[Pioneers of the Old South by Mary Johnston]@TWC D-Link bookPioneers of the Old South CHAPTER VI 22/27
Later, he appeared before Port Royal, where he burned the cabins, slew the cattle, and drove into the forest the settler Frenchmen.
But Port Royal and the land about it called Acadia, though much hurt, survived Argall's fishing.* * Argall, on his fishing trip, has been credited with attacking not only the French in Acadia but the Dutch traders on Manhattan.
But there are grounds for doubt if he did the latter. There was also on Virginia in these days the shadow of Spain.
In 1611 the English had found upon the beach near Point Comfort three Spaniards from a Spanish caravel which, as the Englishmen had learned with alarm, "was fitted with a shallop necessarie and propper to discover freshetts, rivers, and creekes." They took the three prisoner and applied for instructions to Dale, who held them to be spies and clapped them into prison at Point Comfort. That Dale's suspicions were correct, is proved by a letter which the King of Spain wrote in cipher to the Spanish Ambassador in London ordering him to confer with the King as to the liberty of three prisoners whom Englishmen in Virginia have captured.
The three are "the Alcayde Don Diego de Molino, Ensign Marco Antonio Perez, and Francisco Lembri an English pilot, who by my orders went to reconnoitre those ports." Small wonder that Dale was apprehensive.
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