The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863. Various
and slavery, they would otherwise have been mercifully driven, to the salvation of their souls, and the greater glory of God. And, for the Adelantado himself, should the vast outlays, the vast debts, of his bold Floridian venture be all in vain? Should his fortunes be wrecked past redemption through these tools of Satan? As a Catholic, as a Spaniard, as an adventurer, his course was clear. Woe, then, to the Huguenot in the gripe of Pedro Menendez!
But what was the scope of this enterprise, and the limits of the Adelantado's authority? He was invested with power almost absolute, not merely over the peninsula which now retains the name of Florida, but over all North America, from Labrador to Mexico,—for this was the Florida of the old Spanish geographers, and the Florida designated in the commission of Menendez. It was a continent which he was to conquer and occupy out of his own purse. The impoverished King contracted with his daring and ambitious subject to win and hold for him the territory of the future United States and British Provinces. His plan, as subsequently developed and exposed at length in his unpublished letters to Philip II., was, first, to plant a garrison at Port Royal, and next to fortify strongly on Chesapeake Bay, called by him St. Mary's. He believed that this bay was an arm of the sea, running northward and eastward, and communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thus making New England, with adjacent districts, an island. His proposed fort on the Chesapeake, giving access, by this imaginary passage, to the seas of Newfoundland, would enable the Spaniards to command the fisheries, on which both the French and the English had long encroached, to the great prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubtless, too, these inland waters gave access to the South Sea, and their occupation was necessary to prevent the French from penetrating thither; for that ambitious people, since the time of Cartier, had never abandoned their schemes of seizing this portion of the dominions of the King of Spain. Five hundred soldiers and one hundred sailors must, he urges, take possession, without delay, of Port Royal and the Chesapeake.
Preparation for his enterprise was pushed with a furious energy. His force amounted to two thousand six hundred and forty-six persons, in thirty-four vessels, one of which, the San Pelayo, bearing Menendez himself, was of more than nine hundred tons' burden, and is described as one of the finest ships afloat. There were twelve Franciscans and eight Jesuits, besides other ecclesiastics; and many knights of Galicia, Biscay, and the Asturias bore part in the expedition. With a slight exception, the whole was at the Adelantado's charge. Within the first fourteen months, according to his admirer, Barcia, the adventure cost him a million ducats.
Before the close of the year, Sancho de Arciniega was commissioned to join Menendez with an additional force of fifteen hundred men.
Red-hot with a determined purpose, he would brook no delay. To him, says the chronicler, every day seemed a year. He was eager to anticipate Ribaut, of whose designs and whose force he seems to have been informed to the minutest particular, but whom he hoped to thwart and ruin by gaining Fort Caroline before him. With eleven ships, then, he sailed from Cadiz on the 29th of June, 1565, leaving the smaller vessels of his fleet to follow with what speed they might. He touched first at the Canaries, and on the eighth of July left them, steering for Dominica. A minute account of the voyage has come down to us from the pen of Mendoza, chaplain of the expedition, a somewhat dull and illiterate person, who busily jots down the incidents of each passing day, and is constantly betraying, with a certain awkward simplicity, how the cares of this world and the next jostle each other in his thoughts.
On Friday, the twentieth of July, a storm fell upon them with appalling fury. The pilots lost head, the sailors gave themselves up to their terrors. Throughout the night, they beset Mendoza for confession and absolution, a boon not easily granted, for the seas swept the crowded decks in cataracts of foam, and the shriekings of the gale in the rigging drowned the exhortations of the half-drowned priest. Cannon, cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard, and the chests of the sailors would have followed, had not the latter, despite their fright, raised such a howl of remonstrance that the order was revoked. At length day dawned. At least there was light to die by. Plunging, reeling, half submerged, quivering under the crashing shock of the seas, whose mountain ridges rolled down upon her before the gale, the ship lay in deadly jeopardy from Friday till Monday noon. Then the storm abated; the sun broke forth; and again she held her course.
They reached Dominica on Sunday, the fifth of August. The chaplain tells us how he went on shore to refresh himself,—how, while his Italian servant washed his linen at a brook, he strolled along the beach and picked up shells,—and how he was scared, first, by a prodigious turtle, and next by a vision of the cannibal natives, which caused his prompt retreat to the boats.
On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of Porto Rico, where they found two of their companion-ships, from which they had parted in the storm. One of them was the San Pelayo, with Menendez on board. Mendoza informs us that in the evening the officers came on board his ship, when he, the chaplain, regaled them with sweetmeats, and that Menendez invited him not only to supper that night, but to dinner the next day, "for the which I thanked him, as reason was," says the gratified churchman.
Here thirty men deserted, and three priests also ran off, of which Mendoza bitterly complains, as increasing his own work. The motives of the clerical truants may perhaps be inferred from a worldly temptation to which the chaplain himself was subjected. "I was offered the service of a chapel where I should have got a peso for every mass I said, the whole year round; but I did not accept it, for fear that what I hear said of the other three would be said of me. Besides, it is not a place where one can hope for any great advancement, and I wished to try whether, in refusing a benefice for the love of the Lord, He will not repay me with some other stroke of fortune before the end of the voyage; for it is my aim to serve God and His blessed Mother."
The original design had been to rendezvous at Havana, but, with the Adelantado, the advantages of despatch outweighed every other consideration. He resolved to push directly for Florida. Five of his scattered ships had by this time rejoined company, comprising, exclusive of officers, a force of about five hundred soldiers, two hundred sailors, and one hundred colonists. Bearing northward, he advanced by an unknown and dangerous course along the coast of Hayti and through the intricate passes of the Bahamas. On the night of the twenty-sixth, the San Pelayo struck three times on the shoals; "but," says the chaplain, "inasmuch as our enterprise was undertaken for the sake of Christ and His blessed Mother, two heavy seas struck her abaft, and set her afloat again."
At length the ships lay becalmed in the Bahama Channel, slumbering on the dead and glassy sea, torpid with the heats of a West-Indian August. Menendez called a council of the commanders. There was doubt and indecision. Perhaps Ribaut had already reached the French fort, and then to attack the united force would be a stroke of desperation. Far better to await their lagging comrades. But the Adelantado was of another mind; and, even had his enemy arrived, he was resolved that he should have no time to fortify himself.
"It is God's will," he said, "that our victory should be due, not to our numbers, but to His all-powerful aid. Therefore has He stricken us with tempests and scattered our ships." And he gave his voice for instant advance.
There was much dispute; even the chaplain remonstrated; but nothing could bend the iron will of Menendez. Nor was a sign of celestial approval wanting. At nine in the evening, a great meteor burst forth in mid-heaven, and, blazing like the sun, rolled westward towards the Floridian coast. The fainting spirits of the crusaders were kindled anew. Diligent preparation was begun. Prayers and masses were said; and, that the temporal arm might not be wanting, the men were daily practised on deck in shooting at marks, in order, says the chronicle, that the recruits might learn not to be afraid of their guns.
The dead calm continued. "We were all very tired," says the chaplain, "and I above all, with praying to God for a fair wind. To-day, at about two in the afternoon, He took pity on us, and sent us a breeze." Before night they saw land,—the faint line of forest, traced along the watery horizon, that marked the coast of Florida. But where in all this vast monotony was the lurking-place of the French? Menendez anchored, and sent fifty men ashore, who presently found a band of Indians in the woods, and gained from them the needed information. He stood northward, till, on the afternoon of Tuesday, the fourth of September, he descried four ships anchored near the mouth of a river. It was the river St. John's, and the ships were four of Ribaut's squadron. The prey was in sight. The Spaniards prepared for battle, and bore down upon the Lutherans; for, with