Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna.  Wading breast-deep in grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple.  Here the rich gordonia, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to drink at the stealing brook.  Here the halesia hangs out its silvery bells, the purple clusters of the wistaria droop from the supporting bough, and the coral blossoms of the erythryna glow in the shade beneath.  From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall spires of the yucca, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry ixia.

Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way.  At first, Outina’s Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning the post of honor to their French allies.

An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian town.  Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise daunted, came swarming forth to meet them.  But the sight of the bearded strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences.  The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit.  Pell-mell, all entered the town together.  Slaughter; pillage; flame.  The work was done, and the band returned triumphant.

CHAPTER II.

In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life.  Hopes had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought.  The adventurers had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating alligator.  Gathered in knots, they nursed each other’s wrath, and inveighed against the commandant.

Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be made for a full year?  Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he said should follow us from France?  Why is he always closeted with Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment?  And why has he sent La Roche Ferriere to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept here, digging at the works?