After a graphic sketch of the line of Spanish notables in the New World,--of Ponce de Leon, of Garay, Ayllon, De Narvaez, and De Soto,--Mr. Parkman concisely reviews the successive attempts at a settlement in Florida by Frenchmen. His central figures here are Admiral De Coligny and his agents, Villegagnon, Ribaut, and Laudonniere. They had no fixed policy towards the Indians, and they followed the worst possible course with them. They wholly neglected tillage, and so were in constant peril of starvation. They were lawless and disorderly in their fellowship, and were always at the mercy of conspirators among themselves. Beginning about the year 1550, and embracing the quarter of a century following, there transpired on the coast of Florida a series of acts of mingled heroism and barbarity not easily paralleled in any chapter of the world's history. Menendez, under his commission as Adelantado, having effected the first European settlement in North America at St. Augustine, and the French having established a river fort named Caroline, the struggle which could not long have been deferred was invited. We have here a double narrative. While the French commander, Ribaut, is shipwrecked in an enterprise by sea against St. Augustine, Menendez, by land, after a most harassing tramp through forest and swamp, successfully assails Fort Caroline. Though he has pledged his honor to spare those who surrendered to his mercy, he foully breaks his pledge, as no faith was to be kept with heretics. A brutal massacre, which shocked even his Indian allies, signalized his victory. An inscription on the trees under which he slaughtered his victims announced that vengeance was wreaked on them, "not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." These atrocities were in their turn avenged, after a similar fashion and in the same spirit, by Dominique de Gourgues. It is doubtful whether he was a Huguenot; but he felt, as the French monarch and court did not, the rankling disgrace of this bloody catastrophe. An intense hater of the Spaniards, he gave his whole spirit of chivalry and prowess, in the approved fashion of the age, to avenge the insult to France. Providing himself with three small vessels, navigable by sail or oar, he gathered a fit company for his enterprise; but not till well on his way did he reveal to them his real purpose, in which they proved willing coadjutors. He found the Spaniards at their forts had alienated the Indians, who readily leagued with him. By a bold combination and a fierce onslaught he carries the Spanish works, and retaliates on his fiendish and now cowering prisoners by hanging them, "not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers." De Gourgues came to do this, not to make another attempt for a permanent settlement in the interest of France. He therefore destroyed the forts, and with a friendly parting from his red allies, much to their sorrow, returned home. Thus closes one episode in the world's tragic history.