Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/613

 them after but little resistance, and then marched against Fort Caroline, changed to San Matteo. Although the fort was well garrisoned, the Spanish commander, believing that he was surrounded by a superior force, fled, and De Gourgues captured the fort, meeting with little resistance. In retaliation for the massacre of the Huguenots, he hung his prisoners to the same trees, with the inscription, burned upon a plank, that he did this "not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, thieves, and murderers."

No further attempt was made by the French to colonize the southern Atlantic coast, and thus ended the sad beginnings of what, under other circumstances, might have proved the establishment of French colonization along our whole Atlantic coast.

The annals of St. Augustine during the remainder of the life of Menendez present only the usual vicissitudes of new settlements, the alternation of want and supply and occasional disaffections and annoyances by unruly soldiers or hostile Indians.

Unluckily for the little city, Sir Francis Drake, in 1586, returning from the coasts of South America, discovered, in passing, the