The back country, running up to hills and even mountains stuffed with ores, was not known--though indeed Spanish adventurers had wandered there and mined for gold.

But the lowlands were warm and dense with trees and wild life.

The Huguenot Ribault, making report of this region years and years before, called it "a fayre coast stretching of a great length, covered with an infinite number of high and fayre trees," and he described the land as the "fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest of all the world, abounding in hony, venison, wilde fowle, forests, woods of all sorts, Palm-trees, Cypresse and Cedars, Bayes ye highest and greatest; with also the fayrest vines in all the world....

And the sight of the faire medows is a pleasure not able to be expressed with tongue; full of Hernes, Curlues, Bitters, Mallards, Egrepths, Woodcocks, and all other kind of small birds; with Harts, Hindes, Buckes, wilde Swine, and all other kindes of wilde beastes, as we perceived well, both by their footing there and...

their crie and roaring in the night."* This is the country of the liveoak and the magnolia, the gray, swinging moss and the yellow jessamine, the chameleon and the mockingbird.
* Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America", vol.
V, p.