running along the beach and out upon the sand-bars, beckoning them to
land. They pushed their boats ashore and disembarked,--sailors, soldiers,
and eager young nobles. Corslet and morion, arquebuse and halberd flashed
in the sun that flickered through innumerable leaves, as, kneeling on the
ground, they gave thanks to God who had guided their voyage to an issue
full of promise. The Indians, seated gravely under the neighboring trees,
looked on in silent respect, thinking that they worshipped the sun. They
were in full paint, in honor of the occasion, and in a most friendly mood.
With their squaws and children, they presently drew near, and, strewing
the earth with laurel-boughs, sat down among the Frenchmen. The latter
were much pleased with them, and Ribaut gave the chief, whom he calls the
king, a robe of blue cloth, worked in yellow with the regal fleur-de-lis.

But Ribaut and his followers, just escaped from the dull prison of their
ships, were intent on admiring the wild scenes around them. Never had they
known a fairer May-Day. The quaint old narrative is exuberant with
delight. The quiet air, the warm sun, woods fresh with young verdure,
meadows bright with flowers; the palm, the cypress, the pine, the
magnolia; the grazing deer; herons, curlews, bitterns, woodcock, and
unknown water-fowl that waded in the ripple of the beach; cedars bearded
from crown to root with long gray moss; huge oaks smothering in the
serpent folds of enormous grape-vines: such were the objects that greeted
them in their roamings, till their new-found land seemed "the fairest,
fruitfullest, and pleasantest of al the world."

They found a tree covered with caterpillars, and hereupon the ancient
black-letter says,--"Also there be Silke wormes in meruielous number, a
great deale fairer and better then be our silk wormes. To bee short, it is
a thing vnspeakable to consider the thinges that bee seene there, and
shalbe founde more and more in this incomperable lande."