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
"There we sang a psalme of thanksgiving unto God." Prayer was made, and,
gathering courage from the exercise of their devotions, our Huguenots
applied themselves to the duty of building themselves a fortress. In
this work they were assisted by the Indians.[20] A few days sufficed,
with this help, to give their fabric form. It was built in the shape of
a triangle. "The side towarde the west, which was towarde the lande, was
enclosed with a little trench and raised with towers made in forme of
a battlement of nine foote high: the other side, which was towarde the
river, was inclosed with a palisado of plankes of timber, after the
manner that gabions are made. On the south side, there was a kinde of
bastion, within which I caused an house for the munition to be built. It
was all builded of fagots and sand, saving about two or three foote high
with turfes, whereof the battlements were made. In the middest I caused
a great court to be made of eighteen paces long and broad; in the
middest whereof, on the one side, drawing toward the south, I builded a
_corps de garde_, and an house, on the other side, towarde the north."
* * * "One of the sides that enclosed my court, which I made very faire
and large, reached unto the grange of my munitions: and, on the other
side, towarde the river, was mine owne lodgings, round which were
galleries all covered. The principal doore of my lodging was in the
middest of the great place, and the other was towarde the river. A good
distance from the fort, I built an oven."
[20] Jacques de Moyne de Morgues represents the Indian Chief or
Paracoussi of the neighborhood, Satouriova by name, as taking great
umbrage at the erection of the fortress La Caroline within his
dominions; thus differing from Laudonniere, who describes him and
his subjects as cheerfully assisting in its erection. Charlevoix
undertakes to reconcile the difference between them; but in a manner
which would soon leave the chronicle and the historian at the mercy of
the merest conjecture. The matter is scarcely of importance.
It will be an employment of curious interest, whenever the people of
Florida shall happen upon the true site of the settlement and structure
of Laudonniere, to trace out, in detail, these several localities, and
fix them for the benefit of posterity. The work is scarcely beyond the
hammer and chisel of some Old Mortality, who has learned to place his
affections, and fix his sympathies, upon the achievements of the Past.
X.
HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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