Menendez was allowed three years for his tremendous task. He
was to take with him five hundred men and as many slaves, a suitable
supply of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and provisions, and sixteen
priests, four of whom were to be Jesuits. He had also to find ships to
convey this great expedition.
But Menendez had been playing for big stakes all his life. He was only
ten years old when he ran away and went to sea on a Barbary pirate ship.
While yet a lad he was captain of a ship of his own, fighting pirates
and French privateers. He had served in the West Indies and he had
commanded fleets. King Philip had never really understood the enormous
possibilities of Florida until Menendez explained them to him. The soil
was fertile, the climate good, there might be valuable mines, and there
were above all countless heathen whom it was the deepest desire of
Menendez to convert to the true faith. In this last statement he was as
sincere as he was in the others. He expected to do in Florida what
Cortes had done in Mexico. Now heresy, the unpardonable sin, burned out
and stamped out in Spain, had appeared in the province which he had
bound himself at the cost of a million ducats to make Spanish and
Catholic. With furious energy he pushed on the work of preparation.
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