The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in FloridaSimms, William Gilmore
History
The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in Florida
Simms, William Gilmore
Florida -- History -- Huguenot colony, 1562-1565 -- Fiction
It is not known to us at the present day, though the matter is still,
probably, within the province of the antiquarian, to which of the
numerous sea islands of the neighborhood the unhappy man was banished.
It was one divided from the colony, and from the main, by an arm of
the sea of such breadth, and so open to the most violent action of the
waves, that any return of the exile by swimming, or without assistance
from his comrades, was not apprehended or hoped for. His little desolate
domain is described as about three leagues from Fort Charles, as almost
entirely barren, a mere realm of sand, treeless and herbless, without
foliage sufficient to shelter from sun and storm, or to provide against
famine by its fruits. Should this island ever be identified with that of
Lachane's place of exile, it should receive his name to the exclusion of
every other.
Here, then, hopeless and companionless, was the unhappy victim destined
to remain, until death should bring him that escape which the mercy of
his fellows had denied. Yet he was not to be abandoned wholly; a certain
pittance of provisions was allowed him that he might not absolutely
die of famine. This allowance was calculated nicely against his merest
necessities. It was to be brought him on the return of every eighth day,
and this period was that, accordingly, on which, alone, could he be
permitted to gaze upon the face of a fellow being and a countryman.
Certainly, a more cruel punishment, adopted in a mere wanton exercise
of despotic power, could not have been devised for any victim by the
ingenuity of any superior. Death, even the death by which Guernache had
perished, had been a doom more merciful; for if, as was the case, the
colonists at Fort Charles themselves had already begun to find their
condition of solitude almost beyond endurance--if they, living as they
did together, cheered by the exercise of old sports and homely converse,
the ties and assurances of support and friendship, the consciousness
of strength--duties which were necessary and not irksome, and the
interchange of thoughts which enliven the desponding temper;--if,
with all these resources in their favor, they had sunk into gloomy
discontent, eager for change, and anxious for the returning vessels of
Ribault, that they might abandon for their old, the new home which they
found so desolate; what must have been the sufferings and agonies of him
whom they had thus banished, even from such solace as they themselves
possessed--uncheered even by the familiar faces and the well-known
voices of his fellows, and deprived of all the resources whereby
ingenuity might devise some methods of relief, and totally unblessed by
any of those exercises which might furnish a substitute for habitual
employments. No sentence, more than this, could have shown to our
Frenchmen so completely the utter absence of sympathy between themselves
and their commander; could have shown how slight was the value which he
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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