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whole. The two kings were quartered, several were torn to pieces alive, others hung, and the children flogged, and their ears cut off! The sense of smelling was so acute in one of the Brasilians who followed Despinay, that he could tell, by smelling the ground, whether it was a Negro or a Frenchman that had gone that way!!

"Barbadoes, which is inhabited only by the English, may boast of having two regular cities, in each of which more than a hundred taverns may be reckoned, as well furnished as in Europe. In the greater part of the islands inhabited by the Spaniards, there are regular cities, well built, surrounded by walls, fortified with good bastions; which are so populous, that there are cathedral churches, and convents of monks of different orders, the same as in Europe. It is to be hoped, that when the number of inhabitants is increased in the islands, that they will build cities and villages as in the others; but at present there are none, not even among the English at St. Christopher's, Antigua, Nevis, or Monserrat, although they are incomparably better peopled than ours." So says Du Tertre, who left the West Indies this year: he adds,

"The vanity which reigns in the dresses of the inhabitants has not as yet extended itself to their furniture; for some chests, a table, a bed, and some benches, compose the furniture of the houses. Married persons have beds as in France, but the others have only hanging cotton beds, in which they sleep like the savages; and, besides that the custom is very convenient, it is not expensive, because no pillows, sheets, or quilts are necessary: so that a good cotton bed lasts a man for his life!"

The Caribs, at the instigation of an old savage who had belonged to Mademoiselle de la Montagne, attacked the inhabitants of St. Bartholomew's, killed sixteen, and wounded several others. From this island the Caribs went to Anguilla, where they killed almost all the men, plundered and burnt the houses, but kept the women and children for slaves.

"We were not dreaming of this enterprise of the savages,"

Du Tertre, tom. ii. p. 450, 451.— tom. i. p. 508.

1 "Les enfans de nos isles ne sont pas elèves avec tant de delicatesse que les enfans de l'Europe: car on ne les emmaillotte jamais, à cause de la trop grande chaleur qui les corromperoit dans leurs ordures. On les nourrit de laict, de palates, et de fruicts, et il y en à peu qui manget de la bouillie. Il s'en trouve fort peu de contre faits, et ils marchent bien plustost que dans la France. Ils viennent à merveille jusqu'a l'age de sept ou

la pluspart semble estre arrestez tout court,
le teint leur pallit, et ils deviennent lan-
guissans si bien que plusiers y meurent.
Je crois que cela vient de la nourriture
qui leur engendre des vers; car en ayant
fait ouvrir quelquesuns j'ay trouvé dans
leur estomach de gros pelotons de vers
enterlassez les uns dans les autres, qui leur
piquotoient cette partie d'ou vient qu'avant
leur mort ils ne faisoient que vomir."
Du Tertre, tom. ii. p. 459.

Du Tertre says, "nor of meeting with them, when we embarked in M. du Parquet's bark to go to St. Christopher's, in the hope of finding some ship ready to sail for France or Holland. Besides the crew of the bark, whose sailors were all good soldiers, we had on board the Sieur de la Fontaine Heron, captain of his guards, and the Father Boulongne, who had business at St. Christopher's. The bark had two guns mounted, and two peteraroes; but she was so lumbered with the quantity of refreshments which the generosity of M. du Parquet had put on board, that she was but in a bad state for action: we scarcely dreamt of preparing her, for besides that we were ignorant of the outrage of the savages, there was but little to apprehend from them close to St. Christopher's, in the middle between three islands full of English, their greatest enemies, and in the track of all their ships: so that I do not believe that for twenty years there had been any savages seen in the state in which we found them.

"We sailed, then, from Martinico the 16th of November, and the 18th, at day-break, we had, as it were, a sort of presage of what was going to happen: it was a meteor, which, taking fire towards the stern of our bark, passed with a great noise over our mast-head, like a fiery dragon, went, and was dissipated, and we lost sight of it towards the place where the savages appeared a quarter of an hour afterwards! I saw them first, to the number of nine piraguas, which looked at a distance only like pieces of timber floating on the water, and shewed them to Captain la Bourlotte, who said after he had looked at them, Father, if we were in any other place, I should think that it was an army of savages going upon some expedition.' But a moment afterwards, seeing them tack, he cried out, Get ready! get ready! they are the savages!' As they were still a full league from us, we had time to prepare for action, and to say some short and fervent prayers.

6

"The largest piragua, leaving the eight others, came boldly to reconnoitre us. Our captain did what he could to run her on board athwart ships, and sail over her; but the Caribs adroitly avoided the shock, and always kept her head towards us.

"We had pointed the gun to rake the piragua from one end to the other, and it was loaded with a large ball, an iron chain, and two bags of old nails and musket-balls. Half the savages on board the piragua rowed; all the others, held each of them two arrows on their bow-string, ready to let fly. When they were about twenty paces from us, they made great cries and hootings on coming to attack us; but as we went to them before the wind, the fore-sail covered us, and they could not see to fire at us: our gunner seeing them close, chose his time so well, and let off his

Du Tertre, tom. i. p. 509.

gun so à propos, that the discharge knocked down more than half the savages, and if the stern of the piragua had not pitched, not one of them would have escaped. There were more than twenty killed by this discharge, so that the sea all round our bark became bloody, and the piragua was stove and full of water: they did not for that cease to close with us; and those that had escaped, seeing us clear of the sail, shot a number of arrows, and wounded two of our soldiers, one in the finger, which was cut off the next day, and the other in the thigh, who died a few days afterwards, at Martinico.

"Our two captains and our soldiers fired their pieces, and because they were so close, there was scarcely one shot that did not kill a savage. While both sides were fighting valiantly, an old captain of the savages, seeing M. de Maubray upon the poop, shot an arrow at him with such violence, that it broke the vessel's bell, without which he would have been killed: but he did not endure that long; M. de Maubray immediately shot him in the side. The ball passed through him, and M. de Maubray would have finished him with his pistol, but the savage avoided him, and threw himself into the sea, with his bow and arrows, where all the others, even the wounded, followed him!

"As soon as they were all in the water, we tried to save some prisoners that were in the piragua, and easily got out two young Frenchmen: but as we were trying to get an English girl out, an old female savage bit her in the shoulder, and tore out as much flesh as her mouth could hold! But at the same time a Christian Carib that we had on board, and a sworn enemy to others of his nation, struck her a blow with a half-pike in the neck, which made her drop her prize. This wound, nevertheless, did not prevent her from throwing herself upon the girl and biting her a second time, before we could get her out of the piragua! A Negro, who had lost both his legs by our shot, refused the hand which was held out to save him: after being lifted up on the side of the piragua, he threw himself head foremost into the sea; but his feet not being quite separated from his legs, he hung by the bones, and drowned himself!

"We also tried to save a young English lady, the mistress of the girl we had taken on board. The piragua being separated from the bark, we saw her for some time upon a chest, holding out her hands to us; but as we went to her, the chest upset, and we never saw her again!

"While we were occupied in saving these poor miserable creatures, our old savage captain, all wounded as he was, came towards us, and raising his body half out of the water, like a Triton, holding two arrows on the string of his bow, fired them

Du Tertre, tom. i. p. 510.

into the bark, and dived immediately under the water: he returned thus bravely five times to the charge; and his strength failing him before his courage, we saw him fall backwards and sink to the bottom! Another old man, who had remained on the bark's rudder, having lost his hold, began to cry out, and implore us not to kill him. I instantly begged Captain Bourlote, who, to satisfy me, threw a rope's end to him, but he could not catch it; and seeing that he used all his efforts to regain the bark, Bourlote shot him in the face, and he sunk to the bottom. In the beginning of the action, I had seen a young savage in the water, that could not be more than two years old, moving his little hands; but it was impossible to save him.

"If the eight piraguas had come to us with the same courage, we should certainly have been taken; but having seen the fire that we kept up upon the first, and perceiving that we stood towards them with all sail set, they took fright, and having gained the weather-gage by rowing, they saved themselves on a small island called Redonda."

The French, who escaped from St. Bartholomew's, retired to St. Martin's and St. Christopher's: it was not until 1659 that any attempt was again made to colonize that island.

The expence of the colony established in Grenada had so greatly injured Du Parquet's fortune, that he sold the island this year, to the Count de Cerillac, for 30,000 crowns. M. de Miromenil and Father Du Tertre made the agreement for the Count, who appointed a rapacious man governor, whose exactions obliged the colonists to take the administration of justice into their own hands: they seized the governor, brought him to a public trial, and condemned him to be hanged. The criminal pleaded noble birth, and demanded the honour of being beheaded, but as no executioner could be found, the judges compounded the matter with his excellency, by consenting that he should be shot: and he suffered, in that mode, with great composure.'

M. Haquet, governor of St. Lucie, was enticed from his fort by the Caribs under pretence of shewing him a large quantity of turtle on a neighbouring hill; he went with only three followers,

Labat, tom. v. p. 144. Du Tertre, tom. i. pp. 416. 516. 436.
B. Edwards, vol. i. pp. 357, 358.

1 "De toute la cour de justice que fit le procés à cet infortune gouverneur il n'y avoit que le nommé Archangeli, qui sçut ecrire. Celui qui fit les informations et que instruisit le procés etoit un marêchal ferrant dont on voit encore la marqué dans le Registre du Greffe, qui est un fer à cheval autour duquel le Greffier

Archangeli a ecrit, 'Marque de Monsieur la Brie, Conseiller Rapporteur.""—Labat, tom. vi. p. 222.

2 "J'ay cru fort long-temps que les tortués de ces quartiers avoient trois cœurs, car au-dessus du cœur (qu'elles ont gros comme celuy d'un homme), soit un gros trone d'arteres aux deux costez duquel

was seized by the Caribs, and thrown from the hill into the sea: Haquet was stunned, but not hurt by the fall, and was on his road to the fort, when they mortally wounded him by an arrow, of which he died in three days. He was succeeded as governor by M. Breton, who would have been assassinated by the garrison, for ill usage, had he not escaped into the woods. They despised him because he had been Madame du Parquet's footman. The garrison then stript the fort, and seizing an English ship in the road, escaped to the Spaniards, by whom they were protected. About ten days after this, a French ship, commanded by Captain Burlotte, passing by from Grenada, left four seamen, with proper supplies in the fort, as its artillery was good, and took on board Breton. Du Parquet, understanding what had passed, sent a reinforcement of thirty-eight men from Martinico, and appointed Le Sieur du Coutis governor, and afterwards Mr. Aygremont to supersede him, during whose administration the English made an unsuccessful attack upon the island.

1657.

M. de Poincy had forbidden the colony of Santa Cruz to trade with strangers. The consequence was, that the inhabitants, reduced to distress, when the Chevalier de la Mothe arrived to take the government of the island, seized his vessel, and leaving him tobacco and cotton to the value of the vessel and her cargo, they, to the number of 200, embarked in her, and proceeded to Brazil. M. de Poincy, finding the vessel did not return, sent a bark to know what was become of her: this vessel found the governor overwhelmed with affliction, and the rest of the inhabitants only waiting for an opportunity to desert. La Mothe returned to St. Christopher's. To induce other colonists to repair to the island, De Poincy altered his regulations, and permitted them to trade the same as the other islands.

At this time the French colonies had four proprietors: - The Knights of Malta had Sir Christopher's, Santa Cruz, part of

Univ. Hist. vol. xxxvi. pp. 210, 211.
Labat, tom. vi. p. 249.

sont attachez deux autres façons de cœurs, gros comme des œufs de poule et de la mesme forme et substance que le premier; mais j'ay depuis changé d'opinion, et crois fermement que ce ne sont que les oreilles du cœur. Quoy qu'il en soit, il est certain que cela bien ajuste sur une table, composé une fleur-de-lys, d'ou on peut

Du Tertre, tom. i. pp. 437. 454, 455. tom. v. pp. 119, 120. 165.

tirer une conjecture assez avantageuse de progrez de nos colonies Françoises dans l'Amerique, puisque la providence de Dieu, qui ne fait rien en vain, a plante la fleur-de-lys au cœur de l'animal qui est le hieroglyphe du pays." Du Tertre, tom. ii. p. 228.

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