Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

Ranging the woods, they found them full of game, wild turkeys and partridges, bears and lynxes. Two deer, of unusual size, leaped up from the underbrush. Crossbow and arquebuse were brought to the level; but the Huguenot captain, "moved with the singular fairness and bigness of them," forbade his men to shoot.

Preliminary exploration, not immediate settlement, had been the object of the voyage, but all was still rose-color in the eyes of the voyagers, and many of their number would fain linger in the New Canaan. Ribaut was more than willing to humor them. He mustered his company on deck, and made them a stirring harangue: appealed to their courage and their patriotism, told them how, from a mean origin, men rise by enterprise and daring to fame and fortune, and demanded who among them would stay behind and hold Port Royal for the king. The greater part came forward, and "with such a good will and joly corage," writes the commander, "as we had much to do to stay their importunitie." Thirty were chosen, and Albert de Pierria was named to command them.

A fort was forthwith begun, on a small stream called the Chenonceau, probably Archer's Creek, about six miles from the site of Beaufort. They named it Charlesfort, in honor of the unhappy son of Catherine de Médicis, Charles IX., the future hero of St. Bartholomew. Ammunition and stores were sent on shore, and, on the eleventh of June, with his diminished company, Ribaut, again embarking, spread his sails for France.

From the beach at Hilton Head Albert and his companions might watch the receding ships, growing less and less on the vast expanse of blue, dwindling to faint specks, then vanishing on the pale verge of the waters. They were alone in those fearful solitudes. From the North Pole to Mexico no Christian denizen but they.

But how were they to subsist? Their thought was not of subsistence, but of gold. Of the thirty, the greater number were soldiers and sailors, with a few gentlemen, that is to say, men of the sword, born within the pale of nobility, who at home could neither labor nor trade without derogation from their rank. For a time they busied themselves with finishing their fort, and, this done, set forth in quest of adventures.

The Indians had lost all fear of them. Ribaut had enjoined upon them to use all kindness and gentleness in their dealing with the men of the woods; and they more than obeyed him. They were soon hand and glove with chiefs, warriors, and squaws; and as with Indians the adage that familiarity breeds contempt holds with peculiar force, they quickly divested themselves of the prestige which had attached at the outset to their supposed character of children of the sun. Goodwill, however, remained, and this the colonists abused to the utmost

Roaming by river, swamp, and forest, they visited in turn the villages of five petty chiefs, whom they called kings, feasted everywhere on hominy, beans, and game, and loaded with gifts. One of these chiefs, named Audusta, invited them to the grand religious festival of his tribe. Thither, accordingly, they went. The village was alive with preparation, and troops of women were busied in sweeping the great circular area, surrounded by the lodges, where the ceremonies were to take place. But as the noisy and impertinent guests showed disposition to undue merriment, the chief shut them all in his wigwam, lest their gentile eyes should profane the mysteries. Here, immured in darkness, they listened to the howls, yelpings, and lugubrious songs that resounded from without. One of them, however, by some artifice, contrived to escape, hid behind a bush, and saw the whole solemnity: the procession of the medicine-men and the bedaubed and befeathered warriors; the drumming, the dancing, the stamping; the wild lamentation of the women, as they gashed the arms of the young girls with sharp mussel-shells and flung the blood into the air with dismal outcries. A scene of ravenous feasting followed, in which the French, released from durance, were summoned to share.

Their carousal over, they returned to Charlesfort, where they were soon pinched with hunger. The Indians, never niggardly of food, brought them supplies as long as their own lasted; but the harvest was not yet ripe, and their means did not match their good-will. They told the French of two other kings, Ouadé and Couexis, who dwelt towards the South, and were rich beyond belief in maize, beans, and squashes. Embarking without delay, the mendicant colonists steered for the wigwams of these potentates, not by the open sea, but by a perplexing inland navigation, including, as it seems, Calibogue Sound and neighboring waters. Arrived at the friendly villages, on or near the Savannah, they were feasted to repletion, and their boat laden with vegetables and corn. They returned rejoicing; but their joy was short. Their storehouse at Charlesfort, taking fire in the night, burned to the ground, and with it their newly acquired stock. Once more they set forth for the realms of King Ouadé, and once more returned laden with supplies. Nay, more, the generous savage assured them, that, so long as his cornfields yielded their harvests, his friends should not want.

How long this friendship would have lasted may well be matter of doubt. With the perception that the dependants on their bounty were no demigods, but a crew of idle and helpless beggars, respect would soon have changed to contempt and contempt to ill-will. But it was not to Indian war-clubs that the embryo colony was to owe its ruin. Within itself it carried its own destruction. The ill-assorted band of landsmen and sailors, surrounded by that influence of the wilderness which wakens the dormant savage in the breasts of men, soon fell into quarrels. Albert, a rude soldier, with a thousand leagues of ocean betwixt him and responsibility, grew harsh, domineering, and violent beyond endurance. None could question or oppose him without peril of death. He hanged a drummer who had fallen under his displeasure, and banished La Chère, a soldier, to a solitary island, three leagues from the fort, where he left him to starve. For a time his comrades chafed in smothered fury. The crisis came at length. A few of the fiercer spirits leagued together, assailed their tyrant, and murdered him. The deed done, and the famished soldier delivered, they called to the command one Nicholas Barré, a man of merit. Barré took the command, and thenceforth there was peace.

Peace, such as it was, with famine, homesickness, disgust. The rough ramparts and rude buildings of Charlesfort, hatefully familiar to their weary eyes, the sweltering forest, the glassy river, the eternal silence of the wild monotony around them, oppressed the senses and the spirits. Did they feel themselves the pioneers of religious freedom, the advance-guard of civilization? Not at all. They dreamed of ease, of home, of pleasures across the sea,—of the evening cup on the bench before the cabaret, of dances with kind damsels of Dieppe. But how to escape? A continent was their solitary prison, and the pitiless Atlantic closed the egress. Not one of them knew how to build a ship; but Ribaut had left them a forge, with tools and iron, and strong desire supplied the place of skill. Trees were hewn down and the work begun. Had they put forth, to maintain themselves at Port Royal, the energy and resource which they exerted to escape from it, they might have laid the cornerstone of a solid colony.

All, gentle and simple, labored with equal zeal. They calked the seams with the long moss which hung in profusion from the neighboring trees; the pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians made for them a kind of cordage; and for sails they sewed together their shirts and bedding. At length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe floated on the waters of the Chenonceau. They laid in what provision they might, gave all that remained of their goods to the delighted Indians, embarked, descended the river, and put to sea. A fair wind filled their patchwork sails and bore them from the hated coast. Day after day they held their course, till at length the favoring breeze died away and a breathless calm fell on the face of the waters. Florida was far behind; France farther yet before. Floating idly on the glassy waste, the craft lay motionless. Their supplies gave out. Twelve kernels of maize a day were each man's portion; then the maize failed, and they ate their shoes and leather jerkins. The water-barrels were drained, and they tried to slake their thirst with brine. Several died, and the rest, giddy with exhaustion and crazed with thirst, were forced to ceaseless labor, baling out the water that gushed through every seam. Head-winds set in, increasing to a gale, and the wretched brigantine, her sails close-reefed, tossed among the savage billows at the mercy of the storm. A heavy sea rolled down upon her, and threw her on her side. The surges broke over her, and, clinging with desperate gripe to spars and cordage, the drenched voyagers gave up all for lost. At length she righted. The gale subsided, the wind changed, and the crazy, water-logged vessel again bore slowly towards France.