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Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar by Henry Stevens
page 24 of 141 (17%)
All the world knows how the swift vengeance of Pedro Menendez de Aviles
descended upon the unfortunate colonists of Laudonnière and Ribault and
destroyed them, with very few exceptions, in September 1565. On the
other hand, every one has heard how the Spaniards, almost all except the
absent leader, expiated their murderous cruelty in April 1568, under the
retributive justice of De Gourgues. The Spanish settlers of Florida were
thus as completely exterminated by the French as the French three years
before had been exterminated by the Spaniards.

After this till 1574, the Spaniards maintained possession of Florida, as
far north as the Chesapeake Bay, under Menendez, who had been appointed
at first Adelantado of Florida, and subsequently also Governor of Cuba.
He caused an elaborate and official survey of the whole coast to be made
and recorded, both in writing and in charts. Barcia tells the whole
interesting story, but the charts seem to have been lost, though the
description, or parts of it, remains. Menendez returned to Spain and
died in 1574, just as he had been invested with the command of an
'invincible' armada of three hundred ships, and twenty thousand men to
act against England and Flanders. All his North American acquisitions
and surveys seem to have at once fallen into neglect. Not a Spanish town
had been founded north of StAugustine. His Spanish missionaries sent
among the Indians had gained no solid foot hold. Spain however still
claimed possession, on paper, of the whole coast up to Newfoundland,
though she could not boast of a single place of actual occupation.

England at this time began to see the coast clear for the spread of her
protestant principles in America, and for her occupation of some of
those vast countries she now professed to have been the first to
discover by the Cabots. No friendly power any longer stood in her way.
Her relations with Spain had settled into patriotic hatred and open war.
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