Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast. Drake Samuel Adams
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was printed. The retention of some of them by the actual settlers might be accidental, but they appear much as if scattered at random over the paper. "Plimouth" is where it was located six years after the date of the map. York is called Boston, and Agamenticus "Snadoun Hill." Penobscot is called "Pembrock's Bay."
The name of Cape Breton is said to occur on very early maps, antecedent even to Cartier's voyage. A map of Henry II. is the oldest mentioned. "Nurembega" is on a map in "Le Receuil de Ramusius"5 tome iii., where there is an account of a Frenchman of Dieppe, and a map made before the discovery of "Jean Guartier." It is asserted that the Basque and Breton fishermen were on the coast of America before the Portuguese and Spaniards. Baron La Hontan says, "The seamen of French Biscay are known to be the most able and dexterous mariners that are in the world." It is pretty certain that Cape Breton had this name before the voyages of Cartier or Champlain. The Frenchman of Dieppe is supposed to be Thomas Aubert, whose discovery is assigned to the year 1508.
The atlas of Guillaume and John Blauw has a map of America in tome i. There is a second, entitled Nova Belgica and Nova Anglica. New England extends no farther than the Kennebec, where begins the territory of Nova Franciæ Pars, in which Norumbega is located. The rivers Pentagouet and Chouacouet (Saco) appear properly placed. The map bears certain marks in its nomenclature, and the configuration of the coast, of being compiled from those of Champlain and Smith.6
Researches made in England, France, and Holland, at the instance of Massachusetts and New York,7 have resulted in the recovery of many manuscript fragments more or less interesting, bearing upon the question of priority of discovery. Of these the following is not the least curious. If credence may be placed in the author of the "Memoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Dieppe," "Recherches sur les Voyages et decouvertes des Navigateurs Normands," and "Navigateurs Français," the continent of America was discovered by Captain Cousin in the year 1488. Sailing from Dieppe, he was carried westward by a gale, and drawn by currents to an unknown coast, where he saw the mouth of a large river.
Cousin's first officer was "un étranger nommé Pinçon ou Pinzon," who instigated the men to mutiny, and was so turbulent that, on the return of the caravel, Cousin charged him before the magistrates of Dieppe with mutiny, insubordination, and violence. He was banished from the city, and embarked four years afterward, say the Dieppois, with Christopher Columbus, to whom he had given information of the New World.8
In the "Bibliothéque Royale" of Paris there is, or rather was, existing a manuscript (dated in 1545) entitled "Cosmographie de Jean Alfonce le Xaintongeois." It is undoubtedly from this manuscript that Jean de Marnef and De St. Gelais compiled the "Voyages Aventureux d'Alfonce Xaintongeois," printed in 1559, which includes an expedition along the coast from Newfoundland southwardly to "une baye jusques par les 42 degrés, entre la Norembegue et la Fleuride," in 1543.
Of Jean Alfonse it is known that he was one of Roberval's pilots, in his voyage of 1542 to Canada, and that he returned home with Cartier. Roberval expected to find a north-west passage, and Jean Alfonse, who searched the coast for it, believed the land he saw to the southward to be part of the continent of Asia. His cruise within the latitude of Massachusetts Bay is also mentioned by Hakluyt. The claim of Alfonse to be the discoverer of Massachusetts Bay has been set forth with due prominence.9 Alfonse and Champlain were both from the same old province in the west of France.
It goes without dispute that the older French historians knew little or nothing of Hakluyt and Purchas. So little did the affairs of the New World engage their attention, that in the "History of France," by Father Daniel, printed at Amsterdam in 1720, by the Company of Jesuits, in six ponderous tomes, the discoveries and settlements in New France (Canada) occupy no more than a dozen lines. Cartier, Roberval, De Monts, and Champlain are mentioned, and that is all.
When a vessel of the old navigators was approaching the coast, the precaution was taken of sending sailors to the mast-head. These lookouts were relieved every two hours until night-fall, at which time, if the land was not yet in sight, they furled their sails so as to make little or no way during the night. It was a matter of emulation among the ship's company who should first discover the land, as the passengers usually presented the lucky one with some pistoles. One writer mentions that on board French vessels, after sighting Cape Race, the ceremony known among us as "crossing the line" was performed by the old salts on the green hands, without regard to season.
The method of taking possession of a new country is thus described in the old chronicles: Jacques Cartier erected a cross thirty feet high, on which was suspended a shield with the arms of France and the words "Vive le Roy." Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1583, raised a pillar at Newfoundland, with a plate of lead, having the queen's arms "graven thereon." A turf and a twig were presented to him, which he received with a hazel wand. The expression "by turf and twig," a symbol of actual possession of the soil and its products, is still to be met with in older New England records.
Douglass, the American historian, speaking of Henry IV., says, "He planted a colony in Canada which subsists to this day. May it not long subsist; it is a nuisance to our North American settlements: Delenda est Carthago."
The insignificant attempt of Gosnold, in 1603, and the disastrous one of Popham, in 1607, contributed little to the knowledge of New England. But the absence of any actual possession of the soil did not prevent the exercise of unworthy violence toward intruders on the territory claimed by the English crown. In 1613 Sir Samuel Argall broke up the French settlement begun at Mount Desert in that year, opening fire on the unsuspecting colonists before he gave himself the trouble of a formal summons. Those of other nations fared little better, as the following recital will show:
Purchas relates that "Sir Bernard Drake, a Devonshire knight, came to Newfoundland with a commission; and having divers good ships under his command, he took many Portugal ships, and brought them into England as prizes.
"Sir Bernard, as was said, having taken a Portugal ship, and brought her into one of our western ports, the seamen that were therein were sent to the prison adjoining the Castle of Exeter. At the next assizes held at the castle there, about the 27th of Queen Elizabeth, when the prisoners of the county were brought to be arraigned before Sergeant Flowerby, one of the judges appointed for this western circuit at that time, suddenly there arose such a noisome smell from the bar that a great number of people there present were therewith infected; whereof in a very short time after died the said judge, Sir John Chichester, Sir Arthur Bassett, and Sir Bernard Drake, knights, and justices of the peace there sitting on the bench; and eleven of the jury impaneled, the twelfth only escaping; with divers other persons."
Captain John Smith says: "The most northern part I was at was the Bay of Penobscot, which is east and west, north and south, more than ten leagues; but such were my occasions I was constrained to be satisfied of them I found in the bay, that the river ran far up into the land, and was well inhabited with many people; but they were from their habitations, either fishing among the isles, or hunting the lakes and woods for deer and beavers.
"The bay is full of great islands of one, two, six, eight, or ten miles in length, which divide it into many faire and excellent good harbours. On the east of it are the Tarrantines, their mortal enemies, where inhabit the French, as they report, that live with these people as one nation or family."
If the English had no special reason for self-gratulation in the quality of the emigrants first introduced into New England, the French have as little ground to value themselves. In order to people Acadia, De Monts begged permission of Henri Quatre to take the vagabonds that might be collected in the cities, or wandering at large through the country. The king acceded to the request.10
Again, in a memoir on the state of the French plantations, the following passage occurs: "The post of Pentagouet, being at the head of all Acadia on the side of Boston, appears to have been principally strengthened by the sending over of men and courtesans that his majesty would have emigrate there for the purpose of marrying, so that this portion of the colony may receive the accessions necessary to
Giambetta Ramusio, the Venetian.
Champlain's map of 1612 is entitled "Carte Geographiqve de la Novvelle France Faictte par le Sievr de Champlain Saint Tongois, Cappitaine Ordinaire povr le Roy en La Marine.
By Ben Perley Poore and John Romeyn Brodhead.
"Massachusetts Archives, French Documents," vol. i., p. 269.
Rev. B. F. De Costa's "Northmen in Maine."
"Mass. Archives, French Documents."