quite an intricate bony net-work. There is only one living animal, the Crocodile, characterized by this peculiar structure of the breast-bone. The Ichthyosaurus is, indeed, one of the most remarkable of the synthetic types: by the shape of its head one would associate it with the Porpoises, while by its paddles and its long tail it reminds one of the whole group of Cetaceans to which the Porpoises belong; by its crocodilian teeth, its ribs, and its breast-bone, it seems allied to Reptiles; and by its uniform neck, not distinguished from the body, and the structure of the backbone, it recalls the Fishes.



Another most curious member of this group is the Plesiosaurus, odd Saurian (Figure 2). By its disproportionately long and flexible neck, and its small, flat head, it unquestionably foreshadows the Serpents, while by the structure of the backbone, the limbs, and the tail, it is closely allied with the Ichthyosaurus. Its flappers are, however, more slender, less clumsy, and were, no doubt, adapted to more rapid motion than the fins of the Ichthyosaurus, while its tail is shorter in proportion to the whole length of the animal. It seems probable, from its general structure, that the Ichthyosaurus moved like a Fish, chiefly by the flapping of the tail, aided by the fins, while in the Plesiosaurus the tail must have been much less efficient as a locomotive organ, and the long, snake-like, flexible neck no doubt rendered the whole body more agile and rapid in its movements. In comparing the two, it may be said, that, as a whole, the Ichthyosaurus, though belonging by its structure to the class of Reptiles, has a closer external resemblance to the Fishes, while the Plesiosaurus is more decidedly reptilian in character. If there exists any animal in our waters, not yet known to naturalists, answering to the descriptions of the "Sea-Serpent," it must be closely allied to the Plesiosaurus. The occurrence in the fresh waters of North America of a Fish, the Lepidosteus, which is closely allied to the fossil Fishes found with the Plesiosaurus in the Jurassic beds, renders such a supposition probable.



Of all these strange old forms, so singularly uniting features of Fishes and Reptiles, none has given rise to more discussion than the Pterodactylus, (Figure 3,) another of the Saurian tribe, associated, however, with Birds by some naturalists, on account of its large wing-like appendages. From the extraordinary length of its anterior limbs, they have generally been described as wings, and the animal is usually represented as a flying Reptile. But if we consider its whole structure, this does not seem probable, and I believe it to have been an essentially aquatic animal, moving after the fashion of the Sea-Turtle. Its so-called wings resemble in structure the front paddles of the Sea-Turtles far more than the wings of a Bird; differing from them, indeed, only by the extraordinary length of the inner toe, while the outer ones are comparatively much shorter. But, notwithstanding this difference, the hand of the Pterodactylus is constructed like that of an aquatic swimming marine Reptile; and I believe, that, if we represent it with its long neck stretched upon the water, its large head furnished with powerful, well-armed jaws, ready to dive after the innumerable smaller animals living in the same ocean, we shall have a more natural picture of its habits than if we consider it as a flying animal, which it is generally supposed to have been. It has not the powerful breast-bone, with the large projecting keel along the middle line, such as exists in all the flying animals. Its breast-bone, on the contrary, is thin and flat, like that of the present Sea-Turtle; and if it moved through the water by the help of its long flappers, as the Sea-Turtle does now, it could well dispense with that powerful construction of the breast-bone so essential to all animals which fly through the air. Again, the powerful teeth, long and conical, placed at considerable intervals in the jaw, constitute a feature common to all predaceous aquatic animals, and would seem to have been utterly useless in a flying animal at that time, since there were no aerial beings of any size to prey upon. The Dragon-Flies found in the same deposits with the Pterodactylus were certainly not a game requiring so powerful a battery of attack.

The Fishes of the Jurassic sea were exceedingly numerous, but were all of the Ganoid and Selachian tribes. It would weary the reader, were I to introduce here any detailed description of them, but they were as numerous and varied as those living in our present waters. There was the Hybodus, with the marked furrows on the spines and the strong hooks along their margin,—the huge Chimera, with its long whip, its curved bone over the back, and its parrot-like bill,—the Lepidotus, with its large square scales, its large head, its numerous rows of teeth, one within another, forming a powerful grinding apparatus,—the Microdon, with its round, flat body, its jaw paved with small grinding teeth,—the swift Aspidorhynchus, with its long, slender body and massive tail, enabling it to strike the water powerfully and dart forward with great rapidity. There were also a host of small Fishes, comparing with those above mentioned as our Perch, Herring, Smelts, etc., compare with our larger Fishes; but, whatever their size or form, all the Fishes of those days had the same hard scales fitting to each other by hooks, instead of the thin membranous scales overlapping each other at the edge, like the common Fishes of more modern times. The smaller Fishes, no doubt, afforded food to the larger ones, and to the aquatic Reptiles. Indeed, in parts of the intestines of the Ichthyosauri, and in their petrified excrements, have been found the scales and teeth of these smaller Fishes perfectly preserved. It is amazing that we can learn so much of the habits of life of these past creatures, and know even what was the food of animals existing countless ages before man was created.

There are traces of Mammalia in the Jurassic deposits, but they were of those inferior kinds known now as Marsupials, and no complete specimens have yet been found.

The Articulates were largely represented in this epoch. There were already in the vegetation a number of Gymnosperms, affording more favorable nourishment for Insects than the forests of earlier times; and we accordingly find that class in larger numbers than ever before, though still meagre in comparison with its present representation. Crustacea were numerous,—those of the Shrimp and Lobster kinds prevailing, though in some of the Lobsters we have the first advance towards the highest class of Crustacea in the expansion of the transverse diameter now so characteristic of the Crabs. Among Mollusks we have a host of gigantic Ammonites; and the naked Cephalopods, which were in later times to become the prominent representatives of that class, already begin to make their appearance. Among Radiates, some of the higher kinds of Echinoderms, the Ophiurans and Echinolds, take the place of the Crinoids, and the Acalephian Corals give way to the Astraean and Meandrina-like types, resembling the Reef-Builders of the present time.

* * * * *

I have spoken especially of the inhabitants of the Jurassic sea lying between England and France, because it was there that were first found the remains of some of the most remarkable and largest Jurassic animals. But wherever these deposits have been investigated, the remains contained in them reveal the same organic character, though, of course, we find the land Reptiles only where there happen to have been marshes, the aquatic Saurians wherever large estuaries or bays gave them an opportunity of coming in near shore, so that their bones were preserved in the accumulations of mud or clay constantly collecting in such localities,—the Crustacea, Shells, or Sea-Urchins on the old sea-beaches, the Corals in the neighborhood of coral reefs, and so on. In short, the distribution of animals then as now was in accordance with their nature and habits, and we shall seek vainly for them in the localities where they did not belong.

But when I say that the character of the Jurassic animals is the same, I mean, that, wherever a Jurassic sea-shore occurs, be it in France, Germany, England, or elsewhere throughout the world, the Shells, Crustacea, or other animals found upon it have a special character, and are not to be confounded by any one thoroughly acquainted with these fossils with the Shells or Crustacea of any preceding or subsequent time,—that, where a Jurassic marsh exists, the land Reptiles inhabiting it are Jurassic, and neither Triassic nor Cretaceous,—that a Jurassic coral reef is built of Corals belonging as distinctly to the Jurassic creation as the Corals on the Florida reefs belong to the present creation,—that, where some Jurassic bay or inlet is disclosed to us with the Fishes anciently inhabiting it, they are as characteristic of their time as are the Fishes of Massachusetts Bay now.

And not only so, but, while this unity of creation prevails throughout the entire epoch as a whole, there is the same variety of geographical distribution, the same circumscription of faunae within distinct zooelogical provinces, as at the present time. The Fishes of Massachusetts Bay are not the same as those of Chesapeake Bay, nor those of Chesapeake Bay the same as those of Pamlico Sound, nor those of Pamlico Sound the same as those of the Florida coast. This division of the surface of the earth into given areas within which certain combinations of animals and plants are confined is not peculiar to the present creation, but has prevailed in all times, though with ever-increasing diversity, as the surface of the earth itself assumed a greater variety of climatic conditions. D'Orbigny and others were mistaken in assuming that faunal differences have been introduced only in the last geological epochs. Besides these adjoining zooelogical faunae, each epoch is divided, as we have seen, into a number of periods, occupying successive levels one above another, and differing specifically from each other in time as zooelogical provinces differ from each other in space. In short, every epoch is to be looked upon from two points of view: as a unit, complete in itself, having one character throughout, and as a stage in the progressive history of the world, forming part of an organic whole.

* * * * *

As the Jurassic epoch was ushered in by the upheaval of the Jura, so its close was marked by the upheaval of that system of mountains called the Cote d'Or. With this latter upheaval began the Cretaceous epoch, which we will examine with special reference to its subdivision into periods, since the periods in this epoch have been clearly distinguished, and investigated with especial care. I have alluded in the preceding article to the immediate contact of the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs in Switzerland, affording peculiar facilities for the direct comparison of their organic remains. But the Cretaceous deposits are well known, not only in this inland sea of ancient Switzerland, but in a number of European basins, in France, in the Pyrenees, on the Mediterranean shores, and also in Syria, Egypt, India, and Southern Africa, as well as on our own continent. In all these localities, the Cretaceous remains, like those of the Jurassic epoch, have one organic character, distinct and unique. This fact is especially significant, because the contact of their respective deposits is in many localities so immediate and continuous that it affords an admirable test for the development-theory. If this is the true mode of origin of animals, those of the later Jurassic beds must be the progenitors of those of the earlier Cretaceous deposits. Let us see now how far this agrees with our knowledge of the physiological laws of development.

Take first the class of Fishes. We have seen that in the Jurassic periods there were none of our common Fishes, none corresponding to our Herring, Pickerel, Mackerel, and the like,—no Fishes, in short, with thin membranous scales, but that the class was represented exclusively by those with hard, flint-like scales. In the Cretaceous epoch, however, we come suddenly upon a horde of Fishes corresponding to our smaller common Fishes of the Pickerel and Herring tribes, but principally of the kinds found now in tropical waters; there are none like our Cods, Haddocks, etc., such as are found at present in the colder seas. The Fishes of the Jurassic epoch corresponding to our Sharks and Skates and Gar-Pikes still exist, but in much smaller proportion, while these more modern kinds are very numerous. Indeed, a classification of the Cretaceous Fishes would correspond very nearly to one founded on those now living. Shall we, then, suppose that the large reptilian Fishes of the Jurassic time began suddenly to lay numerous broods of these smaller, more modern, scaly Fishes? And shall we account for the diminution of the previous forms by supposing that in order to give a fair chance to the new kinds they brought them forth in large numbers, while they reproduced their own kind less abundantly? According to very careful estimates, if we accept this view, the progeny of the Jurassic Fishes must have borne a proportion of about ninety per cent, of entirely new types to some ten per cent, of those resembling the parents. One would like a fact or two on which to rest so very extraordinary a reversal of all known physiological laws of reproduction, but, unhappily, there is not one.

Still more unaccountable, upon any theory of development according to ordinary laws of reproduction, are those unique, isolated types limited to a single epoch, or sometimes even to a single period. There are some very remarkable instances of this in the Cretaceous deposits. To make my statement clearer, I will say a word of the sequence of these deposits and their division into periods.

These Cretaceous beds were at first divided only into three sets, called the Neocomian, or lower deposits, the Green-Sands, or middle deposits, and the Chalk, or upper deposits. The Neocomian, the lower division, was afterwards subdivided into three sets of beds, called the Lower, Middle, and Upper Neocomian by some geologists, the Valengian, Neocomian, and Urgonian by others. These three periods are not only traced in immediate succession, one above another, in the transverse cut before described, across the mountain of Chaumont, near Neufchatel, but they are also traced almost on one level along the plain at the foot of the Jura. It is evident that by some disturbance of the surface the eastern end of the range was raised slightly, lifting the lower or Valengian deposits out of the water, so that they remain uncovered, and the next set of deposits, the Neocomian, is accumulated along their base, while these in their turn are slightly raised, and the Urgonian beds are accumulated against them a little lower down. They follow each other from east to west in a narrower area, just as the Azoic, Silurian, and Devonian deposits follow each other from north to south in the northern part of the United States. The Cretaceous deposits have been intimately studied in various localities by different geologists, and are now subdivided into at least ten, or it may be fifteen or sixteen distinct periods, as they stand at present. This is, however, but the beginning of the work; and the recent investigations of the French geologist, Coquand, indicate that several of these periods at least are susceptible of further subdivision. I present here a table enumerating the periods of the Cretaceous epoch best known at present, in their sequence, because I want to show how sharply and in how arbitrary a manner, if I may so express it, new forms are introduced. The names are simply derived from the localities, or from some circumstances connected with the locality where each period has been studied.

Table of Periods in the Cretaceous Epoch.

Maestrichtian } Chalk. Senonian }

Turonian } Chalk Marl. Cenomanian }

Albian } Aptian } Green Sands. Rhodanian }

Urgonian } Neocomian } Wealden. Valengian }

One of the most peculiar and distinct of those unique types alluded to above is that of the Rudistes, a singular Bivalve, in which the lower valve is very deep and conical, while the upper valve sets into to it as into a cup. The subjoined woodcut represents such a Bivalve. These Rudistes are found suddenly in the Urgonian deposits; there are none in the two preceding sets of beds; they disappear in the three following periods, and reappear again in great numbers in the Cenomanian, Turonian, and Senonian periods, and disappear again in the succeeding one. These can hardly be missed from any negligence or oversight in the examination of these deposits, for they are by no means rare. They are found always in great numbers, occupying crowded beds, like Oysters in the present time. So numerous are they, where they occur at all, that the deposits containing them are called by many naturalists the first, second, third, and fourth bank of Rudistes. Which of the ordinary Bivalves, then, gave rise to this very remarkable form in the class, allowed it to die out, and revived it again at various intervals? This is by no means the only instance of the same kind. There are a number of types making their appearance suddenly, lasting during one period or during a succession of periods, and then disappearing forever, while others, like the Rudistes, come in, vanish, and reappear at a later time.



I am well aware that the advocates of the development-theory do not state their views as I have here presented them. On the contrary, they protest against any idea of sudden, violent, abrupt changes, and maintain that by slow and imperceptible modifications during immense periods of time these new types have been introduced without involving any infringement of the ordinary processes of development; and they account for the entire absence of corroborative facts in the past history of animals by what they call the "imperfection of the geological record." Now, while I admit that our knowledge of geology is still very incomplete, I assert that just where the direct sequence of geological deposits is needed for this evidence, we have it. The Jurassic beds, without a single modern scaly Fish, are in immediate contact with the Cretaceous beds, in which the Fishes of that kind are proportionately almost as numerous as they are now; and between these two sets of deposits there is not a trace of any transition or intermediate form to unite the reptilian Fishes of the Jurassic with the common Fishes of the Cretaceous times. Again, the Cretaceous beds in which the crowded banks of Rudistes, so singular and unique in form, first make their appearance, follow immediately upon those in which all the Bivalves are of an entirely different character. In short, the deposits of this year along any sea-coast or at the mouth of any of our rivers do not follow more directly upon those of last year than do these successive sets of beds of past ages follow upon each other. In making these statements, I do not forget the immense length of the geological periods; on the contrary, I fully accede to it, and believe that it is more likely to have been underrated than overstated. But let it be increased a thousand-fold, the fact remains, that these new types occur commonly at the dividing line where one period joins the next, just on the margin of both.

For years I have collected daily among some of these deposits, and I know the Sea-Urchins, Corals, Fishes, Crustacea, and Shells of those old shores as well as I know those of Nahant Beach, and there is nothing more striking to a naturalist than the sudden, abrupt changes of species in passing from one to another. In the second set of Cretaceous beds, the Neocomian, there is found a little Terebratula (a small Bivalve Shell) in immense quantities: they may actually be collected by the bushel. Pass to the Urgonian beds, resting directly upon the Neocomian, and there is not one to be found, and an entirely new species comes in. There is a peculiar Spatangus (Sea-Urchin) found throughout the whole series of beds in which this Terebratula occurs. At the same moment that you miss the Shell, the Sea-Urchin disappears also, and another takes its place. Now, admitting for a moment that the later can have grown out of the earlier forms, I maintain, that, if this be so, the change is immediate, sudden, without any gradual transitions, and is, therefore, wholly inconsistent with all our known physiological laws, as well as with the transmutation-theory.

There is a very singular group of Ammonites in the Cretaceous epoch, which, were it not for the suddenness of its appearance, might seem rather to favor the development-theory, from its great variety of closely allied forms. We have traced the Chambered Shells from the straight, simple ones of the earliest epochs up to the intricate and closely coiled forms of the Jurassic epoch. In the so-called Portland stone, belonging to the upper set of Jurassic beds, there is only one type of Ammonite; but in the Cretaceous beds, immediately above it, there set in a number of different genera and distinct species, including the most fantastic and seemingly abnormal forms. It is as if the close coil by which these shells had been characterized during the Middle Age had been suddenly broken up and decomposed into an endless variety of outlines. Some of these new types still retain the coil, but the whorls are much less compact than before, as in the Crioceras; in others, the direction of the coil is so changed as to make a spiral, as in the Turrilites; or the shell starts with a coil, then proceeds in a straight line, and changes to a curve again at the other extremity, as in the Ancyloceras, or in the Scaphites, in which the first coil is somewhat closer than in the Ancyloceras; or the tendency to a coil is reduced to a single curve, so as to give the shell the outline of a horn, as in the Toxoceras; or the coil is entirely lost, and the shell reduced to its primitive straight form, as in the Baculites, which, except for their undulating partitions, might be mistaken for the Orthoceratites of the Silurian and Devonian epochs. I have presented here but a few species of these extraordinary Cretaceous Ammonites, and, strange to say, with this breaking-up of the type into a number of fantastic and often contorted shapes, it disappears. It is singular that forms so unusual and so contrary to the previous regularity of this group should accompany its last stage of existence, and seem to shadow forth by their strange contortions the final dissolution of their type. When I look upon a collection of these old shells, I can never divest myself of an impression that the contortions of a death-struggle have been made the pattern of living types, and with that the whole group has ended.



Now shall we infer that the compact, closely coiled Ammonites of the Jurassic deposits, while continuing their own kind, brought forth a variety of other kinds, and so distributed these new organic elements as to produce a large number of distinct genera and species? I confess that these ideas are so contrary to all I have learned from Nature in the course of a long life that I should be forced to renounce completely the results of my studies in Embryology and Palaeontology before I could adopt these new views of the origin of species. And while the distinguished originator of this theory is entitled to our highest respect for his scientific researches, yet it should not be forgotten that the most conclusive evidence brought forward by him and his adherents is of a negative character, drawn from a science in which they do not pretend to have made personal investigations, that of Geology, while the proofs they offer us from their own departments of science, those of Zooelogy and Botany, are derived from observations, still very incomplete, upon domesticated animals and cultivated plants, which can never be made a test of the origin of wild species.[11]

[Footnote 11: The advocates of the development-theory allude to the metamorphosis of animals and plants as supporting their view of a change of one species into another. They compare the passage of a common leaf into the calyx or crown-leaves in plants, or that of a larva into a perfect insect, to the passage of one species into another. The only objection to this argument seems to be, that, whereas Nature daily presents us myriads of examples of the one set of phenomena, showing it to be a norm, not a single instance of the other has ever been known to occur either in the animal or in the vegetable kingdom.]

In my next article I shall show the relation between the Cretaceous and Tertiary epochs, and see whether there is any reason to believe that the gigantic Mammalia of more modern times were derived from the Reptiles of the Secondary age.

* * * * *



THE WHITE-THROATED SPARROW.

Hark! 't is our Northern Nightingale that sings In far-off, leafy cloisters, dark and cool, Flinging his flute-notes bounding from the skies!

Thou wild musician of the mountain-streams, Most tuneful minstrel of the forest-choirs, Bird of all grace and harmony of soul, Unseen, we hail thee for thy blissful voice!

Up in yon tremulous mist where morning wakes Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes, Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown With all the murmurous language of the trees, No blither presence fills the vocal space. The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass, The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life, The cheerful call of cattle in the vales, Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,— All seem less jubilant when thy song begins.

Deep in the shade we lie and listen long; For human converse well may pause, and man Learn from such notes fresh hints of praise, That upward swelling from thy grateful tribe Circles the hills with melodies of joy.

* * * * *



THE FLEUR-DE-LIS IN FLORIDA.

[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.

With a few officers and twelve soldiers, Laudonniere landed where Ribaut had landed before him; and as their boat neared the shore, they saw an Indian chief who ran to meet them, whooping and clamoring welcome from afar. It was Satouriona, the savage potentate who ruled some thirty villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy colors. They crowded around the voyagers with beaming visages and yelps of gratulation. The royal Satouriona could not contain the exuberance of his joy, since in the person of the French commander he recognized the brother of the Sun, descended from the skies to aid him against his great rival, Outina.

Hard by stood the column of stone, graven with the fleur-de-lis, planted here on the former voyage. The Indians had crowned the mystic emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground before it; for with an affectionate and reverent wonder they had ever remembered the steel-clad strangers whom, two summers before, John Ribaut had led to their shores.

Five miles up the St. John's, or River of May, there stands, on the southern bank, a hill some forty feet high, boldly thrusting itself into the broad and lazy waters. It is now called St. John's Bluff. Thither the Frenchmen repaired, pushed through the dense semi-tropical forest, and climbed the steep acclivity. Thence they surveyed their Canaan. Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests. Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs, the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with the mazes of the countless interlacing streams that drain the watery region behind St. Mary's and Fernandina. To the left, the St. John's flowed gleaming betwixt verdant shores beyond whose portals lay the El Dorado of their dreams. "Briefly," writes Laudonniere, "the place is so pleasant that those which are melancholicke would be inforced to change their humour."

A fresh surprise awaited them. The allotted span of mortal life was quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonniere's lieutenant, Ottigny, ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years. Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first, shrunken to a mere anatomy, and "seeming to be rather a dead carkeis than a living body." "Also," pursues the history, "his age was so great that the good man had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely word but with exceeding great paine." Despite his dismal condition, the visitor was told that he might expect to live in the course of Nature thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs sat face to face, half hidden with their streaming white hair, Ottigny and his credulous soldiers looked from one to the other, lost in wonder and admiration.

Man and Nature alike seemed to mark the borders of the River of May as the site of the new colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised abundant food, while the river opened a ready way to the mines of gold and silver and the stores of barbaric wealth which glittered before the dreaming vision of the colonists. Yet, the better to content himself and his men, Laudonniere weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the neighboring coasts. Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream. The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no sound beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped up on all sides as they moved along. Then they emerged into sunlight. A broad meadow, a running brook, a lofty wall of encircling forests. The men called it the Vale of Laudonniere. The afternoon was spent, and the sun was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.

At daybreak they were roused by sound of trumpet. Men and officers joined their voices in a psalm, then betook themselves to their task. Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the river, immediately above St. John's Bluff. On the right was the bluff; on the left, a marsh; in front, the river; behind, the forest.

Boats came up the stream with laborers, tents, provision, cannon, and tools. The engineers marked out the work in the form of a triangle; and, from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber. On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth, and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine. Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries was built on the side towards the river for Laudonniere and his officers. In honor of Charles IX the fort was named Fort Caroline.

Meanwhile, Satouriona, "lord of all that country," as the narratives style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty preparations. The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the neighboring height of St. John's swarming with naked warriors. The prudent Laudonniere set his men in array, and for a season pick and spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage potentate descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his likeness from memory,—a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed, blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated himself on the ground "like a monkey," as Le Moyne has it in the grave Latin of his "Brevis Narratio." A council followed, in which broken words were aided by signs and pantomime. A treaty of alliance was made, and Laudonniere had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend him aid against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his Indians to aid the French at their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native fashion with leaves of the palmetto.

A word touching these savages. In the peninsula of Florida were several distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were brought into contact. The first was that of Satouriona. The next was the potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of "King Potanou," whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North. They were an agricultural people. Around all their villages were fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the forests.

Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto. In the midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and sometimes raised on an artificial mound. They were inclosed with palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length. Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at stated intervals the bones of their dead.

The most prominent feature of their religion was sun-worship, and, like other wild American tribes, they abounded in "medicine-men," who combined the functions of priest, physician, and necromancer.

Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the nation. In the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords, vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that they were the authors of the mounds and other remains at present found in various parts of Florida.

Their fort nearly finished, and their league made with Satouriona, the gold-hunting Huguenots were eager to spy out the secrets of the interior. To this end the lieutenant, Ottigny, went up the river in a sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter going forth, says Laudonniere, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a fight with the hated Thimagoa, and exulting in the havoc to be wrought among them by the magic weapons of their white allies. They were doomed to grievous disappointment.

The Sieur d'Ottigny spread his sail, and calmly glided up the dark waters of the St. John's. A scene fraught with strange interest to the naturalist and the lover of Nature. Here, two centuries later, the Bartrams, father and son, guided their skiff and kindled their nightly bivouac-fire; and here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and his gun. Each alike has left the record of his wanderings, fresh as the woods and waters that inspired it. Slight, then, was the change since Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks earlier studded the verdant dome with silver. From the edge of the bordering swamp the cypress reared its vast buttressed column and leafy canopy. From the rugged arms of oak and pine streamed the gray drapery of the long Spanish moss, swayed mournfully in the faintest breeze. Here were the tropical plumage of the palm, the dark green masses of the live-oak, the glistening verdure of wild orange-groves; and from out the shadowy thickets hung the wreaths of the jessamine and the scarlet trumpets of the bignonia.

Nor less did the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life. From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length, or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat on the strand, and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the shores resounded with the roaring of these colossal lizards; all night the forest rang with the whooping of the owls; and in the morning the sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal, far and near, with the clamor of wild turkeys.

Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on. Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and, step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.

The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them, and Laudonniere repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.

As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina, lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two feet high. Thus, while Laudonniere stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur made alliance with his mortal enemy.

Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied, that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale those whom they delighted to honor.

Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonniere of his promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go without him.

Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers, bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy, distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and, turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. "So," he cried, "may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives extinguished!" and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.

The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.

A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonniere. Resolved, cost what it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonniere, at the head of twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke, renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the prisoners away. Laudonniere grew peremptory, when the chiefs son, Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the French led back to Fort Caroline.

Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave it.

Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers, embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.

The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were sung. Then the wild cohort took up its march. The wilderness through which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,—the shady desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died, with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless, inexorable monotony. Yet the waste has its oases, the "hummocks," where the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,—where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the Spanish moss. The swamp is veiled in mourning. No breath, no voice. A deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like solitude.

Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here the rich gordonia, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to drink at the stealing brook. Here the halesia hangs out its silvery bells, the purple clusters of the wistaria droop from the supporting bough, and the coral blossoms of the erythryna glow in the shade beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall spires of the yucca, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry ixia.

Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning the post of honor to their French allies.

An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences. The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the band returned triumphant.



CHAPTER II.

In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and inveighed against the commandant.

Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La Roche Ferriere to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept here, digging at the works?

Of La Roche Ferriere and his adventures, more hereafter. The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony—unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil—was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them. The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonniere, whose greatest errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,—fatal defects in his position.

The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette, who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver, high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for Laudonniere, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonniere's confidants, who, still professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant. About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's machinations reaching the ears of Laudonniere, the culprit fled to the woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his commander.

Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,—the third, the Breton, remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the opportunity to send home charges against Laudonniere of peculation, favoritism, and tyranny.

Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer, had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the tenth of November, Laudonniere persuaded him to carry home seven or eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonniere's two pinnaces, and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.

On a Sunday morning, Francis de la Caille came to Laudonniere's quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come to the parade-ground. He complied, and, issuing forth, his inseparable Ottigny at his side, saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and gentlemen-volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre countenance. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work, starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise along the Spanish main in order to procure provision by purchase "or otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn buccaneers.

Laudonniere refused, but assured them, that, so soon as the defences of the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.

A severe illness again seized Laudonniere and confined him to his bed. Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door. Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonniere's breast, and demanded leave to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters, carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed him to the ship anchored in the river.

Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated West-India cruise, which he required Laudonniere to sign. The sick commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length yielded.

The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels on which the carpenters had been for some time at work. In a fortnight they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon, munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved: first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly, vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.

They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonniere was gladdened in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac, who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted; but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was hovering off the coast. Laudonniere sent to reconnoitre. The stranger lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine, manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonniere sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told. Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly reembarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last, and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom; but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his wife. Whence it happened that at daybreak three armed vessels fell upon them, retook the prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their brigantine, fled out to sea. Among these was the ringleader, Fourneaux, and, happily, the pilot, Trenchant. The latter, eager to return to Fort Caroline, whence he had been forcibly taken, succeeded during the night in bringing the vessel to the coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and consternation of the discomfited pirates, when they saw their dilemma; for, having no provision, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They chose the latter alternative, and bore away for the St. John's. A few casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternized by the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either side.

"Say what you like," said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the defence, "but if Laudonniere does not hang us all, I will never call him an honest man."

They had some hope of gaining provision from the Indians at the mouth of the river, and then patting to sea again; but this was frustrated by La Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was called near Fort Caroline, and all were found guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sentenced to be hanged.

"Comrades," said one of the condemned, appealing to the soldiers, "will you stand by and see us butchered?"

"These," retorted Laudonniere, "are no comrades of mutineers and rebels."

At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to shooting.

A file of men; a rattling volley; and the debt of justice was paid. The bodies were hanged on gibbets at the river's mouth, and order reigned at Fort Caroline.



CHAPTER III.

While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferriere had been sent out as an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains, and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under Laudonniere. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic, became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter, and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains with a hatchet.