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.”

But his prayers did not detain him long. The necessities of the colony continued as pressing as ever. “Afterward, I thought upon new meanes to obtaine victuals, as well for our returne into France, as to drive out the time untill our embarking.” Those were meditations of considerable difficulty. The petty fields of the natives, never contemplated with reference to more than a temporary supply of food;—never planted with reference to providing for a whole year, were really inadequate to the wants of such a body of men, unless by grievously distressing their proprietors. The people of Olata Utina had been moved to rage in all probability, quite as much because of their grain crops, about to be torn from them, as with any feeling of indignation in consequence of the detention of their Paracoussi. In the sacks of corn which the Frenchmen bore away upon their shoulders, they beheld the sole provisions upon which, for several months, their women and children had relied to feed; and their quick imaginations were goaded to desperation, as they depicted the vivid horrors of a summer consumed in vain search after crude roots and indigestible berries, through the forests. No wonder the wild wretches fought to avert such a danger; as little may we wonder that they fought successfully. The Frenchmen, compelled to cast down their sacks of grain, to use their weapons, the red-men soon repossessed themselves of all their treasure. When Laudonniere reviewed his harrassed soldiers on their return from this expedition, “all the mill that he found among his company came but to two men’s burdens.” To attempt to recover the provisions thus wrested from them, or to revenge themselves for the indignity and injury they had undergone, were equally out of the question. The people of the Paracoussi could number their thousands; and, buried in their deep fortresses of forest, they could defy pursuit. Laudonniere was compelled to look elsewhere for the resources which should keep his company from want.

Two leagues distant from La Caroline, on the opposite side of May River, stood the Indian village of Saravahi. Not far from this might be seen the smokes of another village, named Emoloa. The Frenchmen, wandering through the woods in search of game, had alighted suddenly upon these primitive communities. Here they had been received with gentleness and love. The natives were lively and benevolent. They had never felt the wrath of the white man, nor been made to suffer because of his improvidence and necessities. His thunderbolts had never hurled among their columns, and mown them down as with a fiery scythe from heaven. The Frenchmen did not fail to remark that they were provident tribes, with corn-fields much more ample than were common among the Indians. These, they now concluded, must be covered with golden grain, in the season of harvest, and thither, accordingly, Laudonniere dispatched his boats. A judicious officer conducted the detachment, and stores of European merchandize were confided to him for the purposes of traffic. He was not disappointed in his expectations. His soldiers were received with open arms; and a “good store of mil,” speaking comparatively, was readily procured from the abundance of the Indians.

But, in preparation for the return to France, other and larger supplies were necessary. The boats were again made ready, and confided to La Vasseur and D’Erlach. They proceeded to the river to which the French had given their name of Somme, now known as the Satilla, but which was then called among the Indians, the Iracana, after their own beautiful queen. Of this queen our Frenchmen had frequently been told. She had been described to them as the fairest creature, in the shape of woman, that the country had beheld: nor was the region over which she swayed, regarded with less admiration. This was spoken of as a sort of terrestrial paradise. Here, the vales were more lovely; the waters more cool and pellucid than in any other of the territories of earth. Here, the earth produced more abundantly than elsewhere; the trees were more stately and magnificent, the flowers more beautiful and gay, and the vines more heavily laden with grapes of the most delicious flavor. Sweetest islets rose along the shore over which the moon seemed to linger with a greater fondness, and soft breezes played ever in the capacious forests, always kindling to emotions of pleasure, the soft beatings of the delighted heart. The influences of scene and climate were felt for good amongst the people who were represented at once as the most generous and gentle of all the Floridian natives. They had no wild passions, and coveted no fierce delights. Under the sway of a woman, at once young and beautiful, the daughter of their most favorite monarch, their souls had become attuned to sympathies which greatly tended to subdue and to soothe the savage nature. Their lives were spent in sports and dances. No rebukes or restraints of duty, no sordid cares or purposes, impaired the dream of youth and rapture which prevailed everywhere in the hearts of the people. Gay assemblages were ever to be found among the villages in the forests; singing their own delights and imploring the stranger to be happy also. They had a thousand songs and sports of youth and pleasure, which made life a perpetual round of ever freshening felicity. Innocent as wild, no eye of the ascetic could rebuke enjoyments which violated no cherished laws of experience and thought, and their glad and sprightly dances, in the deep shadows of the wood, to the lively clatter of Indian gourds and tambourines, were quite as significant of harmless fancies as of thoughtless lives. Happy was the lonely voyager, speeding along the coast, in his frail canoe, when, suddenly darting out from the forests of Iracana, a slight but lovely creature, with flowing tunic of whitechant,—

“Love you me not, oh, lonely voyager—love you me not? Lo! am I not lovely; I who serve the beautiful queen of Iracana? will you not come to me, for a while!—come, hide the canoe among the reeds, along the shore, and make merry with the damsels of Iracana. I give to thee the palm and the myrtle, in token of a welcome of peace and love. Come hither, oh! lonely voyager, and be happy for a season!”

And seldom were these persuasions unavailing. The lonely voyager was commonly won, as was he who, sailing by Scylla and Charybdis, refused to seal his ears with wax against the song of the Syren. But our charmers, along the banks of the Satilla, entreated to no evil, laid no snares for the unwary, meditating their destruction. They sought only to share the pleasures which they themselves enjoyed. The benevolence of that love which holds its treasure as of little value, unless its delights may be bestowed on others, was the distinguishing moral in the Indian Eden of Iracana; and he who came with love, never departed without a sorrow, such as made him linger as he went, and soon return, when this were possible, to a region, which, among our Floridians, realized that period of the Classic Fable, which has always been designated, par excellence, as the “age of gold.”

Our Frenchmen, under the conduct of La Vasseur and D’Erlach, reached the frontiers of Iracana, at an auspicious period. The season of harvest, among all primitive and simple nations, is commonly a season of great rejoicing. Among a people like those of Iracana, habitually accustomed to rejoice, it is one in which delight becomes exultation, and when in the supreme felicity of good fortune, the happy heart surpasses itself in the extraordinary expression of its joy. Here were assembled to the harvest, all the great lords of the surrounding country. Here was Athoree, the gigantic son of Satouriova, a very Anak, among the Floridians. Here were Apalou, a famous chieftain,—Tacadocorou, and many others, whom our Frenchmen had met and known before;—some of whom indeed, they had known in fierce conflict, and a strife which had never been healed by any of the gentle offices of peace.

But Iracana was the special territory of peace. It was not permitted, among the Floridians, to approach this realm with angry purpose. Here war and strife were tabooed things,—shut out, denied and banished, and peace and love, and rapture, were alone permitted exercise in abodes which were too grateful to all parties, to be desecrated by hostile passions. When, therefore, our Frenchmen, beholding those only with whom they had so lately fought, were fain to betake themselves to their weapons, the chiefs themselves, with whom they had done battle, came forward to embrace them, with open arms.

“Brothers, all—brothers here, in Iracana;” was the common speech. “Be happy here, brothers, no fight, no scalp, nothing but love in Iracana,—nothing but dance and be happy.”

Even had not this assurance sufficed with our Frenchmen, the charms of the lovely Queen herself, her grace and sweetness, not unmixed with a dignity which declared her habitual rule, must have stifled every feeling of distrust in their bosoms, and effectually exorcised that of war. She came to meet the strangers with a mingled ease and state, a sweetness and a majesty, which were inexpressibly attractive. She took a hand of La Vasseur and of D’Erlach, with each of her own. A bright, happy smile lightened in her eye, and warmed her slightly dusky features with a glow. Rich in hue, yet delicately thin, her lips parted with a pleasure, as she spoke to them, which no art could simulate. She bade them welcome, joined their hands with those of the great warriors by whom she was attended, and led them away among her damsels, of whom a numerous array were assembled, all habited in the richest garments of their scanty wardrobes.

The robes of the Queen herself were ample. The skirts of her dress fell below her knees, a thing very uncommon with the women of Florida. Over this, she wore a tunic of crimson, which descended below her hips. A slight cincture embraced, without confining, her waist. Long strings of sea-shell, of the smallest size, but of colors and tints the most various and delicate, drooped across her shoulders, and were strung, in loops and droplets, to the skirts of her dress and her symar. Similar strings encircled her head, from which the hair hung free behind, almost to the ground, a raven-like stream, of the deepest and most glossy sable. Her form was equally stately and graceful—her carriage betrayed a freedom, which was at once native and the fruit of habitual exercise. Nothing could have been more gracious than the sweetness of her welcome; nothing more utterly unshadowed than the sunshine which beamed in her countenance. She led her guests among the crowd, and soon released La Vasseur to one of the loveliest girls who came about her. Alphonse D’Erlach she kept to herself. She was evidently struck with the singular union of delicacy and youth with sagacity and character, which declared itself in his features and deportment.

Very soon were all the parties engaged in the mazes of the Indian dance of Iracana,—a movement which, unlike the waltz of the Spaniards, less stately perhaps, and less imposing—yet requires all its flexibility and freedom, and possesses all its seductive and voluptuous attractions. Half the night was consumed with dancing; then gay parties could be seen gliding into canoes and darting across the stream to other villages and places of abode. Anon, might be perceived a silent couple gliding away to sacred thickets; and with the sound of a mighty conch, which strangely broke the silence of the forest, the Queen herself retired with her attendants, having first assigned to certain of her chiefs the task of providing for the Frenchmen. Of these she had already shown herself sufficiently heedful and solicitous. Not sparing of her regards to La Vasseur, she had particularly devoted herself to D’Erlach, and, while they danced together, if the truth could be spoken of her simple heart, great had been its pleasure at those moments, when the spirit of the dance required that she should yield herself to his grasp, and die away languidly in his embrace.

“Ah! handsome Frenchman,” she said to her companion,—“You please me so much.”

His companions were similarly entertained. Captain La Vasseur was soon satisfied that he too was greatly pleasing to the fair and lovely savage who had been assigned him; and not one of the Frenchmen, but had his share of the delights and endearments which made the business of life in Iracana. The soldiers had each a fair creature, with whom he waltzed and wandered; and fond discourse, everywhere in the great shadows of the wood, between sympathizing spirits, opened a new idea of existence to the poor Huguenots who, hitherto, had only known the land of Florida, by its privations and its gold. The dusky damsels, alike sweet and artless, brought back to our poor adventurers precious recollections of youthful fancies along the banks of the Garonne and the Loire, and it is not improbable, that, under the excitement of new emotions, had Laudonniere proposed to transfer La Caroline to the Satilla, or Somme, instead of May River, they might have been ready to waive, for a season at least, their impatient desire to return to France.

Night was at length subdued to silence on the banks of the Satilla. The sounds of revelry had ceased. All slept, and the transition from night to day passed, sweetly and insensibly, almost without the consciousness of the parties. But, with the sunrise, the great conch sounded in the forest. The Eden of the Floridian did not imply a life of mere repose. The people were gathered to their harvesting, and the labors of the day, under the auspices of a gracious rule, were made to seem a pleasure. Hand in hand, the Queen Iracana, with her maidens, and her guests, followed to the maize fields. Already had she found D’Erlach, and her slender fingers, without any sense of shame, had taken possession of his hand, which she pressed at moments very tenderly. He had already informed her of the wants and the sufferings of his garrison, and she smiled with a new feeling of happiness, as she eagerly assured him that his people should receive abundance. She bent with her own hands the towering stalks; and, detaching the ears, flung to the ground a few in all these places, on which it was meant that the heaps should be accumulated. “Give these to our friends, the Frenchmen,” she said, indicating with a sweep of the hand, a large tract of the field, through which they went. D’Erlach felt this liberality. He squeezed her fingers fondly in return,—saying words of compliment which, possibly, in her ear, meant something more than compliment.

Then followed the morning feast; then walks in the woods; then sports upon the river in their canoes; and snaring the fish in weirs, in which the Indians were very expert. Evening brought with it a renewal of the dance, which again continued late in the night. Again did Alphonse D’Erlach dance with Iracana; but it was now seen that her eyes saddened with the overfulness of her heart. Love is not so much a joy as a care. It is so vast a treasure, that the heart, possessed of the fullest consciousness of its value, is for ever dreading its loss. The happiness of the Floridian Eden had been of a sort which never absorbed the soul. It lacked the intensity of a fervent passion. It was the life of childhood—a thing of sport and play, of dance and dream—not that eager and avaricious passion which knows never content, and is never sure, even when most happy, from the anxieties and doubts which beset all mortal felicity. Already did our Queen begin to calculate the hours between the present, and that which should witness the departure of the pleasant Frenchmen.

“You will go from me,” said she to D’Erlach, as they went apart from the rest, wandering along the banks of the river and looking out upon the sea. “You will go from me, and I shall never see you any more.”

“I will come again, noble Queen, believe me,” was the assurance.

“Ah! come soon,” she said, “come soon, for you please me very much, Aphon.”

Such was the soft Indian corruption of his christened name. No doubt, she too gave pleasure to ‘Aphon.’ How could it be otherwise? How could he prove insensible to the tender and fervid interest which she so innocently betrayed in him? He did not. He was not insensible; and vague fancies were quickening in his mind as respects the future. He was opposed to the plan of returning to France. He was for carrying out the purposes of Coligny, and fulfilling the destinies of the colony. He had warned Laudonniere against the policy he pursued, had foreseen all the evils resulting from his unwise counsels, and there was that in his bosom which urged the glorious results to France, of a vigorous and just administration of a settlement in the western hemisphere, in which he was to participate, with his energy and forethought, without having these perpetually baffled by the imbecility and folly of an incapable superior. In such an event, how sweetly did his fancy mingle with his own fortunes those of the gentle and loving creature who stood beside him. He told her not his thoughts—they were indeed, fancies, rather than thoughts—but his arm gently encircled her waist, and while her head drooped upon her bosom, he pressed her hand with a tender earnestness, which spoke much more loudly than any language to her heart.

The hour of separation came at length. Three days had elapsed in the delights of the Floridian Eden. Our Frenchmen were compelled to tear themselves away. The objects for which they came had been gratified. The bounty of the lovely Iracana had filled with grain their boats. Her subjects had gladly borne the burdens from the fields to the vessels, while the strangers revelled with the noble and the lovely. But their revels were now to end. The garrison at La Caroline, it was felt, waited with hunger, as well as hope and anxiety for their return, and they dared to delay no longer. The parting was more difficult than they themselves had fancied. All had been well entertained, and all made happy by their entertainment. If Alphonse D’Erlach had been favored with the sweet attentions of a queen, Captain La Vasseur had been rendered no less happy by the smiles of the loveliest among her subjects. He had touched her heart also, quite as sensibly as had the former that of Iracana. Similarly fortunate had been their followers. Authority had ceased to restrain in a region where there was no danger of insubordination, and our Frenchmen, each in turn, from the sergeant to the sentinel, had been honored by regards of beauty, such as made him forgetful, for the time, of precious memories in France. Nor had these favors, bestowed upon the Frenchmen, provoked the jealousy of the numerous Indian chieftains who were present, and who shared in these festivities. It joyed them the rather to see how frankly the white men could unbend themselves to unwonted pleasures, throwing aside that jealous state, that suspicious vigilance, which, hitherto, had distinguished their bearing in all their intercourse with the Indians.

“Women of Iracana too sweet,” said the gigantic son of Satouriova, Athore, to Captain La Vasseur, as the parties, each with a light and laughing damsel in his grasp, whirled beside each other in the mystic maze of the dance.

“I much love these women of Iracana,” said Apalou, as fierce a warrior in battle, as ever swore by the altars of the Indian Moloch. “I glad you love them too, like me. Iracana woman good for too much love! They make great warrior forget his enemies.”

“Ha!” said one addressing D’Erlach, “You have beautiful women in your country, like Iracana, the Queen?”

But, we need not pursue these details. The hour of separation had arrived. Our Frenchmen had brought with them a variety of commodities grateful to the Indian eye, with which they designed to traffic; but the bounty of Iracana, which had anticipated all their wants, had asked for nothing in return. The treasures of the Frenchmen were accordingly distributed in gifts among the noble men and women of the place. Some of these Iracana condescended to take from the hands of Aphon. Her tears fell upon his offering. She gave him in return two small mats, woven of the finer straws of the country, with her own hands—wrought, indeed, while D’Erlach sat beside her in the shade of a great oak by the river bank—and “so artificially wrought,” in the language of the chronicle, “as it was impossible to make it better.” The poor Queen had few words—

“You will come to me, Aphon—you will? you will? I too much want you! Come soon, Aphon. Iracana will dance never no more till Aphon be come.”

“Aphon” felt, at that moment, that he could come without sorrow. He promised that he would. Perhaps he meant to keep his promise; but we shall see. The word was given to be aboard, and the trumpet rang, recalling the soldier who still lingered in the forest shadows, with some dusky damsel for companion. All were at length assembled, and with a last squeeze of her hand, D’Erlach took leave of his sorrowful queen. She turned away into the woods, but soon came forth again, unable to deny herself another last look.

But the Frenchmen were delayed. One of their men was missing. Where was Louis Bourdon? There was no answer to his name. The boats were searched, the banks of the river, the neighboring woods, the fields, the Indian village, and all in vain. The Frenchmen observed that the natives exhibited no eagerness in the search. They saw that many faces were clothed with smiles, when their efforts resulted fruitlessly. They could not suppose that any harm had befallen the absent soldier. They could not doubt the innocence of that hospitality, which had shown itself so fond. They conjectured rightly when they supposed that Louis Bourdon, a mere youth of twenty, had gone off with one of the damsels of Iracana, whose seductions he had found it impossible to withstand. D’Erlach spoke to the Queen upon the subject. She gave him no encouragement. She professed to know nothing, and probably did not, and she would promise nothing. She unhesitatingly declared her belief that he was in the forest, with some one that “he so much loved:” but she assured D’Erlach that to hunt them up would be an impossibility.

“Why you not stay with me, Aphon, as your soldier stay with the woman he so much love? It is good to stay. Iracana will love you too much more than other woman. Ah! you love not much the poor Iracana.”

“Nay, Iracana, I love you greatly. I will come to you again. I find it hard to tear myself away. But my people—”

“Ah! you stay with Iracana, and much love Iracana, and you have all these people. They will plant for you many fields of corn; you shall no more want; and we will dance when the evening comes, and we shall be so happy, Aphon and Iracana, to live together; Aphon the great Paracoussi, and Iracana to be Queen no more.”

It was not easy to resist these pleadings. But time pressed. Captain La Vasseur was growing impatient. The search after Louis Bourdon was abandoned, and the soldiers were again ordered on board. The anxieties of La Vasseur being now awakened, lest others of his people should be spirited away. Of this the danger was considerable. The Frenchman was a more flexible being than either the Englishman or Spaniard. It was much easier for him to assimilate with the simple Indian; and our Huguenot soldiers, who had very much forgotten their religion in their diseased thirst after gold, now, in the disappointment of the one appetite were not indifferent to the consolations afforded by a life of ease and sport, and the charms which addressed them in forms so persuasive as those of the damsels of Iracana. La Vasseur began to tremble for his command, as he beheld the reluctance of his soldiers to depart. He gave the signal hurriedly to Alphonso D’Erlach, and with another sweet single pressure of the hand, he left the lovely Queen to her own melancholy musings. She followed with her eyes the departing boats till they were clean gone from sight, then buried herself in the deepest thickets where she might weep in security.

Other eyes than hers pursued the retiring barks of the Frenchmen, with quite as much anxiety; and long after she had ceased to see them. On a little headland jutting out upon the river below, in the shade of innumerable vines and flowers, crouching in suspense, was the renegade, Louis Bourdon. By his side sat the dusky damsel who had beguiled him from his duties. While his comrades danced, he was flying through the thickets. The nation were, many of them, conscious of his flight; but they held his offence to be venial, and they encouraged him to proceed. They lent him help in crossing the river, at a point below; the father of the woman with whom he fled providing the canoe with which to transport him beyond the danger of pursuit. Little did our Frenchmen, as the boats descended, dream who watched them from the headland beneath which they passed. Many were the doubts, frequent the changes, in the feelings of the capricious renegade, as he saw his countrymen approaching him, and felt that he might soon be separated from them and home forever, by the ocean walls of the Atlantic. Whether it was that his Indian beauty detected in his face the fluctuations of his thoughts, and feared that, on the near approach of the boats, he would change his purpose and abandon her for his people, cannot be said; but just then she wound herself about within his arms, and looked up in his face, while her falling hair enmeshed his hands, and contributed, perhaps, still more firmly to ensnare his affections. His heart had been in his mouth; he could scarcely have kept from crying out to his comrades as the boats drew nigh to the cliff; but the dusky beauties beneath his gaze, the soft and delicate form within his embrace, silenced all the rising sympathies of brotherhood in more ravishing emotions. In a moment their boats had gone by; in a little while they had disappeared from sight, and the arms of the Indian woman, wrapped about her captive, declared her delight and rapture in the triumph which she now regarded as secure. Louis Bourdon little knew how much he had escaped, in thus becoming a dweller in the Floridian Eden.