[Footnote 95: For the romantic details of Ferdinand de Soto's perilous enterprise, see Vega Garcilasso de Florida del Ynca, b. i., ch. iii., iv.; Herrera, Dec. VI., b. vii., ch. ix.; Purchas, 4, 1532; "Purchas, his Pilgrimage," otherwise called "Hackluytus Posthumus;" a voluminous compilation by a chaplain of Archbishop Abbot's, designed to comprise whatever had been related concerning the religion of all nations, from the earliest times.--Miss Aikin's _Charles I._, vol. i., p. 39.] [Footnote 96: "La colonie Francaise etablie sous Charles IX. comprenoit la partie meridionnale de la Caroline Angloise, la Nouvelle Georgie, d'aujourd'hui (1740) San Matteo, appelle par Laudonniere Caroline en l'honneur du roi Charles, St. Augustin, et tout ce que les Espagnols ont sur cette cote jusqu'au Cap Francois, n'a jamais ete appellee autrement que la Floride Francaise, ou la Nouvelle France, ou la France Occidentale."--Charlevoix, tom. vi., p. 383.] [Footnote 97: See Appendix, Nos. XV., XVI. (see Vol II)] CHAPTER III. Little or no effort was made to colonize any part of Canada for nearly fifty years after the loss of Roberval; but the Huguenots of France did not forget that hope of a refuge from religious persecution which their great leader, Coligni, had excited in their breasts. Several of the leaders of subsequent expeditions of trade and discovery to Canada and Acadia were Calvinists, until 1627, when Champlain, zealous for the Romish faith, procured a decree forbidding the free exercise of the Reformed religion in French America. Although the French seemed to have renounced all plan of settlement in America by the evacuation of Florida, the fishermen of Normandy and Brittany still plied their calling on the Great Bank and along the stormy shores of Newfoundland, and up the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence. By degrees they began to trade with the natives, and soon the greater gains and easier life of this new pursuit transformed many of these hardy sailors into merchants.