The voyagers penetrated to the “River of May,” now St. John’s River, coming to the seat on its banks of Laudonnière’s colony of French Huguenots. They had been established here for fourteen months, and were now in a wretched condition. The fleet anchored off their port, and Hawkins and his chief men going ashore were “very gently entertained” by Laudonnière and his captains. The Frenchmen gave a pitiful account of the extremities to which the colony had been put for food. They had brought out a scant stock of provisions expecting to receive fresh supplies from France by ships that were to follow them with recruits. But these had not arrived. From two hundred strong at the beginning the colonists were now reduced by death and desertions to about half that number. They had early exhausted all the maize that they could buy of the natives. New supplies were got in return for the service of a number of their soldiers with a king of the Floridians in a tribal war. But the relief thus obtained was only temporary. When this supply had gone they resorted to acorns and roots. The acorns “stamped [crushed] small and often washed to take away the bitterness” were used for bread; the roots as vegetables. Many of the roots albeit the sort that “served rather for medicine than for meats alone,” they found to be “good and wholesome.” They must, however, have had rich drink with this dull food, for Hawkins noted that during the fourteen months here they had made twenty hogsheads of wine from the native grapes. In the midst of the colony’s distresses a rebellion arose. Some of the soldiers turned upon Laudonnière, seized his armour, and imprisoned him. Then taking a bark and a pinnace they set off, “to the number of fourscore,” on a piratical cruise. They went “a roaming” to Jamaica and Hispaniola, spoiling the Spaniards. Having taken the caravels laden with wine and “casair [cassava], which is bread made of roots, and much other victuall and treasure,” the marauding crew hovered about Jamaica, with frequent carousals on shore. At length their revels were cut short when a ship that had come out from Hispaniola bore down upon them. Twenty were taken prisoners, “whereof the most part were hanged, the rest sent to Spain.” Some twenty-five escaped in the pinnace and returned to the colony. Upon landing they were thrown into prison, and four of the ringleaders were “hanged at a gibbet.” Other troubles had come upon the colony through the enmity of natives, hitherto friendly, who had been robbed of maize by some of the colonists when nothing was left to barter for it. For such offences several Frenchmen had been seized by the Floridians and slain in the woods. When Hawkins’s fleet appeared the colony had not more than forty soldiers unhurt and “not above ten days’ victuals” in store.