which the remoteness of the region promised them, and the novelty which invested every object in their eyes made the parting from their comrades a tolerably easy one. They heard with lively spirits the farewell shouts of their companions, and answered them with cheers of confidence and pride. The simple paragraph which records the leave-taking of the parties, is at once pleasing and full of pathos. "Having ended his (Ribault's) exhortations, we took our leaves of _each_ of them, and sayled toward our shippes. We hoysed our sayles about ten of the clocke in the morning. After wee were ready to depart, Captain Ribault commanded to shoote off our ordnance, to give a farewell unto our Frenchmen; which fayled not to do the like on their part. This being done, wee sayled toward the north." That last shout, that last sullen roar of their mutual cannon, and the great waves of the Atlantic rolled, unbroken by a sail, between our colonists and _La Belle France_. II. THE COLONY UNDER ALBERT. The Colonists, thus abandoned by their countrymen, proceeded to make themselves secure in their forest habitations. Day and night did they address themselves to the completion of their fortress. They have seen none of the natives in the immediate neighborhood of the spot in which they had pitched their tents; but, aware of the wandering habits of the red-men, they might naturally look for them at any moment. Their toils, quickened by their caution, enabled them to make rapid progress. While they labored, they felt nothing of their loneliness. The employments which accompanied their situation, and flowed from its necessities, might be said to exercise their fancies, and to subdue the tendency to melancholy which might naturally grow out of their isolation. Besides, the very novelty of the circumstances in which they found themselves had its attractions, particularly to a people so lively as the French. Our Huguenots, at the outset, were very sensible to the picturesque beauties of their forest habitation. For a season, bird, and beast, and tree, and flower, presented themselves to their delighted eyes, in guises of constantly varying attraction. The solitude, itself, possessed its charm, most fascinating of all,--until it became monotonous--to those who had been little favored of fortune in the crowded world of civilization; and, with the feeling of a first freshness in their hearts, and, while in the performance of duties which were equally necessary to their safety, and new to their experience, the whole prospect before them was beheld through that rose-colored atmosphere which the fancy so readily flings before the mind, beguiling the soberer thought into forgetfulness. During this period they toiled successfully upon their fortifications. They raised the parapet, they mounted the cannon for defence; built rude dwellings within the walls, and in their boundless contiguity of shade, with the feeling that they were in some