The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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one another fearfully on the voyage. One morning they beheld the long yellow beaches of Sable Island, off the shore of Maine. As De la Roche had not decided where to make a settlement, he landed the criminals, and sailed away to explore the coast; but a storm came on, and the north-west winds blew so furiously that he was swept nearly across the Atlantic, and found himself so near home that he returned to St. Malo.
Forty thieves, with no one to govern them, no law — no authority — what will they do? what will become of them?
A vessel had been wrecked on the island years before, and the hulk lay half buried on the beach; from its planks they built some huts. Herds of wild horses cropped the stunted grass in the meadows, and the sea was alive with fish, so that they would not lack food. There were troublesome times in France, and De la Roche could not visit them. Five years went by, when a vessel approached the island and sent a boat on shore. Twelve men, wearing clothes made from the skins of foxes, were all that remained: the others had been killed, or had died from exposure or homesickness. The weak had gone down before the strong; might had made right. So ended the first attempt of the French to make a settlement in America.
The merchants of Bristol, England, began to turn their eyes to the New World, and sent Bartholomew Gosnold on a voyage of discovery. He sailed in 1602, in the ship Concord, descrying first the white granite ledges of Cape Ann. Turning southward, he discovered a sandy promontory, which he named Cape Cod. He dropped anchor in the harbor of Provincetown, caught many fish, sailed south once more around the cape to the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, entered Buzzard’s Bay, and landed on an island which the Indians called Cuttyhunk. He was charmed with the country, the tall forest-trees, the grapevines which grew along the shore; built a fort, intending to leave six men, but was so short of provisions that he was obliged to abandon the project. He loaded his ship with sassafras, which was greatly esteemed in London, the doctors using it as a medicine, and hastened away, having only a single biscuit left when he reached England.
The next year the Bristol merchants sent Martin Pring to see what he could discover. He sailed along the coast of Maine, entered Casco Bay, Kennebunk Harbor, the Saco, and Piscataqna. It was midsummer, and the fields on the west shore of the Piscataqna were so red with strawberries that he named it Strawberry Bank. The quaint old town of Portsmouth now covers the ground where the sailors feasted themselves upon red, ripe berries.
Captain Pring was so enthusiastic over what he had seen, upon his return to England, that Richard Hakluyt, one of the ministers of Bristol, became greatly interested, and wrote letters to influential friends — Sir George Somers, Edward Wingfield, and others in London — telling them that ‘it was the duty of Englishmen to do something to checkmate Spain, who had already obtained possession of Mexico, South America, and Florida, and who was in a fair way to control the whole Western World.
While Richard Hakluyt was thus endeavoring to awaken an interest among his friends, there was a gentleman in France, Pierre de Guast, who saw that it was time for France to be getting a foothold in America. Henry IV. bestowed the title of Sieur de Monts upon De Guast, and gave him the territory now comprised in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, to which was given the name of Acadia. He gave to De Monts, Baron Pontrincourt, and Samuel Champlain, as he had once given to De la Roche, the sole privilege of trading with the Indians. They were to build up the empire of New France in the New World.
It was a strange company that sailed from Havre de Grace, April 7th, 1604. There were De Monts, Pontrincourt, Pontgrave, Champlain, several Jesuit priests and Huguenot ministers, and a crowd of thieves and vagabonds which De Monts had taken from the prisons. The Jesuits and Huguenots were almost at swords’ points; and when they could not convince one another by argument, fell to with their fists, while the thieves blackened each other’s eyes in their frequent quarrels. They sailed into the Bay of Fundy, laid out a town on the sandy island of St. Croix, built a great house for the noblemen, and smaller houses for the others; and then the vessels returned to France, leaving De Monts, Champlain, and seventy men.
What a dreary winter it was! The snows whirled around the houses, and the nights were so cold that the wine which De Moots had brought from France was frozen in the casks. Disease thinned their ranks. Before spring one-half died.
In the spring a vessel came from France with forty men, whom De Monts had hired. He saw that the soil of the island was poor, and sailed in search of a better place — visiting the Kennebec, Saco, and Piscataqua rivers and the Isles of Shoals, discovering the Merrimac River, which he named for himself, La Riviere de Guast. He called Cape Aun Cape St. Louis, and Cape Cod Cape Blanco. He landed at Nausett; and while the sailors were obtaining fresh water an Indian darted from behind a tree and seized a kettle.
A crowd of Indians were upon them, letting fly their arrows; but Champlain fired a gun, which so frightened them that they fled.
De Monts returned to his settlement, sailed eastward, and selected a beautiful site on the eastern shore of the Bay of Fundy, and laid out a town which he named Port Royal, putting up a spacious house, containing a great hall with a wide-mouthed
fireplace, a row of smaller buildings, and a church. So France obtained her first foothold in the Western World.
Gold! gold! The ships of Spain were bringing it by the cart-load from Mexico and South America. For more than a century rich cargoes had been gathered in by the rapacious gold-hunters of Castile, Aragon, and Andalusia. The people of England began to have the gold hunger, and fondly imagined that gold could be found almost anywhere in America. Poets pictured the attractions of the ‘Sew World in glowing language. In one of the plays, Captain Seagull narrated to a fellow named Spendthrift wonderful accounts of the country beyond the sea:
Spendthrift. “Is there such treasure there as I have heard?”
Seagull. “I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us. For as much copper as I can carry, I’ll have thrice weight in gold. Why, man, all their pots and pans are of purest gold; all their prisoners are fettered in gold; and as for rubies and diamonds, they go forth and gather them by the sea-shore to hang on their children’s coats and stick in their children’s caps.”
Spendthrift. “Is it a pleasant country?”
Seagull. “As ever the sun shone on: temperate, and full of all sorts of excellent viands. Wild-boar is as common there as bacon is here, and venison as mutton. You may be an alderman there, and not a laborer; an officer, and not a slave.”
Night after night crowds flocked to the theatres to see the play, and have their imaginations fired by the exhibition of pieces of gold supposed to have been brought from America.
Queen Elizabeth was dead, and James was on the throne, and the merchants of London and Plymouth petitioned him for a grant of land in America: he complied with their request, and gave the London merchants the country between Long Island and Cape Fear; and to the Plymouth merchants the country between Long Island and Nova Scotia.
The Plymouth men sent out Captain Weymouth to explore the coast. He reached Cape Cod on May 13th, 1605, then sailed north and landed on the island of Monhegan. He entered a harbor on the coast of Maine on Pentecost Sunday, and named it Pentecost. He landed the next day, and the sailors dug up a patch of ground and sowed some garden-seeds — the first sown by the hands of Englishmen in the Western World.
Captain Weymouth sailed up the Kennebec River, entered Booth Bay, and landed at Pemmaquid. The Indians flocked around his ship in their bark canoes. He enticed them on board, treacherously seized five, and sailed away to England.
What an excitement there was in the old town of Plymouth when the ship Archangel, with five Indians on board, dropped anchor in the harbor! All the town came to see Squanto and his red-skinned fellow-savages. Sir Fernando Gorges, the governor, became greatly interested in them. Wherever they went great crowds flocked to see them, which set everybody to talking and thinking about America.
Sieur de Monts, the while, was spending his money freely in buying provisions and supplies for his colony on the Bay of Fundy, treating the Indians kindly, feasting their old chief, Membertu, at his own table, and tossing strips of bear-meat to the dusky warriors who squatted on the floor of the great hall. The savages grunted their satisfaction,