suitable place, somewhere between 30° north latitude and Cape Breton,
for the discomfited Huguenots to retire to and found a Protestant
colony. The previous Brazilian project had already been abandoned as
impracticable and unsuccessful.

Hitherto the Spanish Roman Catholic maritime doctrine had been that to
see or sail by any undiscovered country gave possession. But the French
Protestants, now firmly rejecting the Pope's gift, required occupation
in addition to discovery to secure title. Hence Florida at that time,
not being occupied by the Spanish, was considered open to the French.
Ribault sailed from Havre the 18th of February 1562, taking a course
across the Atlantic direct, and, as he thought, new, making his land
fall on the 30th of April at 29½ degrees; but Verrazano had in 1524
sailed also direct for Florida, taking a similar course, with the
difference that he started from Madeira. Thence coasting northward,
seeking for a harbour, touching at the river of May, and proceeding up
the coast to 32½ degrees, Ribault found a good harbour into which he
entered on the 27th of May, and named it Port Royal. He was so well
pleased with the country that, perhaps contrary to instructions, he left
a colony of thirty volunteers, under Capt. Albert de la Pierria, and
returned home with the news, arriving in France, after a quick voyage,
on the 20th of July, 1562.

Ribault, on leaving Port Royal, intended to explore up the coast to 40°,
that is, to the present site of New York, but gives various reasons for
not doing so, one of which was 'the declaration made vnto vs of our
pilots and some others that had before been at some of those places
where we purposed to sayle and have been already found by some of the
king's subjects.' This little colony of Port Royal, after nearly a year
of danger and privation, built a ship and put to sea, hoping to reach