On the 28th, some of the Indians came to report by signs that the French were six leagues distant, that they had lost their ships, and that they had reached the shore by swimming. They had halted at a stream which they could not cross,—evidently Matanzas inlet. Menendez sent out a boat, and followed in another with some of his officers and Mendoza, one of the clergymen. He overtook his party, and they encamped near the inlet, but out of sight. On the opposite side, the light of the camp-fires marked the spot occupied by the French. The next day, seeing Menendez, a sailor swam over, and stated that he had been sent to say that they were survivors of some of Ribault’s vessels which had been wrecked; that many of their people had been drowned, others killed or captured by the Indians; and that the rest, to the number of one hundred and forty, asked permission and aid to reach their fort, some distance up the coast. [Illustration: FLORIDA, 1591 (_Lemoyne, in De Bry_). [This is the only cartographical result of the French occupation. It is also reproduced in Gaffarel’s _Floride Française_, and in Shipp’s _De Soto and Florida_. It was literally copied by Hondius in 1607, and not so well in the Mercator-Hondius _Atlas_ of 1633. Lescarbot followed it; but in his 1618 edition altered for the worse the course of the St. John’s River; and so did De Laet. Cf. Kohl, _Maps in Hakluyt_, p. 48, and Brinton, _Floridian Peninsula_, p. 80, who says (p. 86) that De Laet was the first to confine the name Florida to the peninsula; but Thevet seems nearly to do so in the map in his _Cosmographia_, which he based on Ortelius, a part of which is given in fac-simile in Weise’s _Discoveries of America_, p. 304; and it seems also to be the case in the earlier Mercator gores of 1541. The map accompanying Charlevoix’ narrative will be found in his _Nouvelle France_, i. 24, and in Shea’s translation of it, i. 133.—ED.]]