"
In the morning the French landed again, and found their new friends on
the same spot, to the number of eighty or more, seated under a shelter
of boughs, in festal attire of smoke-tanned deer-skins, painted in many
colors. The party then rowed up the river, the Indians following them
along the shore. As they advanced, coasting the borders of a great marsh
that lay upon their left, the St. John's spread before them in vast
sheets of glistening water, almost level with its flat, sedgy shores,
the haunt of alligators, and the resort of innumerable birds. Beyond the
marsh, some five miles from the mouth of the river, they saw a ridge of
high ground abutting on the water, which, flowing beneath in a deep,
strong current, had undermined it, and left a steep front of yellowish
sand. This was the hill now called St. John's Bluff. Here they landed
and entered the woods, where Laudonniere stopped to rest while his
lieutenant, Ottigny, with a sergeant and a few soldiers, went to explore
the country.
They pushed their way through the thickets till they were stopped by a
marsh choked with reeds, at the edge of which, under a great
laurel-tree, they had seated themselves to rest, overcome with the
summer heat, when five Indians suddenly appeared, peering timidly at
them from among the bushes.
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