The red men whom they encounter on this progress are at first shy of the strangers and take flight at their approach, but they are soon encouraged by the gentleness and forbearance of the Frenchmen, who persuade them finally to confidence. An amiable understanding soon reconciles the parties, and the Floridian at length brings forward his gifts of maize, his palm baskets with fruits and flowers, his rudely-dressed skins of bear and beaver, and these are pledges of his amity which he does not violate. He, in turn, persuades the voyagers to draw near to the shore and finally to land. They are soon surrounded by the delighted and simple natives, whose gifts are multiplied duly in degree with the pleasure which they feel. Skins of the _chamois_--deer rather--and baskets of pearls, are offered to the chief among the whites, whom they proceed to entertain with shows of still greater courtesy. A bower of forest leaves and shrubs is soon built to shelter them "from the parching heate of the sunne," and our Frenchmen lingered long enough among this artless and hospitable people to get tidings of a "greate Indian Lorde which had pearles in great abundance and silver also, all of which should be given them at the king's arrival." They invited the strangers to their dwellings--proffering to show them a thousand pleasures in shooting, and seeing the death of the stag. Our Huguenots, excellent Christians though they were, were by no means insensible to the tidings of pearl and gold. These glimpses of treasures, already familiar to their imaginations, greatly increase, in their sight, the natural beauties of the country. The narratives of the red men, imperfectly understood, and construed by the desires of the strangers, rather than their minds, were full of marvels of neighboring lands and nations,--great empires of wealth and strength,--cities in romantic solitudes,--high places among almost inaccessible mountains, in which the treasures are equally precious and abundant. Listening to such legends, our Frenchmen linger with the red men, until the approach of night counsels them to seek the security of their ships. But, with the dawning of the following day the explorations were resumed. Before leaving his vessel, however, Ribault provides himself with "a pillar of hard stone, fashioned like a column, whereon the armes of France were graven," with the purpose of planting "the same in the fairest place that he coulde finde." "This done, we embarked ourselves, and sayled three leagues towards the west; where we discovered a little river, up which wee sayled so long, that, in the ende, wee found it returned into the great current, and in his return, to make a little island separated from the firme lande, where wee went on shore, and by commandment of the captain, because it was exceeding faire and pleasant, there we planted the pillar upon a hillock open round about to the view and environed with a lake halfe a fathom deepe, of very good and sweete water."