Chapter III: Discoveries Continued

Raleigh, spite of the ill-success which had attended his efforts at colonisation, was not discouraged; and the report which Hariot made of the capabilities and resources of the country strengthened the public faith. Profiting by adversity, Raleigh now resolved to attempt an agricultural colony; to send out families, men with wives and children, so that the emigrant should take his home, as it were, with him. He granted a charter of incorporation for the settlement, and established, before it left the country, a municipal government for his projected city of Raleigh; Captain John White being appointed governor. The emigrants were embarked at the expense of Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth declining to afford any aid. Women were now among them, and a sufficiency of implements of husbandry seemed to give promise of successful industry. They arrived at Roanoke in July, expecting to find the fifteen men whom Grenville had left there; but the fort which had been built was in ruins, the houses were deserted; wild deer were feeding amid the rank vegetation of the gardens, and human bones lay scattered everywhere. Spite of all these melancholy tokens, the new-comers resolved here to build their city of Raleigh; here to establish the seat of their future government.

Raleigh was again unfortunate in his choice of governor; Captain John White was no better fitted for his post than Sir Richard Lane had been. Aggressions on the Indians were the first acts of the colonists. The mother and relatives of Manteo welcomed the English with the utmost cordiality, but spite of this, a party of English seeing a company of natives sitting by their fires at night, and fearing lest they might be enemies, fell upon them, and after killing a considerable number discovered that they were their friends. Manteo, however, remained faithful, and by command of Sir Walter Raleigh received Christian baptism and the rank of a feudal baron, as the Lord of Roanoke.

It was soon found that many things were yet needful for the comfort of the emigrants, and the governor sailed for England to obtain them. A gloom overspread the little colony as the ship was ready to depart, and women as well as men besought of him to return speedily with reinforcements and supplies. At this moment he would have remained with them, and shared their sufferings and privations, but they compelled him to go. Previous to his departure, his daughter, Eleanor Dare, the wife of one of the emigrants, gave birth to a female child, the first offspring of English parents born in America; the child was called Virginia Dare.

When White reached England he found the whole nation absorbed by the threats of a Spanish invasion; Raleigh, Grenville, and Lane, Frobisher, Drake, and Hawkins, all were employed in devising measures of resistance. It was twelve months before Raleigh, who had to depend almost entirely upon his own means, was able to despatch White with supplies; this he did in two vessels. White, who wished to profit by his voyage, instead of at once returning without loss of time to his colony, went in chase of Spanish prizes, until at length one of his ships was overpowered, boarded, and rifled, and both compelled to return to England. This delay was fatal. The great events of the Spanish Armada took place, after which Sir Walter Raleigh found himself embarrassed with such a fearful amount of debt, that it was no longer in his power to attempt the colonisation of Virginia; nor was it until the following year that White was able to return, and then also through the noble efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh, to the unhappy colony Roanoke. Again the island was a desert. An inscription on the bark of a tree indicated Croatan; but the season of the year, and the danger of storms, furnished an excuse to White for not going thither. What was the fate of the colony never was known. It has been conjectured that through the friendship of Manteo they had probably escaped to Croatan; perhaps had been, when thus cruelly neglected by their countrymen, received into a friendly tribe of Indians, and become a portion of the children of the forest. The Indians had, at a later day, a tradition of this kind, and it has been thought that the physical character of the Hatteras Indians bore out the tradition.

The kind-hearted and noble Raleigh did not soon give up all hopes of his little colony. Five different times he sent out at his own expense to seek for them, but in vain. The mystery which veils the fate of the colonists of Roanoke will never be solved in this world. “Roanoke,” says Bancroft, “is now almost uninhabited; the intrepid pilot and the hardy wrecker, rendered bold by their familiarity with the dangers of the ocean, and unconscious of the associations by which they are surrounded, are the only tenants of the spot, where the inquisitive stranger may still discern the ruins of the fort, round which the cottages of the new settlement were erected.”

Speaking of Raleigh and his many and rare virtues, Bancroft adds—“The judgments of the tribunal of the Old World are often reversed at the bar of public opinion in the New. The family of the chief author of early colonisation in the United States was reduced to beggary by the government of England, and he himself finally beheaded. After a lapse of nearly two centuries the State of North Carolina, by a solemn act of legislation, revived in its capital the CITY OF RALEIGH; and thus expressed its confidence in the integrity, and a grateful respect for the memory, of the extraordinary man, who united in himself as many kinds of glory as were ever combined in one individual, and whose name is indissolubly connected with the early period of American history.”

The fisheries of the north and the efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh at colonisation had trained a race of men for discovery. One of these, Bartholomew Gosnold, determined upon sailing direct from England to America, without touching at the Canaries and the West Indies, as had hitherto been the custom; and with the aid of Raleigh he “well nigh secured to New England the honour of the first permanent English colony.” He sailed in a small vessel directly across the ocean, and in seven weeks reached the shore of Massachusetts, but not finding a good harbour sailed southward, and discovered and landed on a promontory which he called Cape Cod, which name it retains to this day. Sailing thence, and still pursuing the coast, he discovered various islands, one of which he called Elizabeth, after the Queen, and another Martha’s Vineyard. The vegetation was rich; the land covered with magnificent forests; and wild fruits and flowers burst from the earth in unimagined luxuriance—the eglantine, the thorn, and the honeysuckle; the wild pea, tansy, and young sassafras; strawberries, raspberries, and vines. In the island was a little lake, and in the lake a rocky islet, and here the colonists resolved to build their storehouse and fort, the nucleus of the first New England colony. The natural features of the place, the historian tells us, remain unchanged—the island, the little lake, and the islet are all there; the forests are gone, while the flowers and fruit are as abundant as ever. But no trace remains of the fort.

Friendly traffic with the natives of the mainland soon completed a freight, which consisted of furs and sassafras, and Gosnold was about to sail, when the hearts of the intending colonists failed them; they dreaded the attack of Indians and the want of necessary supplies from home. All, therefore, re-embarked, and in five weeks reached England.

Gosnold and his companions brought home such favourable reports of the country and the shortness of the voyage, that the following year a company of Bristol merchants despatched two small vessels, under the command of Martin Pring, for the purpose of exploring the country and commencing a trade with the natives. They carried out with them trinkets and merchandise suited for such traffic, and their voyage was eminently successful. They discovered some of the principal rivers of Maine, and examined the coast of Massachusetts as far south as Martha’s Vineyard. The whole voyage occupied but six months. Pring repeated his voyage in 1606, making still more accurate surveys of the country.

English enterprises for discovery were rapidly continued. An expedition, promoted by the Earl of Southampton and Lord Arundel of Wardour, and commanded by George Weymouth, having explored the coast of Labrador, discovered the Penobscot River. It left England in March, and in six weeks reached the American continent near Cape Cod.

We must, however, now return to the French and their colonies, of whom we have lost sight for some time.

In 1598, the Marquis de la Roche received a commission from Henry IV. to found a French empire in America. But his enterprise utterly failed. His proposed colonists were the refuse of the jails; these he conveyed to the desolate Sable Island, on the coast of Nova Scotia, where, after languishing twelve years, they were allowed to return, and their offences pardoned in consideration of their sufferings.

Five years later, in 1603, a company of merchants of Rouen resolved to attempt a scheme of colonisation, and Samuel Champlain, a man “marvellously delighting in such enterprises,” was placed at its head. He proceeded to Canada, carefully studied the geography of the country and the manners of the Indians, and selected Quebec as a commodious situation for a settlement, near the place where, in 1541, Cartier had passed the winter and erected a fort. Champlain returned to France, and De Monts, an able patriot and an honest Calvinist, obtained a patent from the French government, which conceded to him the sovereignty of Acadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of latitude, that is, from a degree south of New York city to one north of Montreal, with a monopoly of the fur trade, control and government of the soil, and freedom of religion for the Huguenots. Wealth and honour were expected from the expedition. He set sail with two vessels in March 1604, reached Nova Scotia in May, and spent the summer in trading with the natives and examining the coasts preparatory to a settlement.

The early colonists seem to have had a remarkable preference for islands; accordingly the company of De Monts selected an island near the mouth of the river St. Croix, in New Brunswick; here they passed a winter of intense suffering, and in the spring removed to a place in the Bay of Fundy, where was formed the first permanent settlement of the French in America, three years before a cabin had been erected in Canada. The settlement was called Port Royal, and the whole country, including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the neighbouring islands, received the name of Acadia.

De Monts was superseded by Pourtrincourt, one of his company. The undertaking now assumed a religious character. The pope gave his benediction to all who went thither to evangelise the heathen; Marie de Medici contributed money, and the Marchioness de Guercheville gave her support. Jesuits were sent over, and the order itself enriched by imposts on the fishery and fur trade.

Jesuit priests commenced the conversion of the natives and the exploration of the country at the same time. The Indians of the Canadian territory, affected by the confiding humanity of the French priests, listened reverently to their teachings of salvation. A French colony within the United States was soon established, under the safeguard of religion. “The conversion of the heathen,” says Bancroft, “was the motive of the settlement; the natives venerated the Jesuit Biart as a messenger from heaven, and beneath the summer sky, round a cross in the centre of the hamlet, matins and vespers were regularly chanted. France and the Roman religion had appropriated the soil of Maine.”

In 1608, the company of merchants of Dieppe and St. Malo, who had been instrumental in depriving De Monts of his monopoly, founded Quebec, the whole undertaking, nevertheless, originating with Samuel Champlain, in concert with De Monts. Brick cottages were built, a few fields cleared, a few gardens laid out; the city of Quebec was begun. The following year, Champlain, attended by his two Europeans, joined an expedition of Indians against the Iroquois, and advanced as far into the interior as the lake which bears his name.

Seven years later, he once more advanced against his old enemies, the Iroquois. Wounded and alone, he spent a winter with the Hurons, and thus “a knight-errant in the forest, he carried his language, religion, and influence even to the hamlets of Algonquins near Lake Nipissing.”

The presence of Jesuits and Calvinists led to contentions; religious animosity and commercial jealousy checked for a time the progress of the colony; nevertheless, the wisdom and good conduct of Champlain established successfully the dominion of the French on the banks of the St. Lawrence. He lies buried in the land which he colonised.

About the same time that the French adventurer Champlain advanced inland to the lake which since then has borne his name, another discoverer, the celebrated Henry Hudson, was penetrating in the same direction from an opposite point. The great field for commercial enterprise which had been opened by traffic with the East, and the immense profits thence accruing, still kept alive the hope of a nearer passage than that by the Cape of Good Hope. Almost every maritime power of Europe had sent out ships in the vain hope of discovery, and so persevering was the quest, that no sooner was one failure recorded, than another expedition set forth.

It was on the failure of Denmark in this respect that a company of London merchants contributed a large sum of money for another attempt, under the command of Henry Hudson. Sailing to the north, with his only son as his companion, he deliberated, while coasting Greenland, as to whether he should circumnavigate that country or attempt to cross the pole; he discovered Spitzbergen, however, and was then compelled to return, from the immense icebergs which he encountered. The next year found him again amid the horrors of the polar seas, cherishing the vain hope of advancing across the pole into the warm, genial regions of southern Asia.

These two unsuccessful expeditions, though they could not daunt the courage of this bold navigator, quite discouraged the rich London merchants, and Hudson, who seems to have had a passion for the northern seas, hastened to Holland and offered his services to the Dutch East India Company, to explore for them this much-desired passage. Hudson had applied in the right quarter; the Dutch at that time took rank as one of the most maritime and commercial nations of Europe. Commerce was the breath of their lives, maritime adventure their occupation. The device on the first Dutch coin was a ship labouring on a stormy sea, without oar or sails. Speaking of the Republic of the United Netherlands, the historian Bancroft says, “the rendezvous of its martyrs had been the sea; the musters of its patriot emigrants had been on shipboard; they had hunted their enemy, as the whale-ships pursue their game, in every corner of the ocean.” Holland is but a peninsula, intersected by navigable rivers, protruding itself into the sea. And Zealand is composed of islands. Its inhabitants were nearly all fishermen; both provinces were by nature a nursery of sailors; the principles of navigation were imbibed from infancy; every house was a school for mariners. They became affluent through commerce. They were the connecting links between hemispheres. Their enterprising seamen displayed the flag of the republic from Southern Africa to the Arctic circle. The ships of the Dutch, said Raleigh, outnumber those of England and the other kingdoms. Amsterdam, the depôt of the merchandise of Europe and of the East, was esteemed, beyond dispute, the first commercial city of the world.

England and Holland had been allies in the contest with Spain; both had sent their ships to the Indian seas; they were both desirous of obtaining settlements in America. The Dutch, like all other nations connected either with the commerce of Asia or inquisitive with regard to America, turned their efforts to the discovery of a north-west passage. The unsuccessful attempts of the English mariners, Cabot, Frobisher, Willoughby, and others, mattered nothing to them; with that perseverance which, if it attain not to its object, generally wins some unlooked-for good, they, too, had sought repeatedly for the north-west passage, coasting for this purpose Nova Zembla and Muscovy. In 1596, one of their ships in this quest advanced within ten degrees of the pole; during the winter, when it was frozen in, on the shores of Nova Zembla, the sufferings of the unfortunate crew have hardly their parallel in any narrative of human endurance, misery, and terror at sea.

Hudson had, as we have said, offered his services in the right quarter. A vessel of discovery, called the Crescent, was soon equipped for him, and on the 4th of April, 1609, he set sail in search of the north-western passage, accompanied again by his son.

Masses of ice prevented his sailing toward Nova Zembla; turning to the south-west, therefore, and passing Greenland and Newfoundland, he ran along the coast of Acadia, and entered Penobscot Bay, on the southern coast of Maine, and so on southward to Cape Cod, which, supposing himself to have first discovered, he called New Holland, and still sailing southward, reached the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, where he remembered that his countrymen had a settlement. From this point he again turned northward, having discovered Delaware Bay; on the 3rd of September, about five months from the time of his setting sail, he anchored within Sandy Hook; the natives being attracted to the ship from the neighbouring shores, which he described as crowned with “goodly oaks.” After tarrying here a week, Hudson advanced up the Narrows, and anchored in a safe harbour at the mouth of the river. Every object around was worthy of admiration—the luxuriant grass, the trees, the flowers, and the fragrance which was diffused over all. For ten days the Crescent, the wonder of the Indians who congregated on the shore to witness the marvellous apparition and to welcome the strangers, ascended the river above the highlands, and some little distance beyond where the city of Hudson now stands, and whence he took a boat forward as far as the present city of Albany. He descended the stream rapidly, and on the 4th of October, set sail for Europe, “leaving,” says the eloquent historian, “once more to its solitude the land that his imagination, anticipating the future, described as the most beautiful in the world.”

A prosperous voyage returned Hudson to Europe. He landed at Dartmouth, and sent a splendid report of his discoveries to his Dutch employers; but he never revisited the country which he so much praised, nor the river to which time has now given his name. The Dutch East India Company declined, as he had failed to discover the north-western passage, to employ him further.

The following spring, however, an English company was formed, and Hudson was again abroad in search of a passage to the Pacific. He sailed directly north, passing Iceland, and Greenland, and Frobisher Straits, and advancing through the straits that now bear his name, and through which Cabot had entered a century before, emerged into an immense gulf, which he joyfully believed for some time to be the object of his search. He was naturally very unwilling to believe it a bay. Backwards and forwards he sailed; still hoping for success, and determining at all hazards to winter there, that he might be ready in the spring to pursue the important discovery. A horrible winter succeeded; the spring was late; famine stared him in the face; Hudson divided the last bread with his men, and wept as he gave it them, having consented to return. He believed that he was now on the point of success—of success, where all other nations had failed. With a heavy heart he commenced his homeward voyage, on June the 18th, yet still amid fields of ice. Two days afterwards the crew broke forth into mutiny; Hudson was seized, and, with his son, and seven others, four of whom were sick, was put in an open boat and turned adrift. Hudson, it is said by some, was a severe commander, and that his stern and pitiless temper provoked his crew to mutiny; one little circumstance, however, which is related of this tragical event, seems to contradict the assertions, and we are willing to believe its inference. The ship’s carpenter, Philip Staffe—his name deserves to be remembered—seeing his commander thus exposed, insisted upon sharing his fate. It was on Midsummer-day, and in a latitude where the sun at that season scarcely sets, and morning and night meet in the heavens, that this infamous deed was perpetrated. The fate of Hudson and his companions never was known. But his name and his memory are preserved in those dreary polar waters, which, seeming to have had a wonderful fascination for him in life, became in death his tomb.

“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the men and the voyages which led the way to the colonisation of the United States. The daring and skill of these earliest adventurers on the ocean deserve the highest admiration. The difficulties of crossing the Atlantic were new; the characters of the prevalent winds and currents were unknown. The possibility of making a direct passage was but gradually discovered. The ships at first employed for discovery were generally of less than one hundred tons burden. Frobisher sailed in a vessel of but twenty-five tons; two of those of Columbus were without decks; and so perilous were voyages considered, that the sailors were accustomed, before embarking, to perform acts of solemn devotion.”