various other tribes, collected at stated intervals the bones of their
dead.

Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose
office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each
village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the
confederacy. In the language of the French narratives, they were all
kings or lords, vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or
Potanou. All these tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to
ascertain with precision their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt
that they were the authors of the aboriginal remains at present found in
various parts of Florida.

Having nearly finished the fort, Laudonniere declares that he "would not
lose the minute of an houre without employing of the same in some
vertuous exercise;" and he therefore sent his lieutenant, Ottigny, to
spy out the secrets of the interior, and to learn, above all, "what this
Thimagoa might be, whereof the Paracoussy Satouriona had spoken to us so
often." As Laudonniere stood pledged to attack the Thimagoas, the chief
gave Ottigny two Indian guides, who, says the record, were so eager for
the fray that they seemed as if bound to a wedding feast.

The lazy waters of the St. John's, tinged to coffee color by the
exudations of the swamps, curled before the prow of Ottigny's sail-boat
as he advanced into the prolific wilderness which no European eye had
ever yet beheld. By his own reckoning, he sailed thirty leagues up the
river, which would have brought him to a point not far below Palatka.
Here, more than two centuries later, the Bartrams, father and son,
guided their skiff and kindled their nightly bivouac-fire; and here,
too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and his gun. It was a paradise