The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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in the next world if she should be the means of saving the souls of the Indians. Her zeal was fired for the Church.
In grand old cathedrals, amidst the pomp and gorgeous ceremony of the Church, women weary of the world were bidding good-bye to its frivolity, taking the veil, consecrating themselves to lives of penance and self-denial, that they might win heaven. Madame de Guercheville planned to send a company of nuns and Jesuit fathers to carry on the work already begun. She infused a little of her own spirit into the indolent, frivolous, voluptuous crowd that swarmed around the boy-king, Louis XIII., so that they opened their purses and contributed liberally to her enterprise.
The Jesuits laid far-reaching plans, persuading Madame de Guercheville to ask Louis to give her all the country between the St. Lawrence and Florida. What was a wilderness on the other side of the sea to a boy? What did he know or care about it? Nothing. He granted all that Madame de Guercheville asked, giving her the whole of America north of the territory claimed by Spain, including Virginia. The Jesuits were delighted; the continent was theirs! Not quite. There were other forces at work, and other wills and plans besides theirs. Time would reveal them.
Along the towering cliffs of Mount Desert, into the peaceful waters of Somes Sound, sailed a ship from Honfleur. It was the month of May, and the forest was robed in green, and the air fragrant with the odors of spring. The vessel was owned by Madame de Guercheville, and commanded by an officer of the Court of Louis XII., De Saussaye. The vessel had touched at Port Royal, and taken on board Father Biard and other Jesuits. Madame de Guercheville had sent out a company of colonists, who, with the priests, were to establish missions to convert the Indians.
A signal fire was blazing on the beach, kindled by the Indians, and Father Biard hastened to the shore. The Indians knew him, for they had been to Port Royal and eaten good dinners at the hall.
“Our chief is sick, and will die, and live in hell forever if he is not baptized!” they said.
The priest hastened to see the chief, and found that he had only a bad cold, and was in no danger of dying. But he saw what a beautiful place it was — a green and grassy slope descending to the sea — a delightful harbor protected from the ocean’s waves.
The colonists went on shore. The priest set up the cross, and mass was said. The four white tents which Madame de Guercheville had sent were pitched on the verdant slope, and the boxes, bales, and chests of goods unloaded.
What vessel was that sailing into the harbor, with a red flag and the cross of St. George at the mast-head, and sixteen cannon protruding from the port-holes, and sixty men on her deck?
It was a ship commanded by Samuel Argall, who was roving the sea, trading to the West Indies, and fishing near Virginia. He had been to Jamestown; had coasted northward to the Isles of Shoals; from thence had sailed into Penobscot Bay. Indians came out in their canoes, and climbed on board.
“Normans,” they said, pointing eastward.
Captain Argall understood by their signs and words that the French were in that direction, and sailed for Mount Desert. Frenchmen making a settlement on English territory! He would see about that. He descried the vessel sent out by Madame de Guercheville at anchor, and the white tents on the beach. Saussaje was on shore, but Lieutenant La Motte and the Jesuit priest De Thet were on shipboard.
“Who are you? What do you want?” shouted De la Motte.
A roar from all his cannon was Argall’s answer.
“Fire! Fire!” shouted De Thet. He touched off a cannon, and the next moment was Iying wounded on the deck, knocked down by a ball. Over the railing climbed the English, capturing the vessel. Sanssaye and those on shore fled to the woods, while Argall landed and searched the chests and boxes, putting into his pocket the commission which the king had given Saussaye.
To remain in the woods was to die of starvation, and the Frenchmen gave themselves up as prisoners.
“King James owns this country,” said Argall.
“I have authority from the King of France to make a settlement here.”
“I would like to see it, if you please.”
Saussaye searched his trunk, but could not find it.
“You are a robber, and deserve to be hung. I shall take possession of your property,” said Argali. He set some of the captives adrift in a boat to find their way to the French fishermen at Newfoundland, and took the remainder to Virginia.
“I will hang the rascals,” said Sir Thomas Dale; but as France and England were at peace, he did not quite dare to; but he made short work of the colony at Port Royal by sending Argall to stamp it out.
A few days later, charred brands and heaps of ashes alone marked the site of the great hall: and Biencourt, the governor, and the colonists were wanderers in the wilderness, living through the winter in wigwams, on roots, and the bark and buds of trees, and clams from the sea-shore, and such morsels as they could get from the Indians.
So a rover of the sea, acting on his own responsibility, upset all the plans of the Jesuits. They must begin again. It was the first conflict in the great struggle on the American continent between the two systems of civilization.
Chapter VI
How Beaver-skins and Tobacco Helped on Civilization
On April 14th, 1614, two vessels, one commanded by Captain John Smith and the other by Captain Hunt, dropped anchor off the Island of Monhegan, on the coast of Maine. They had been sent out by the London Company to explore the coast. Captain Smith set some of the men to work building a boat; and while they were sawing out the planks he sailed with eight men eastward to the Bay of Penobscot, exploring the islands and harbor; then steering west, he sailed past Whale’s Back Island, and entered the beautiful Piseataqua, and saw the bank from which Martin Pring had picked strawberries. Seven miles off the shore he saw a group of islands — mostly barren ledges and high cliffs, with rocky reefs, on which the waves were breaking, and named them the Isles of Shoals. One of the group bears the name of Smutty-nose; another. Star Island, on which a monument has been erected in honor of the intrepid man who did so much to make the country known to people in England, and who did more than all others to build up the settlement at Jamestown. From the Isles of Shoals Captain Smith steered south to Cape Ann, and into Massachusetts Bay; cruising among the islands, he entered a river, which he named Charles, in honor of King James’s second son. He found two vessels from France at anchor in the bay, the crews trading with the Indians.
We are to remember that France claimed all the country, through Cartier’s and Verrazani’s discoveries, and that the boy-king of France has given it to Madame de Guercheville.
Leaving the French ships. Captain Smith and Captain Hunt sailed along the coast, past the ledges of Cohasset to Cape Cod, where they parted company — Smith returning to Monhegan, and from there to England, where he made a map of the coast, which he presented to Prince Charles. Captain Hunt enticed some of the Indians on board his ship, and carried them to England to sell into slavery.
If Captain Smith, instead of returning to England, had kept on around Cape Cod to the Hudson River, he would have found Adriaen Block, of Holland, hard at work building a little vessel on the island of Manhattan. He had been trading with the Indians, buying furs for the hat-makers of Amsterdam, and had nearly filled his ship with beaver-skins, when it took fire and was burnt. Captain Block was not a man to sit down and wring his hands over his loss, but built a log-house for his crew, and set them to work, with such tools as they had, to construct another vessel, and soon had it ready for sea. It was only sixteen tons burden. He called it the Onrust, or Restless. Although so small, the Dutchman set sail, hoping to fall in with some larger vessel in which he could make his way to Holland. The tide swept the little bark through the surging waters of Hell Gate, and a south wind wafted it to Connecticut River — the first white sail ever seen by the Pequot Indians, who gazed upon it from the hills along the shore.