It is greatly to be regretted that the astute Coligni had not assumed in person the command of this expedition intended to establish in America a New France, forty-three years before the first settlement of the English at Jamestown, and sixty-six years before the Puritans on the _Mayflower_ landed at Plymouth. His counsels would doubtless have preserved the weak colony who were so cruelly exterminated, and he himself would have escaped his untimely end. Coligni was one of the first victims of the horrid massacre of Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day, in 1572, being assassinated by one of the servants of the Duke of Guise. Laudonnère came upon the coast at St. Augustine, but, stopping only for a reconnoisance, he sailed to the site of the former colony and Fort Charles, with the hope of relieving his countrymen. Finding the fort deserted, and learning of the time that had elapsed since the departure of the colony, he determined to return to the river May (now the St. Johns), and found his settlement on its banks, where, as he says, the “means of subsistence seemed to abound,” and the signs of gold and silver observed on the former voyage had been very encouraging. These signs must have been the possession by the Indians of some pieces of quartz, which seems to have been very general, and to have led the French like the Spaniards from tribe to tribe like a very ignis-fatuus. Laudonnère’s account of his landing at the harbor of St. Augustine is extremely interesting, and by his description the location is readily recognized. He says: “We arrived on Thursday, the 22d of June (1564), about three o’clock in the afternoon, and landed at a little river which is thirty degrees distant from the equator. After we had struck sail and cast anchor athwart the river, I determined to go on shore to discover the same. Therefore, being accompanied by Mons. de Ottigni, with Mons. d’Arlac, mine Ensign, and a certain number of gentlemen and soldiers, I embarked myself about three or four o’clock in the evening, and being arrived at the mouth of the river, I caused the channel to be sounded, which was found to be very shallow, although that further within the same the water was there found reasonably deep, which separateth itself into two great arms, whereof one runneth toward the south, and the other toward the north. Having thus searched the river, I went on land to speak with the Indians, which waited for us upon the shore, which at our coming on land came before us crying with a loud voice in their Indian language ‘Antipola Bonassou,’ which is as much as to say, brother, friend, or some such like thing. After they had made much of us, they showed us their paracoussy, that is to say, their king or governor, to whom I presented certain toys wherewith he was well pleased and for mine own part I praised God continually for the great love I found in these savages, which were sorry for nothing but that the night approached and made us retire into our ships.