1555, and early in November saw the shores of Brazil. Entering the
harbor of Rio Janeiro, then called Ganabara, Villegagnon landed men and
stores on an island, built huts, and threw up earthworks. In
anticipation of future triumphs, the whole continent, by a strange
perversion of language, was called Antarctic France, while the fort
received the name of Coligny.

Villegagnon signalized his new-born Protestantism by an intolerable
solicitude for the manners and morals of his followers. The whip and the
pillory requited the least offence. The wild and discordant crew,
starved and flogged for a season into submission, conspired at length to
rid themselves of him; but while they debated whether to poison him,
blow him up, or murder him and his officers in their sleep, three Scotch
soldiers, probably Calvinists, revealed the plot, and the vigorous hand
of the commandant crushed it in the bud.

But how was the colony to subsist? Their island was too small for
culture, while the mainland was infested with hostile tribes, and
threatened by the Portuguese, who regarded the French occupancy as a
violation of their domain.

Meanwhile, in France, Huguenot influence, aided by ardent letters sent
home by Villegagnon in the returning ships, was urging on the work. Nor
were the Catholic chiefs averse to an enterprise which, by colonizing
heresy, might tend to relieve France of its presence. Another
embarkation was prepared, in the name of Henry the Second, under
Bois-Lecomte, a nephew of Villegagnon. Most of the emigrants were
Huguenots. Geneva sent a large deputation, and among them several
ministers, full of zeal for their land of promise and their new church
in the wilderness. There were five young women, also, with a matron to