Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-07-14
NENENDEZ AND THE ATTACK
ON OLD FORT CAROLINE

From the st. Augustine Record.
If Spain had been successful In her at
tempt to plant her colonies on the shores
of North America, this exploit of Menendez
would have come down in history as an ex-
petition quick in its conception and bold In
execution, remarkable for both general hip
and daring.
1t must be remembered that while much
still remained to De discovered and that
romance and tabled gold stirred the al
venturer of the Spanish main, yet the So
diers of France and Spain were no mean
adventures. Menendez represented the class
OF soldiers that had made Spain the arbiter
OF Europe Her grandees alone of all the
mobiles of Europe claimed the privilege of
standing covered in the presence of their
svereign.
France had landed near the mouth of the
river of May, now the ST. Johns and had
built Fort Caroline more than a year pre-
vious to the landing of Menendez. The
French had cultivated the friendship of tn.
Indians whose fields of maize and lump
kins were all about Fort Caroline. Their
expeditions had sailed up the river as far
as Lake Monroe and they had in all ways
possible endeavored in the face of many
acknowledgements to make a permanent
settlement.
d.
ly known to history except as the author of
the massacre at MatanZas inlet and his
character for courage and generalshiD has
scarcely been considered; yet the eXyedi-
tion TO Fort Caroline from st. Augustine is
Stormlng and capture would alone STAMP
MIN as man of great resource and deci-
sion. A few days after his landing and
beginning the foundation of the present
city OF st: Augustine, he just escaped
capture. When outside the bar, giving
dispatches for the king to the captain of
the ship about to sail for Spain, one of
RlDauts ships coming down the coast from
the River of May, appeared in the offing
and called on him to surrender; but he es-
capped over the bar and once inside safely
bid defiance to his pursuers. The September
gale, with which are all so familiar was
even then rising, and he rightly judged a
great part of the garrison of Fort Caroline
must be on board Rlbaut's ships, and that
now was the opportunity to strike most
effective blow at Fort Caroline; so he made
preparations at once to start with force
or i've hundred men. He succeeded in w.n-
nlng over the other officers whose judgment
at first had been against the expedition, ard
with two Indian guides familiar with TIE
trail, they started
MenendeZs own account is the most mod
est of any, given in his dispatches to the
King of Spain. They carried twenty scaling
ladders in addition to arms and provisions,
Menendez himself bearing equal burden
with the humblest soldier
The path is not a difficult one to trace
even to this day. AS two Indians were their
guides, assisted by a renegade Frenchman
from Fort Caroline, they must have fol-
lowed the well-known trail that led along
the coast to the maize fields that lay along
the borders Of st. Johns bluff on the River
of May. 1t must have led along not far
from the North river, crossing near its
headwater. the hammock at the site of
which was afterward Fort Diego, and from
thence to what is now st. Johns bluff Just