Embarkation of Christopher Columbus at Palos. From an old
print.
From Palos they first bore southward to the Canary Islands, into the
track of the prevalent east winds, then headed west, for Cipango, as
Columbus supposed, but really toward the northern part of Florida. When
a little beyond what he regarded the longitude of Cipango, noticing the
flight of birds to the southwest, he was induced to follow these, which
accident made his landfall occur at Guanahani (San Salvador), in the
Bahamas, instead of the Florida coast.
Near midnight, between October 11th and 12th, Columbus, being on the
watch, descried a light ahead. About two o'clock on the morning of the
12th the lookout on the Pinta distinctly saw land through the moonlight.
When it was day they went on shore. The 12th of October, 1492,
therefore, was the date on which for the first time, so far as history
attests with assurance, a European foot pressed the soil of this
continent. Adding nine days to this to translate it into New Style, we
have October 21st as the day answering to that on which Columbus first
became sure that his long toil and watching had not been in vain.
[1493-1500]
The admiral having failed to note its latitude and longitude, it is not
known which of the Bahamas was the San Salvador of Columbus, whether
Grand Turk Island, Cat (the present San Salvador), Watling, Mariguana,
Acklin, or Samana, though the last named well corresponds with his
description. Mr. Justin Winsor, however, and with him a majority of the
latest critics, believes that Watling's Island was the place. Before
returning to Spain, Columbus discovered Cuba, and also Hayti or
Espagnola (Hispaniola), on the latter of which islands he built a fort.
In a second voyage, from Cadiz, 1493-1496, the great explorer discovered
the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica. In a third, 1498-1500, he came upon
Trinidad and the mainland of South America, at the mouth of the Orinoco.
This was later by thirteen months and a week than the Cabots' landfall
at Labrador or Nova Scotia, though a year before Amerigo Vespucci saw
the coast of Brazil. It was during this third absence that Columbus,
hated as an Italian and for his undeniable greed, was superseded by
Bobadilla, who sent him and his brother home in chains. Soon free again,
he sets off in 1502 upon a fourth cruise, in which he reaches the coast
of Honduras.
To the day of his death, however, the discoverer of America never
suspected that he had brought to light a new continent. Even during this
his last expedition he maintained that the coast he had touched was that
of Mangi, contiguous to Cathay, and that nineteen days of travel
overland would have taken him to the Ganges. He arrived in Spain on
September 12, 1504, and died at Segovia on May 20th of the next year.
His bones are believed to rest in the cathedral at Santo Domingo,
transported thither in 1541, the Columbus-remains till recently at
Havana being those of his son Diego. The latter, under the belief that
they were the father's, were transferred to Genoa in 1887, and deposited
there on July 2d of that year with the utmost ecclesiastical pomp.
[1500-1507]
As Columbus was ignorant of having found a new continent, so was he
denied the honor of giving it a name, this falling by accident, design,
or carelessness of truth, to Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence,
whose active years were spent in Spain and Portugal. Vespucci made three
voyages into the western seas. In the second, 1501, he visited the coast
of Brazil, and pushed farther south than any navigator had yet done,
probably so far as the island of South Georgia, in latitude 54 degrees.
His account of this voyage found its way into print in 1504, at
Augsburg, Germany, the first published narrative of any discovery of the
mainland. Although, as above noted, it was not the earliest discovery of
the main, it was widely regarded such, and caused Vespucci to be named
for many years as the peer, if not the superior of Columbus. The
publication ran through many editions. That of Strassburg, 1505,
mentioned Vespucci on its title-page as having discovered a new
"Southern Land." This is the earliest known utterance hinting at the
continental nature of the new discovery, as separate from Asia, an idea
which grew into a conviction only after Magellan's voyage, described in
the next chapter. In 1507 appeared at St. Die, near Strassburg, a
four-page pamphlet by one Lud, secretary to the Duke of Lorraine,
describing Vespucci's voyages and speaking of the Indians as the
"American race." This pamphlet came out the same year in another form,
as part of a book entitled "Introduction to Cosmography," prepared by
Martin Waldseemuller, under the nom de plume of "Hylacomylus." In this
book the new "part of the world" is distinctly called "THE LAND OF
AMERICUS, OR AMERICA," There is some evidence that Vespucci at least
connived at the misapprehension which brought him his renown--as
undeserved as it has become permanent--but this cannot be regarded as
proved.
Amerigo Vespucci. Fac-simile of an old print.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY SPANISH AMERICA
[1498]
As we have seen, Spain by no means deserves the entire credit of
bringing the western continent to men's knowledge. Columbus himself was
an Italian. So was Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Toscanelli, his
instructor, by whose chart he sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To
Portugal as well Columbus was much indebted, despite his rebuff there.
Portugal then led the world in the art of navigation and in enthusiasm
for discovery. Nor, probably, would Columbus have asked her aid in vain,
had she not previously committed herself to the enterprise of reaching
India eastward, a purpose brilliantly fulfilled when, in 1498, Vasco da
Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to Calicut, on the coast
of Malabar. Already before this Spain and Portugal were rivals in the
search for new lands, and Pope Alexander VI. had had to be appealed to,
to fix their fields. By his bull of May 3, 4, 1493, he ordained as the
separating line the meridian passing through a point one hundred leagues
west of the Azores, where Columbus had observed the needle of his
compass to point without deflection toward the north star. Portugal
objecting to this boundary as excluding her from the longitude of the
newly found Indies, by the treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, the two
powers, with the Pope's assent, moved the line two hundred and seventy
leagues still farther west. At this time neither party dreamed of the
complications destined subsequently to arise in reference to the
position of this meridian on the other side of the globe.
Vasco da Gama; From an old print.
The meridian of the Tordesillas convention had been supposed still to
give Spain all the American discoveries likely to be made, it being
ascertained only later that by it Portugal had obtained a considerable
part of the South American mainland Brazil, we know, was, till in 1822
it became independent, a Portuguese dependency. Spain, however, retained
both groups of the Antilles with the entire main about the Gulf of
Mexico, and became the earliest great principality in the western world.
[1506-1513]
Before the death of Columbus, Spain had taken firm possession of Cuba,
Porto Rico, and St. Domingo, and she stood ready to seize any of the
adjoining islands or lands so soon as gold, pearls, or aught else of
value should be found there. Cruises of discovery were made in every
direction, first, indeed, in Central and South America. In 1506 de Solis
sailed along the eastern coast of Yucatan. In 1513 the governor of a
colony on the Isthmus of Darien, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, from the top of
a lofty mountain on the isthmus, saw what is now called the Pacific
Ocean. He designated it the South Sea, a name which it habitually bore
till far into the eighteenth century. From this time the exploration and
settlement of the western coast, both up and down, went on with little
interruption, but this history, somewhat foreign to our theme, we cannot
detail.
Balboa discovering the Pacific Ocean.
Ponce de Leon.
The same year, 1513, Ponce de Leon, an old Spanish soldier in the wars
with the Moors, a companion of Columbus in his second voyage, and till
now governor of Porto Rico, began exploration to the northward. Leaving
Porto Rico with three ships, he landed on the coast of an unknown
country, where he thought to find not only infinite gold but also the
much-talked-about fountain of perpetual youth. His landing occurred on
Easter Sunday, or Pascua Florida, March 27, 1513, and so he named the
country Florida. The place was a few miles north of the present town of
St. Augustine. Exploring the coast around the southern extremity of the
peninsula, he sailed among a group of islands, which he designated the
Tortugas. Returning to Porto Rico, he was appointed governor of the new
country. He made a second voyage, was attacked by the natives and
mortally wounded, and returned to Cuba to die.
[1518-1520]
Juan de Grijalva explored the south coast of the Gulf of Mexico, from
Yucatan toward the Panuco. Interest attaches to this enterprise mainly
because the treasure which Grijalva collected aroused the envy and greed
of the future conqueror of Mexico, Hernando Cortez.
In 1518, Velasquez, governor of Cuba, sends Cortez westward, with eleven
ships and over six hundred men, for the purpose of exploration. He
landed at Tabasco, thence proceeded to the Island of San Juan de Ulua,
nearly opposite Vera Cruz, where he received messengers and gifts from
the Emperor Montezuma. Ordered to leave the country, he destroyed his
ships and marched directly upon the capital. He seized Montezuma and
held him as a hostage for the peaceable conduct of his subjects. The
Mexicans took up arms, only to be defeated again and again by the
Spaniards. Montezuma became a vassal of the Spanish crown, and
covenanted to pay annual tribute. Attempting to reconcile his people to
this agreement he was himself assailed and wounded, and, refusing all
nourishment, soon after died. With re-enforcements, Cortez completed
the conquest of the country, and Mexico became a province of Spain.
Montezuma mortally wounded by his own subjects.
Hernando Cortes. From an old print.
Vasquez de Ayllon, one of the auditors of the Island of Santo Domingo,
sent two ships from that island to the Bahamas for Indians to be sold as
slaves. Driven from their course by the wind, they at length reached the
shore of South Carolina, at the mouth of the Wateree River, which they
named the Jordan, calling the country Chicora. Though kindly treated by
the natives, the ruthless adventurers carried away some seventy of
these. One ship was lost, and most of the captives on the others died
during the voyage. Vasquez was, by the Emperor Charles V., King of
Spain, made governor of this new province, and again set sail to take
possession. But the natives, in revenge for the cruel treatment which
they had previously received, made a furious attack upon the invaders.
The few survivors of the slaughter returned to Santo Domingo, and the
expedition was abandoned. These voyages were in 1520 and 1526.
In connection with the subject of Spanish voyages, a passing notice
should be given to one, who, though not of Spanish birth, yet did much
to further the progress of discovery on the part of his adopted country.
Magellan was a Portuguese navigator who had been a child when Columbus
came back in triumph from the West Indies. Refused consideration from
King Emmanuel, of Portugal, for a wound received under his flag during
the war against Morocco, he renounced his native land and offered his
services to the sagacious Charles V., of Spain, who gladly accepted
them, With a magnificent fleet, Magellan, in 1519, set sail from
Seville, cherishing Columbus's bold purpose, which no one had yet
realized, of reaching the East Indies by a westward voyage, After
touching at the Canaries, he explored the coast of South America, passed
through the strait now called by his name, discovered the Ladrone
Islands, and christened the circumjacent ocean the Pacific.
The illustrious navigator now sailed for the
Philippine
Islands, so
named from Philip, son of Charles V., who succeeded that monarch as
Philip II. By the Tordesillas division above described, the islands were
properly in the Portuguese hemisphere, but on the earliest maps, made by
Spaniards, they were placed twenty-five degrees too far east, and this
circumstance, whether accidental or designed, has preserved them to
Spain even to the present time. At the Philippine Islands Magellan was
killed in an affray with the natives. One of his ships, the Victoria,
after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, arrived in Spain, having
been the first to circumnavigate the globe. The voyage had taken three
years and twenty-eight days.
[1528-1540]
The disastrous failure of the expedition of Vasquez de Ayllon to Florida
did not discourage attempts on the part of others in the same direction.
Velaspuez, governor of Cuba, jealous of the success of Cortez in Mexico,
had sent Pamphilo de Narvaez to arrest him. In this attempt Narvaez had
been defeated and taken prisoner. Undeterred by this failure he had
solicited and received of Charles V. the position of governor over
Florida, a territory at that time embracing the whole southern part of
what is now the United States, and reaching from Cape Sable to the
Panuco, or River of Palms, in Mexico. With three hundred men he, in
1528, landed near Appalachee Bay, and marched inland with the hope of
opening a country rich and populous. Bitterly was he disappointed.
Swamps and forests, wretched wigwams with their squalid inmates
everywhere met his view, but no gold was to be found. Discouraged, he
and his followers returned to the coast, where almost superhuman toil
and skill enabled them to build five boats, in which they hoped to work
westward to the Spanish settlements. Embarking, they stole cautiously
along the coast for some distance, but were at last driven by a storm
upon an island, perhaps Galveston, perhaps Santa Rosa, where Narvaez and
most of his men perished. Four of his followers survived to cross Texas
to the Gulf of California and reach the town of San Miguel on the west
coast of Mexico. Here they found their countrymen, searching as usual
for pearls, gold, and slaves, and by their help they made a speedy
return to Spain, heroes of as remarkable an adventure as history
records. These unfortunates were the first Europeans to visit New
Mexico. Their narrative led to the exploration of that country by
Coronado and others, and to the discoveries of Cortez in Lower
California.
Death of Magellan.
Ferdinand de Soto.
Ferdinand de Soto, eager to rival the exploits of Cortez in Mexico, and
of his former commander, Pizarro, in Peru, offered to conquer Florida at
his own expense. Appointed governor-general of Florida and of Cuba, he
sailed with seven large and three small vessels. From Espiritu Santo Bay
he, in 1539, marched with six hundred men into the country of the
Appalachians and discovered the harbor of Pensacola. After wintering at
Appalachee he set out into the interior, said to abound in gold and
silver. Penetrating northeasterly as far as the Savannah, he found only
copper and mica. From here he marched first northwest into northern
central Georgia, then southwest into Alabama. A battle was fought with
the natives at Mavila, or Mobile, in which the Spaniards suffered
serious loss. Ships that he had ordered arrived at Pensacola, but de
Soto determined not to embark until success should have crowned his
efforts. He turned back into the interior, into the country of the
Chickasaws, marched diagonally over the present State of Mississippi to
its northwest corner, and crossed the Mississippi River near the lowest
Chickasaw Bluff. From this point the general direction of the Spanish
progress was southwest, through what is now Arkansas, past the site of
Little Rock, till at last a river which seems to have been the Washita
was reached. Down this stream de Soto and his decimated force
floated--two hundred and fifty of his men had succumbed to the hardships
and perils of his march--arriving at the junction of the Red with the
Mississippi River on Sunday, April 17, 1542. At this point de Soto
sickened and died, turning over the command to Luis de Moscoso. Burying
their late leader's corpse at night deep in the bosom of the great
river, and constructing themselves boats, the survivors of this
ill-fated expedition, now reduced to three hundred and seventy-two
persons, made the best of their way down the Mississippi to the Gulf,
and along its coast, finally reaching the Spanish town near the mouth of
the Panuco in Mexico.
A Palisaded Indian Town in Alabama.
Burial of de Soto in the Mississippi at night.
[1562]
Thus no settlement had as yet been made in Florida by the Spanish. The
first occupation destined to be permanent was brought about through
religious jealousy inspired by the establishment of a French Protestant
(Huguenot) colony in the territory. Ribault, a French captain
commissioned by Charles IX., was put in command of an expedition by that
famous Huguenot, Admiral Coligny, and landed on the coast of Florida, at
the mouth of the St. John's, which he called the River of May. This was
in 1562. The name Carolina, which that section still bears, was given to
a fort at Port Royal, or St. Helena. Ribault returned to France, where
civil war was then raging between the Catholics and the Protestants or
Huguenots. His colony, waiting for promised aid and foolishly making no
attempt to cultivate the soil, soon languished. Dissensions arose, and
an effort was made to return home. Famine having carried off the greater
number, the colony came to an end. In 1564 Coligny sent out Laudonniere,
who built another fort, also named Carolina, on the River of May. Again
misfortunes gathered thickly about the settlers, when Ribault arrived
bringing supplies.
Fort Carolina on the River of May.
[1565]
Pedro Melendez.
But Spain claimed this territory, and Pedro Melendez a Spanish soldier,
was in 1565 sent by Philip II. to conquer it from the French, doubly
detested as Protestants. He landed in the harbor and at the mouth of the
river, to both of which he gave the name St. Augustine. Melendez lost no
time in attacking Fort Carolina, which he surprised, putting the
garrison mercilessly to the sword. The destruction of the French colony
was soon after avenged by Dominic de Gourgues, who sailed from France to
punish the enemies of his country. Having accomplished his purpose by
the slaughter of the Spanish garrison he returned home, but the French
Protestants made no further effort to colonize Florida.
Spain claimed the land by right of discovery, but, although maintaining
the feeble settlement at St. Augustine, did next to nothing after this
to explore or civilize this portion of America. The nation that had sent
out Columbus was not destined to be permanently the great power of the
New World. The hap of first landing upon the Antilles, and also the warm
climate and the peaceable nature of the aborigines, led Spain to fix her
settlements in latitudes that were too low for the best health and the
greatest energy. Most of the settlers were of a wretched class,
criminals and adventurers, and they soon mixed largely with the natives.
Spain herself greatly lacked in vigor, partly from national causes,
partly from those obscure general causes which even to this day keep
Latin Europe, in military power and political accomplishments, inferior
to Teutonic or Germanic Europe.
Indians devoured by dogs. From an old print.
[1570]
Moreover, the Spaniards found their first American conquests too easy,
and the rewards of these too great. This prevented all thought of
developing the country through industry, concentrating expectation
solely upon waiting fortunes, to be had from the natives by the sword or
through forced labor in mines, Their treatment of the aborigines was
nothing short of diabolical. Well has it been said: "The Spaniards had
sown desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had
depopulated some of the best peopled of the islands and renewed them
with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of
thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty,
driving them to self-starvation and suicide, as a way of mercy and
release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed
by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel
desperation and mercilessness in passion. The hell which they denounced
upon their victims was shorn of its worst terror by the assurance that
these tormentors were not to be there. Las Casas, the noble missionary,
the true soldier of the cross, and the few priests and monks who
sympathized with him, in vain protested against these cruelties."
To all these causes we must add the narrow colonial policy of Spain.
Imitating Venice and ancient Carthage instead of Greece, she held her
dependencies under the straitest servitude to herself as conquered
provinces, repressing all political or commercial independence. A
similar restrictive policy, indeed, hampered the colonies of other
nations, but it was nowhere else so irrational or blighting as in
Spanish America.
CHAPTER III.
EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION BY THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH
[1534]
How the French fought for foothold in Florida and were routed by the
Spaniards has just been related. So early as 1504, and possibly much
earlier, before Cabot or Columbus, French sailors were familiar with the
fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle of Cape Breton they gave its name
in remembrance of their own Brittany. The attention of the French
Government was thus early directed toward America, and it at length
determined to share in the new discoveries along with the Spanish and
the English.
In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was sent by Francis I. on a
voyage of discovery to the New World. Sighting the shores of America
near the present Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored the coast of
New Jersey, touched land near New York Bay, and anchored a few days in
the harbor of Newport. In this vicinity he came upon an island, which
was probably Block Island. Sailing from here along the coast as far
north as Newfoundland, he named this vast territory New France.
Verrazano, the Florentine Navigator.
Jacques Cartier. From an old print.
[1540]
In 1534 Cartier, a noted voyager of St. Malo, coasted along the north of
Newfoundland, passed through the Straits of Belle Isle into the water
now known as St. Lawrence Gulf, and into the mouth of the St. Lawrence
River. Erecting a cross, he took possession of the shores in the name of
the king of France.
In the following year he made a second voyage, going up as far as the
mouth of a small river which the year before he had named St. John's. He
called the waters the Bay of St. Lawrence. Ascending this, he came to a
settlement of the natives near a certain hill, which he called Mont
Royal, now modified into "Montreal." Cartier returned to France in 1536,
only a few of his men having survived the winter.
In 1540 Lord Roberval fitted out a fleet, with Cartier as subordinate.
Cartier sailed at once--his third voyage--Roberval following the next
year. A fort was built near the present site of Quebec. Roberval and
Cartier disagreed and returned to France, leaving the real foundation of
Quebec to be laid by Champlain, much later.
In 1604 De Monts arrived on the coast of Nova Scotia and erected a fort
at the mouth of the St. Croix, New Brunswick. He also made a settlement
on the shore of the present harbor of Annapolis, naming it Port Royal,
and the country around it Acadia. De Monts is famous largely because
under him the Sieur de Champlain, the real father of French colonization
in America, began his illustrious career. He had entered the St.
Lawrence in 1603. In 1608 he founded Quebec, the first permanent colony
of New France. The next year he explored the lake which perpetuates his
name. In 1615 he saw Lake Huron, Le Caron, the Franciscan, preceding him
in this only by a few days. Fired with ardor for discovery, Champlain
joined the Hurons in an attack upon the Iroquois. This led him into what
is now New York State, but whether the Indian camp first attacked by him
was on Onondaga or on Canandaigua Lake is still in debate. These were
but the beginning of Champlain's travels, by which many other Frenchmen,
some as missionaries, some as traders, were inspired to press far out
into the then unknown West. We shall resume the narrative in Chapter VII
of the next period. Champlain died at Quebec in 1635.
Turn back now to Columbus's time. England, destined to dominate the
continent of North America, was also practically the discoverer of the
same. On St. John's day, June 24, 1497, thirteen months and a week
before Columbus saw South America, John Cabot, a Venetian in the service
of King Henry VII., from the deck of the good ship Matthew, of Bristol,
descried land somewhere on the coast either of Labrador or of Nova
Scotia. Cabot, of course, supposed this prima vista of his to belong to
Asia, and expected to reach Cipango next voyage. So late as 1543 Jean
Allefonsce, on reaching New England, took it for the border of Tartary.
Andre Thevet, in 1515, in a pretended voyage to Maine, places Cape
Breton on the west coast of Asia. This confusion probably
explains the
tradition of Norumbega as a great city, and of other populous and
wealthy cities in the newly found land. Men transferred ideas of Eastern
Asia to this American shore.
[1516]
The subsequent year Cabot made a second voyage,
inspecting the American
coast northward till icebergs were met, southward to the vicinity of
Albemarle Sound. Possibly in his first expedition, probably in the
second, John Cabot was accompanied by his more famous son, Sebastian.
For many years after the Cabots, England made little effort to explore
the New World. Henry VII. was a Catholic. He therefore submitted to the
Pope's bull which gave America to Spain. Henry VIII. had married
Catherine of Aragon. He allowed Ferdinand, her father, to employ the
skill and daring of Sebastian Cabot in behalf of Spain. It was reserved
for the splendid reign of Elizabeth to show what English courage and
endurance could accomplish in extending England's power.
Sebastian Cabot. From an old print.
[1576]
Like those before him, Martin Frobisher was in earnest to find the
northwest passage, in whose existence all navigators then fully
believed. Like Columbus, he vainly sought friends to aid him. At last,
after he had waited fifteen years in vain, Dudley, the Earl of Warwick,
helped him to an outfit. His little fleet embraced the Gabriel, of
thirty-five tons, the Michael of thirty, and a pinnace of ten. As it
swept to sea past Greenwich, the Queen waved her hand in token of
good-will. Sailing northward near the Shetland Isles, Frobisher passed
the southern shore of Greenland and came in sight of Labrador, 1576.
He effected a landing at Hall's Island, at the mouth of the bay now
called by his name, but which he thought to be a strait, his discovery
thus strengthening his belief in the possibility of reaching Asia by
this westward course. He sailed up the bay as far as Butcher's Island,
where five of his men were taken prisoners by the natives. All effort to
rescue them was made, but to no purpose. Among the curiosities which he
brought home was a piece of stone, or black ore, which gave rise to the
belief that gold was to be found in this new country.
[1577]
A second and larger expedition sailed in 1577. The Queen gave 1,000
pounds and lent the royal ship Aid, of two hundred tons. The Gabriel and
the Michael of the former year were again made ready, besides smaller
craft. This voyage was to seek gold rather than to discover the
northwest passage. The fleet set sail May 27th, and on July 18th arrived
off North Foreland, or Hall's Island, so named for the man who had
brought away the piece of black earth. Search was made for this metal,
supposed to be so valuable, and large quantities were found. The fleet
sailed back to England with a heavy cargo of it.
In 1578 a third and the last voyage was made to this region, to which
the name meta incognita was given. Two large ships were furnished by the
Queen, and these were accompanied by thirteen smaller ones.
[1578-1580]
It was now the purpose to found a colony. The expedition set sail May
31st, going through the English Channel, and reaching the coast of
Greenland June 21st. Frobisher and a few of his sailors landed where,
perhaps, white men had never trodden before. As he came near the bay he
was driven south by stormy weather, and entered, not knowing his
whereabouts, the waters of Hudson's Straits, which he traversed a
distance of sixty miles. He succeeded at length in retracing his course,
and anchored on the southern shore of Frobisher's Bay, in the Countess
of Warwick's Sound. But the desire for gold, the bleak winds, barren
shores, and drifting icebergs, all combined to dispel the hopes of
making a successful settlement, and the adventurers turned their faces
homeward, carrying once more a cargo of ore, which proved, like the
first, to be of no value whatever.
Almost three hundred years later Captain Hall, the American explorer,
visited the Countess's Island and Sound. Among the Eskimos, from 1860 to
1862, he learned the tradition of Frobisher's visits, which had been
preserved and handed down. They knew the number of ships; they spoke of
the three times that white men had come; how five of these strangers had
been taken captive, and how, after remaining through the winter, they
had been allowed to build a boat, and to launch themselves upon the icy
seas, never to be heard of more. Captain Hall was shown many relics of
Frobisher's voyages, some of which he sent to the Royal Geographical
Society of London, a part to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington.
The small English house of lime and stone on this island was still
standing in good condition, and there was also a trench where they had
built their ill-fated boat.
An Indian Village at the Roanoke Settlement.
A contemporary of Frobisher, Sir Francis Drake, also entertained the
idea of making the northwest passage. While engaged in privateering or
piratical expeditions against the Spanish, Drake landed on the Isthmus
of Panama, saw the Pacific for the first time, and determined to enter
it by the Straits of Magellan. In 1577 he made his way through the
straits, plundered the Spanish along the coast of Chili and Peru, and
sailed as far north as the 48th parallel, or Oregon, calling the country
New Albion. Steering homeward by the Cape of Good Hope, he arrived at
Plymouth, his starting-point, in 1580, having been absent about two
years and ten months.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Thomas Cavendish had been with Grenville in the voyage of 1585 to
Virginia. Frobisher's attempts inspired him with the ambition of the
age. In 1586 he, too, sailed through the Straits of Magellan, burning
and plundering Spanish ships, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached
Plymouth in 1588, having been gone about two years and fifty days.
Sir Walter Raleigh.
From a portrait attributed to Zuccaro
in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
[1584]
These half-piratical attempts against Spain led continually into
American waters, till the notion of forming a permanent outpost here as
base for such adventures suggested to Sir Humphrey Gilbert the plan,
which he failed to realize, of founding an American settlement. Gilbert
visited our shores in 1579, and again in 1583, but was lost on his
return from the latter voyage.
In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent two captains, Amidas and Barlow, to
inspect the coast off what is now North Carolina. They reported so
favorably that he began, next year, a colony on Roanoke Island. England
was now a Protestant land, and no longer heeded Spanish claims to the
transatlantic continent, save so far as actual settlements had been
made.
[1586]
Sir Richard Grenville commanded this expedition, but was to return on
seeing the one hundred and eight colonists who accompanied him well
established. Queen Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the new country.
Drake, tending homeward from one of his raids on the Spanish coast, in
1586, offered the settlers supplies, but finding them wholly
discouraged, he carried them back to England.
Queen Elizabeth.
[1587]
Determined to plant an agricultural community, Raleigh next time, l587,
sent men with their families. A daughter to one of these, named Dare,
was the first child of English parents born in America. Becoming
destitute, the colony despatched its governor home for supplies. He
returned to find the settlement deserted, and no tidings as to the fate
of the poor colonists have ever been heard from that day to our own. The
Jamestown settlers mentioned in the next chapter found among their
Indian neighbors a boy whose whitish complexion and wavy hair induced
the interesting suspicion that he was descended from some one of these
lost colonists of Roanoke.
Thus Sir Walter's enterprise had to be abandoned. In the 40,000 pounds
spent upon it his means were exhausted. Besides, England was now at war
with Spain, and the entire energies of the nation were in requisition
for the overthrow of the Spanish Armada.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA
[1606]
We have now arrived at the seventeenth century. In 1606 King James I.
issued the first English colonial charter. It created a first and a
second Virginia Company, the one having its centre in London, and coming
to be known as the London Company; the other made up of Bristol, Exeter,
and Plymouth men, and gradually taking the title of the Plymouth
Company. This latter company, the second, or Plymouth Company,
authorized to plant between 38 degrees and 45 degrees north, effected a
settlement in 1607 at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Little came of it
but suffering, the colonists, after a severe winter, returning to
England.
King James I. Mr. Henry Irving's Collection.
[1607]
A colony of one hundred and five planters sent out by the first or
London Company, proceeded, also in 1607, to Chesapeake Bay, entering
James River, to which they indeed gave this name, and planted upon its
banks Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on the continent.
This London Company consisted of a council in England, appointed by the
king, having the power to name the members of a local council which was
to govern the colony, the colonists themselves having no voice.
It is well known that the very earliest population of the Old Dominion
was not of the highest, but predominantly idle and thriftless. Vagabonds
and homeless children picked up in the streets of London, as well as
some convicts, were sent to the colony from England to be indented as
servants, permanently, or for a term of years. Persons of the better
class, to be sure, came as well, and the quality of the population, on
the whole, improved year by year. Settlement here followed a centrifugal
tendency, except as this was repressed by fear of the Indians. In 1616
the departments of Virginia were Henrico, up the James above the
Appomattox mouth, West and Shirley Hundreds, Jamestown, Kiquoton, and
King's Gift on the coast near Cape Charles--a wide reach of territory to
be covered by a total population of only three hundred and fifty.
[1608]
A little exporting was immediately begun. So early as May 20, 1608,
Jamestown sent to England a ship laden with iron ore, sassafras, cedar
posts, and walnut boards. Another followed on June 2d, with a cargo all
of cedar wood. This year or the next, small quantities of pitch, tar,
and glass were sent. From 1619 tobacco was so common as to be the
currency. About 1650 it was largely exported, a million and a half
pounds, on the average, yearly. The figure had risen to twelve million
pounds by 1670. At the middle of the century, corn, wheat, rice, hemp,
flax, and fifteen varieties of fruit, as well as excellent wine were
produced. A wind-mill was set up about 1620, the first in America. It
stood at Falling Creek on the James River. The pioneer iron works on the
continent were in this colony, hailing from about the date last named.
Community of property prevailed at Jamestown in all the earliest years,
as it did at Plymouth. After the event noted by John Rolfe: "about the
last of August [1619] came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty
Negars," slavery was a continual and increasing curse, as is attested
by the laws concerning slaves. It encouraged indolence and savagery of
habit and nature. Virginian slaves, however, were better treated than
those farther south. They were tolerably clothed, fed, and housed.
Tobacco Plant.
Captain John Smith.
There was in Virginia little of that healthful social and political
contact which did so much to develop civilization at the North. Of town
life there was practically nothing. Even so late as 1716 Jamestown had
only a sorry half-dozen structures, two of which were church and
court-house. Fifteen years later Fredericksburg had, besides the manor
house of Colonel Willis and its belongings, only a store, a tailor shop,
a blacksmith shop, a tavern or "ordinary," and a coffeehouse. Richmond
and Petersburg still existed only on paper, and if we come down to the
middle of the eighteenth century, Williamsburg, the capital of the
province, was nothing but a straggling village of two hundred houses,
without a single paved street. Only the College and the governor's
"palace" were of brick. The county-seats were mostly mere glades in the
woods, containing each its court-house, prison, whipping-post, pillory,
and ducking-stool, besides the wretched tavern where court and
attendants put up, and possibly a church. Hardships and dissensions
marked the whole early history of this infant state. At one time only
forty settlers remained alive, at another meal and water were the sole
diet. Hoping for instant riches in gold, poor gentlemen and vagabonds
had come, too much to the exclusion of mechanics and laborers. For
relief from the turbulence and external dangers of this period, the
colony owed much to Captain John Smith, who, after all allowance for his
boasting, certainly displayed great courage and energy in emergencies.
He, too, it was who did most to explore the country up the James and
upon Chesapeake Bay.
"King Powhatan commands C:Smith to be flayne his daughter
Pokahontas beggs his life his thankfullness and how he subiecled 39 of
their kings reade ye history"
Pocahontas saving Captain Smith's
Life. From Smith's "General History."
[1609-1610]
A new charter was granted in 1609, the council in England being now
appointed by the stockholders instead of the king, and the governor of
the colony being named by this council. Lord Delaware was made Governor
and Captain-General of Virginia, and many more colonists sent out. By a
wreck of two of the vessels there was delay in the arrival of the newly
chosen officers. Smith, then Percy, meantime continued to exercise
authority. This, again, was a critical period. Indians were troublesome.
Tillage having been neglected from the first, provisions became
exhausted, and a crisis long referred to as "the starving time" ensued.
The colony had actually abandoned Jamestown and shipped for England,
when met in James River by Lord Delaware, coming with relief. They at
once returned, and an era of hope dawned. This was in June, 1610. One
hundred and fifty new settlers accompanied Delaware. Planting was
vigorously prosecuted, the Indians placated, and still further
accessions of people and cattle secured from England.
[1612]
Delaware's brief, mild sway was always a benediction, in pleasing
contrast with the severities of Dale and Argall, who successively
governed after his departure. Under Dale, death was the penalty for
slaughtering cattle, even one's own, except with the Governor's leave,
also of exporting goods without permission. A baker giving short weight
was to lose his ears, and on second repetition to suffer death. A
laundress purloining linen was to be flogged. Martial law alone
prevailed; even capital punishment was ordained without jury. Such
arbitrary rule was perhaps necessary, so lawless were the mass of the
population. It at any rate had the excellent effect of rousing the
Virginians to political thought and to the assertion of their rights. In
1612 a change took place in the Company's methods of governing its
colony. The superior council was abolished, its authority transferred to
the corporation as a whole, which met as an assembly to elect officers
and enact laws for the colony. The government thus became more
democratic in form and spirit.