This conflict lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until night. It only ceased when the darkness separated the combatants. Even then, but for the deficiency of their arrows, they probably would not have withdrawn from the field. It was late in the night when the Frenchmen reached their boats, weary and exhausted, their grain wrested from them, their hostages rescued, and twenty-four of their number killed and wounded. The Floridians had shown themselves warriors of equal spirit and capacity. The determined exclusion of their Paracoussi from counsels which it was feared that he would dishonor, their manly resistance to the white invaders, their scornful ridicule of their necessities, their proud defiance of their power, and the fierce and unrelenting hostility with which they had chased their adversaries, remind us irresistibly of the degradation of Montezuma by his subjects, their prolonged warfare with the Spaniards, their sleepless hostility, and that bloody struggle which first drove them over the causeways of Tenochtitlan. The inferior state and wealth of the Paracoussi, Olata Ouvae Utina, constitutes no such sufficient element of difference, as to lessen the force of the parallel between himself and people, and those of the Atzec sovereign. XX. IRACANA, OR THE EDEN OF THE FLORIDIAN. The disasters which befel his detachment, brought Laudonniere to his knees. He had now been humbled severely by the dispensations of Providence--punished for that disregard of the things most important to the colonization of a new country, which, in his insane pursuit of the precious metals, had marred his administration. His misfortunes reminded him of his religion. "Seeing, therefore, mine hope frustrate on that side, I made my prayer unto God, and thanked him of his grace which he had showed unto my poore souldiers which were escaped."