[Illustration: A Spanish mission]

%14. St. Augustine.%--St. Augustine was founded by the Spaniards in
order to keep out the French, who made two attempts to occupy the south
Atlantic coast. The first was that of John Ribault (ree-bo'). He led a
colony of Frenchmen, in 1562, to what is now South Carolina, built a
small fort on a spot which he called Port Royal, and left it in charge
of thirty men while he went back to France for more colonists. The men
were a shiftless set, depended on the Indians till the Indians would
feed them no longer, and when famine set in, they mutinied, slew their
commander, built a crazy ship and went to sea, where an English vessel
found them in a starving condition, and took them to London.

In 1564 a second party, under Laudonnière (lo-do-ne-ar'), landed at the
St. Johns River in Florida, and built a fort called Fort Caroline in
honor of Charles IX. of France. But the King of Spain, hearing that the
French were trespassing, sent an expedition under Menendez
(ma-nen'-deth), who founded St. Augustine in 1565. There Ribault, who
had returned and joined Laudonnière, attempted to attack the Spaniards.
But a hurricane scattered his ships, and while it was still raging,
Menendez fell suddenly on Fort Caroline and massacred men, women, and
children. A few days later, falling in with Ribault and his men, who had
been driven ashore south of St. Augustine, Menendez massacred 150
more.[1] For this foul deed a Frenchman named Gourgues (goorg) exacted a
fearful penalty. With three small ships and 200 men, he sailed to the
St. Johns River, took and destroyed the fort which the Spaniards had
built on the site of Fort Caroline, and put to death every human being
within it.

[Footnote 1: The story of the French in Florida is finely told in