French Explorer Rene Ribault and Merchant Mariner Rene Goulaine de Laudeonniere led the French exploration of Florida and South Carolina in the middle 1500's...............They established a temporary Huguenot colony in Florida which ultimately did not sustain itself, collapsing and eventually allowing Spain to claim Florida as a posession...............Nonetheless, Ribault and his 2nd in command Laudonniere planted that first French flag in Florida and documented the vast array of wildlife from two wolf species, to Cougars to Jaguars to Crocodiles, Alligators and snakes of all kinds..............Florida, like all of North America, a cornucopia of "wild" in 1562AD

History of the First Attempts of the
French (The Huguenots)
to Colonize the Newly Discovered
Country of Florida
Explorer Jean Ribault's first attempt in 1562

by Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere

 Jean Ribault (sometimes Ribaut) was a French naval officer, navigator and early colonizer in the area that would become the southeastern United States. He was born in the English Channel village of Dieppe, but little else is known about his youth.  In 1562, Ribault was chosen to lead an expedition to the New World specifically to establish a haven for French Protestants, the Huguenots. A small fleet with 150 colonists crossed the Atlantic and briefly explored the mouth of the St. Johns River near modern-day Jacksonville, Florida. A stone monument was erected on land as proof of the French claim to the area. Ribault's party then proceeded north and selected a settlement site on Parris Island, one of the Sea Islands off the coast of present-day South Carolina. The small colony was called Charlesfort in honor of the French king, Charles IX. Ribault oversaw the initial layout of the settlement, then returned to home for additional supplies.

Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière was a Huguenot nobleman and merchant mariner from Poitou, France. His birthdate and family origins are uncertain. One school of historians attaches him to a branch of the Goulaine family seated at Laudonnière, near Nantes. A competing claim insists that he was a Burdigale (or Bourdigalle) from the port town of Sables d'Olonne. No contemporary records have been published to substantiate either theory.^[1]
In 1562, he was appointed second in command of the Huguenot expedition to Florida under Jean Ribault. Leaving in February 1562, the expedition returned home in July after establishing the small settlement of Charlesfort in present-day South Carolina.

"There groweth, in those parts, great quantity of pine trees, which have no kernels in the apples which they bear. Their woods are full of oak, walnuts, black cherry trees, mulberry trees, lentisks and chestnut trees, which are more wild' than those in France. There is great store of ceders, cypresses, bays, palm trees, hollys, and wild vines, which climb up along the trees, and bear good grapes. There is a kind of medlars, the finest whereof is better than that of France, and bigger. There are ' also plum trees, which bear very fair fruit, but, such as is, not very good. There are raspasses, and a little berry, which we call among us, blues, which are very good to eat. There grow, in that country, a kind of root, which they call, in their language, hasez, whereof,
in necessity, they make bread. There is also there the tree called esqume, which is very good against the small-pox, and other contagious diseases.

 The beasts best known in this country are-stags, hinds, goats, deer, leopards(likely cougars), dunces, lucerns, divers sorts of wolves, wild dogs(the eastern wolf as well as the gray?), hares, cunnies, and a certain kind of beast that differeth little from the lion of Africa(likely Jaguars). The fowls are turkey cocks, partridges, parrots, pigeons, ringdoves, turtles, blackbirds, crows, tarcels, falcons, layuerds,' herons, cranes, storks, wild geese, malards, cormorants, hernshawswhite, red, black, and gray-and an infinite sort of all wild fowl.

There is such abundance of crocodiles, that oftentimes, in swimming, men are assailed by them; of serpents, there are many sorts".