and to Mr. Charles Russell Lowell, of the Boston Athenaeum, and Mr. John
Langdon Sibley, Librarian of Harvard College, for obliging aid in
consulting books and papers.





HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.


CHAPTER I.

1512-1561.

EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, Spain achieved her final
triumph over the infidels of Granada, and made her name glorious through
all generations by the discovery of America. The religious zeal and
romantic daring which a long course of Moorish wars had called forth
were now exalted to redoubled fervor. Every ship from the New World came
freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and
to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery,
of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened,
thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of
the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of
inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land and sea;
they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the
sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from