Curious observations by the first French settlers in "Antarctic France" and "French Florida"
In the middle of the 16th century some French Protestants («Huguenots») established two colonies in Brazil and in Florida. In hastily built forts they had hoped to escape persecution and to create a new society based on justice and tolerance. Named «Antarctic France» and «French Florida», these settlements survived only a few years before they were destroyed by the Portuguese and the Spanish. Although the colonies proved ephemeral, the published testimonies of their first settlers about the life in the New World met an immediate success and have continued to be reprinted in modern times. This is due to the spontaneity of the first impressions of the new lands and of the natives, to the detailed descriptions of exotic plants, birds and animals, as well as to the vivid relation of the life of the French colonists and the cruelties of the Spanish in the New World. One should notice that the French settlers, in particular Jean de Lery, did not condemn the Indians for their common practice of anthropophagy, although they perceived it as a barbaric ritual - they tended to relativize it when they thought of the cruel fratricidal wars of religion going on in France at the same time.