Institutions. The institutions of Spain were those of an absolute monarchy. They lent but little aid to the development of the better elements in the national character. Indeed, they rather encouraged the opposite elements, both before and after the colonies of the nation were founded. A military rule was the only political institution of Florida. It was in the hands of a few officials, whose authority was kept up at the sacrifice of the general progress of the settlements. A rigid system of trade, upholding a monopoly in favor of the government, or of the capitalists dependent on the government at home, increased the obstacles with which the colony had to contend. Circumstances Coming with these motives and under these institutions, the Spaniards found themselves in circumstances of similar tendency. Choosing the south for their first, and, as it proved, their only settlements, from its promising the richest harvest, they met the influences springing from the air above them and from the earth beneath them. The habits of indulgence and of repose which ensued were any thing but favorable to character or to prosperity. Extent of Few and far between were the Spanish settleSpanish ments. But the Spanish claims were universal. claims. In the first place, there was a papal bull of 1493, conveying a right to all America. In the next place, there were the successive discoverers from Ponce de Leon to Vizcaino, whose labors had won the continent anew. The name of Florida was stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of St. Lawrence; that of New Mexico was made equally extensive in the interior and on the west. Could names, and deeds, and papal bulls have sufficed to support the Spanish claim, it would have prevailed throughout the United States. New CHAPTER III. FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. THE approaches of France to our country were France. made, first by fishermen, (1504,) and then by navigators. A Florentine, Verrazzano, in the French service, sailing along the coast from Florida to Newfoundland, was not deterred by any previous discoveries from giving to the continent the name of New France, (1524.) Ten years after, the Frenchman Cartier renewed the name in voyages in and about the Gulf of St. Lawrence, (1534-42.) Carolina. nots. Nothing, however, was done in a persevering Fate of its way to fix the name upon the territory, until AdmiHugue- ral De Coligny conceived the idea of a colony to which his brother Protestants, the Huguenots, might repair for refuge against persecution in France. After failing to make a settlement in South America, De Coligny despatched a party to the northern coast, where a fort, named Charlesfort in honor of the French king, was erected near Port Royal in the present South Carolina, (1562.) This settlement likewise falling through, another was made upon the St. John's in Florida, where a fort called Caroline was reared, (1564.) The mutinous dispositions of the colonists and their Indian wars had much reduced the settlement, when it was annihilated by the Spanish force under Menendez de Aviles, (1565.) Such of the French as did not escape or fall in battle were put to death by the Spaniard and the Catholic, "not as Frenchmen," he is said to have declared, "but as Lutherans." Such was the unhappy fate of the first fugitives from the old world to the new. Objects at once of religious and of national animosity, they were pursued by enemies enlisted against them as on a crusade. The passions of Europe obtained fresh space in America; the feeble fell, the strong triumphed as they had done in older lands. Expedition to avenge them. But there was something inspiring, after all, in the associations of the western shore. If the fugitives thither were murdered by their foes, they were not forgotten by their friends. Three years after their victory, the Spaniards were surprised on the same ground by a French expedition under De Gourgues, a soldier of Gascony, who had sold his estate in order to avenge his fallen countrymen. He took the Spanish forts, and hung his prisoners, with the inscription above them, “Not as Spaniards or Moriscoes, but as Traitors, Robbers, and Assassins." Thus was our soil a second time darkened with the slaughter of strangers. Without waiting an attack from the Spaniards at St. Augustine, De Gourgues sailed home, the last of the French to attempt the possession of Florida or of Carolina, (1568.) Acadie and Maine. De Monts and De A long period elapsed before the French reappeared, except as fishermen or as traders, in any part of America. At length, a grant of all the territory from Pennsylvania to New Brunswick, Saussaye. under the name of Acadie, was made by Henry IV. of France to the Sieur de Monts, (1603,) and he, after a hard winter, made the first permanent settlement of Frenchmen in America at Port Royal, (1604,) since Annapolis. A later attempt to make a settlement upon Cape Cod met with immediate failure on account of the hostility of the natives, (1606.) Some years afterwards, one or two Jesuit missionaries crossed over from that part of Acadie which was occupied, to a part as yet unoccupied, within the limits of the present Maine, (1612.) They were followed the next year, by De Saussaye, the agent of Madame de Guercheville to whom the earlier grant to De Monts was now reconveyed; the limits being extended so far as to reach from Florida to the St. Lawrence. De Saussaye, accompanied by a few Jesuits, began the colony of St. Sauveur upon Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine, (1613.) It was hardly begun, however, before it was broken up by an attack from an English armed vessel belonging to the then rising colony of Virginia. Canada. plain. Meantime the banners of France had been carCham- ried up the St. Lawrence. Champlain, the greatest leader whom the French had as yet followed to the west, laid the foundations of Quebec in the heart of the province of Canada, (1608.) The next year, forming an alliance with the Algonquins, then at war with the Iroquois or Five Nations of New York, he marched southward to the lake which bears his name, (1609.) Six years later, he took the lead in another foray which penetrated the forests on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, (1615.) A new way appeared to be open to French settlements in the United States. English. Collisions But nothing followed. The English arms, after with the an interval of several years, were carried against the northern settlements of the French. Acadie, already made the subject of an English grant, and Canada were conquered, but restored, (1628-32.) Then the French came down in their turn, and drove the English from the trading posts established by the Plymouth colony on the Maine coast, (1631-35.) The attempts to repel them were in vain; on the contrary, they forbade the English to pass Pemaquid, a point midway between the Kennebec and the Penobscot. The interior was at the same time in the occupation of the French priests, if of any Europeans. Priests The priests and the missionaries of France were and mis- the most prominent amongst her settlers. They sionaries. came full of adventure as of faith, hesitating at no danger, shrinking from no sacrifice. That there should be some less worthy amongst the number was a matter of course. It was equally natural that, among the most worthy, there should be many to magnify their work, to count their converts too freely, and to oppose their antagonists too fiercely. But taken all in all, the French missionaries have a higher place than most early comers deserve in our history. What they were and what they did will appear more clearly at a later period. Other With the priest came the soldier, the explorer, settlers. and the trader, all animated by the love of enterprise, to say nothing of its rewards in fame or in riches. They form a less sinister group than the Spanish settlers, more supple, more gay, though by no means more gallant or more adventurous. Institutions. Much of the difference may be ascribed to the influence of the French institutions. These, at the time in question, were the institutions of a comparatively limited monarchy. If there were arbitrary influences in the government, sufficient, as we shall hereafter observe, to oppress its subjects and its colonies, there was also something of a more generous nature, by which the devotedness of the missionary, the bravery of the soldier, and the zeal of the adventurer were sustained. Circumstances. The circumstances in which the French settlers were placed tended to confirm all their enterprise and all their fortitude. Abandoning the southern Carolina and drawing in the limits of Acadie on the south, they were |