ministers of the Reformed faith. They entered the great river which the
Portuguese had already named _Rio Janeiro_, and built a fort, calling it
'Coligny.' Here they sought a new country, where they might adore God in
freedom. Unforeseen difficulties, however, discouraged these bold
Frenchmen, and the pious expedition failed, some dispersing in different
directions, while others regained the shores of France with great
difficulty. A second attempt was also unsuccessful. Coligny, in 1562,
obtained permission from Charles IX. to found a Protestant colony in
Florida. Two ships left Dieppe with emigrants, and, reaching the
American shores, entered a large, deep river called _Port Royal_, which
name it still retains, and is, by coincidence, the spot recently
captured by the United States forces.[F] Fort Charles, in honor of the
reigning king of France, was built near by, and in a fertile land of
flowers, fruits, and singing birds. The country itself was called
_Carolina_. Reduced to the most cruel extremities of famine and death,
the remaining colonists returned to Europe.

Still undismayed by these two disastrous attempts, Coligny, the Huguenot
leader, dispatched a third expedition of three vessels to our shores,
making another attempt near the mouth of the St. John's River (Fort
Caroline). Philip II. was then on the throne, and would not brook the
heresy of the Huguenots, or Calvinism, in his American provinces.
Priests, soldiers, and Jesuits were dispatched to Florida, where the new
settlers, 'Frenchmen and Lutherans,' were destroyed in blood. Such was
the melancholy issue of the earliest attempts to establish a Huguenot or
Protestant settlement in North America. And nearly one hundred years
before it was occupied by the English, Carolina, for an instant, as it
were, was occupied by a band of Christian colonists, but, through the
remorseless spirit of religious persecution, again fell under the
dominion of the uncivilized savages. We refer to these earliest efforts