How long this friendship would have lasted may well be matter of doubt.
With the perception that the dependants on their bounty were no demigods,
but a crew of idle and helpless beggars, respect would soon have changed
to contempt and contempt to ill-will. But it was not to Indian war-clubs
that the embryo colony was to owe its ruin. Within itself it carried its
own destruction. The ill-assorted band of landsmen and sailors, surrounded
by that influence of the wilderness which wakens the dormant savage in the
breasts of men, soon fell into quarrels. Albert, a rude soldier, with a
thousand leagues of ocean betwixt him and responsibility, grew harsh,
domineering, and violent beyond endurance. None could question or oppose
him without peril of death. He hanged a drummer who had fallen under his
displeasure, and banished La Chère, a soldier, to a solitary island, three
leagues from the fort, where he left him to starve. For a time his
comrades chafed in smothered fury. The crisis came at length. A few of the
fiercer spirits leagued together, assailed their tyrant, and murdered him.
The deed done, and the famished soldier delivered, they called to the
command one Nicholas Barré, a man of merit. Barré took the command, and
thenceforth there was peace.

Peace, such as it was, with famine, homesickness, disgust. The rough
ramparts and rude buildings of Charlesfort, hatefully familiar to their
weary eyes, the sweltering forest, the glassy river, the eternal silence
of the wild monotony around them, oppressed the senses and the spirits.
Did they feel themselves the pioneers of religious freedom, the
advance-guard of civilization? Not at all. They dreamed of ease, of home,
of pleasures across the sea,--of the evening cup on the bench before the
cabaret, of dances with kind damsels of Dieppe. But how to escape? A
continent was their solitary prison, and the pitiless Atlantic closed the
egress. Not one of them knew how to build a ship; but Ribaut had left them