Old Times in the Colonies. Charles Carleton Coffin
Читать онлайн книгу.
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.
Captain Block steered for the island that bears his name, and from thence eastward, past Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, around Cape Cod to Nahant.
A sail! How the hearts of the men on board the Onrust were glad dened at the sight of that white speck upon the horizon off Cape Ann! How joyful to meet Hendrick Christiansen! He was from Amsterdam, on his way to the Hudson to buy furs. They exchanged vessels Christiansen going westward, and Block striking .boldly across the Atlantic.
In the city of Hague, or the hedge, in Holland, is the grand old Binnenhof, the building in which the government of Holland in old times held its meetings. In one of the rooms, on October 11th, 1614, sat John of Barneveld, the founder of the Dutch Republic. He was sixty-eight years old. His hair and beard were white. He had large features, high cheek-bones, a sharp nose, broad forehead, firmly-set lips, and mild blue eyes. He wore a velvet robe trimmed with sable, and a starched white ruff. Around him were the members of the Council of State, in velvet robes and white ruff men of influence wealthy burghers of the Republic. A door opened, and Adriaen Block, with the merchants from Amsterdam, entered.
“I have a map of a part of the New World that I have visited to present to you,” said Captain Block; and ho spread upon the table a map showing Hudson River, Long Island, the Connecticut River, Block Island, Narragansett Bay, and all the shore along which he had sailed. Barneveld and those with him followed his linger as he pointed out the location, and spoke of the trade that might be opened in America with the Indians.
“By-and-by that region may be of great political importance to the Dutch Republic,” said Barneveld; and the men around him assented.
“We are here to obtain a special license to open trade in those regions,” said the merchants.
The Council granted their request, and drew up a paper in which the country, nameless before, was called New Netherlands. The merchants were to have the sole privilege of trade with the Indians between Newfoundland and Virginia.
Hendrick Christiansen sailed up the Hudson River, and on an island just below Albany built a log-house, surrounding it with a palisade, digging a moat, mounting two cannon and eleven small guns on swivels, and naming it Fort Nassau. He made friends of the Indians, and filled his vessel with beaver-skins.
Hendrick Christiansen did not know, while he was building the fort, that out in the forest, toward the setting sun, a battle was raging, which in its results would be far more effective than his cannon in preserving peace with the Indians. Before seeing the battle, we must go back a little.
About two hundred years before John and Sebastian Cabot discovered America, a young man in the town of Assisi, in France, became wild on the subject of religion.