So here were the three rivals overlapping again—­the annexing Spaniards, the would-be colonizing French, and the persistently trading English.  There were, however, no Spaniards about at that time.  This was the second Huguenot colony in Florida.  Rene de Laudonniere had founded it in 1564.  The first one, founded two years earlier by Jean Ribaut, had failed and Ribaut’s men had deserted the place.  They had started for home in 1563, had suffered terrible hardships, had been picked up by an English vessel, and taken, some to France and some to England, where the court was all agog about the wealth of Florida.  People said there were mines so bright with jewels that they had to be approached at night lest the flashing light should strike men blind.  Florida became proverbial; and Elizabethan wits made endless fun of it. Stolida, or the land of fools, and Sordida, or the land of muck-worms, were some of their jeux d’esprit.  Everyone was ‘bound for Florida,’ whether he meant to go there or not, despite Spanish spheres of influence, the native cannibals, and pirates by the way.

Hawkins, on the contrary, did not profess to be bound for Florida.  Nevertheless he arrived there, and probably had intended to do so from the first, for he took with him a Frenchman who had been in Ribaut’s colony two years before, and Sparke significantly says that ’the land is more than any [one] king Christian is able to inhabit.’  However this may be, Hawkins found the second French colony as well as ’a French ship of fourscore ton, and two pinnaces of fifteen ton apiece by her ... and a fort, in which their captain Monsieur Laudonniere was, with certain soldiers therein.’  The colony had not been a success.  Nor is this to be wondered at when we remember that most of the ‘certain soldiers’ were ex-pirates, who wanted gold, and ’who would not take the pains so much as to fish in the river before their doors, but would have all things put in their mouths.’  Eighty of the original two hundred ‘went a-roving’ to the West Indies, ’where they spoiled the Spaniards ... and were of such haughty stomachs that they thought their force to be such that no man durst meddle with them....  But God ... did indurate their hearts in such sort that they lingered so long that a [Spanish] ship and galliasse being made out of St. Domingo ... took twenty of them, whereof the most part were hanged ... and twenty-five escaped ... to Florida, where ... they were put into prison [by Laudonniere, against whom they had mutinied] and ... four of the chiefest being condemned, at the request of the soldiers did pass the arquebusers, and then were hanged upon a gibbet.’  Sparke got the delightful expression ’at the request of the soldiers did pass the arquebusers’ from a ‘very polite’ Frenchman.  Could any one tell you more politely, in mistranslated language, how to stand up and be shot?