Chapter II: The Explorers

Like every other part of the Atlantic Coast from Newfoundland to the Delaware Capes, Cape Cod is said to have been one of the ports of call of the Norsemen in their coastwise tour about the year 1000. Of evidence there is none. To identify the places described in their sagas is like trying to identify the particular vintage that Homer had in mind when he sang of the wine-dark sea. Human nature is too frail for such a task, and too readily bends the large phrases of the sagas to fit the contours of any desired landscape. We read, for example, that Thorwald, an Icelandic Viking, younger brother of Leif the Lucky, was shipwrecked at Provincetown, landed and built a house, and later was buried there. An ancient stone cellar is the foundation of this theory. Another authority asserts that his grave was in Plymouth. Somewhat later, we are told, the Icelandic navigator Thorfinn Karlsefne was so struck with the dazzling whiteness of the Monomoy Sands that he called them the ‘Marvellous Strands,’ and then sailed up Buzzards Bay and spent the winter near Woods Hole. But the wisest men and the best authorities unite in their skepticism regarding all such alleged Norse itineraries, and are content to leave the Cape shores unmolested by white men for another six centuries, when Bartholomew Gosnold dropped anchor off Provincetown.

Visitors there were, no doubt, before him--men who either sailed past the Cape or landed on its shores, sometimes inadvertently, like many a good mariner since. Doubtless John and Sebastian Cabot took a look at Cape Cod on their way from Labrador to Virginia in 1498, but their glances have not altered its history. Sailing in the opposite direction, the Italian Giovanni da Verrazano rounded it on his way north to the coast of Maine in 1524, but there is no evidence that either of these navigators ever landed on the Cape. In 1609, Henry Hudson, on the way to the discovery of the great river that bears his name, may have allowed some of his men to land not far from Provincetown and pick grapes, before sailing on past the Chatham shore to New York. In 1611, Edward Harlow, an Englishman, raided the Cape shores at various points and after several skirmishes carried off two Indians. George Weymouth, another Englishman, after a narrow escape from the Monomoy shoals in 1605, prudently decided to explore some other region. His countryman, Thomas Dermer, who had formerly been a captain on the New England coast under John Smith, came again in 1619, and, even more restless than most explorers, paid flying visits to the Cape with bewildering frequency, darting back and forth between its shores and Monhegan Island, rescuing two Frenchmen who had been shipwrecked three years before, getting himself captured by the Indians, and finally sailing away for good to Virginia, where he died of wounds received from the natives of Cape Cod. Other random visitors there were, whom in the words of Captain John Smith ‘I must entreat to pardon me for omitting,’ for their visits were of no consequence.

With Gosnold, however, the case was different, for he was the first European whose voyage gives us any real information about the appearance of the Cape at this early date. He sailed from Falmouth early in the spring of 1602 in the ship Concord, with the object of founding a colony in some agreeable spot, preferably one where gold was abundant. After a voyage of a little over six weeks, his men ‘smelled the land’ (they were real sailors), and the next day, May 14, they sighted a spot on the Massachusetts coast somewhere near Bass Rock. This place Gosnold named Savage Rock because some Indians sailed out in a Biscay shallop to meet him there and paid a short visit on board the Concord. He then sheared off Southwest and, sailing across the mouth of Cape Cod Bay, sighted the end of the Cape. He called the Bay Shoal Hope, and supposed, not unnaturally, that it cut off the end of the Cape from the mainland. He did not investigate, however, but anchored off the outer Beach behind Provincetown and, excited by the numbers of codfish that surrounded his vessel, caught as many as he wanted and named the land Cape Cod. This happy accident has been worthily celebrated in a poem by Benjamin Drew, whose lively fancy justifies him in taking certain liberties with the facts.

Gosnold went ashore, cut some firewood, made sure that the pebbles on the beach were not nuggets of gold, had a friendly though unilluminating encounter with a genial young Indian, and rowed back to the Concord. So far things had gone well; but his troubles were about to begin. He weighed anchor and headed south along the outside of the Cape. After sailing about thirty-five miles, he was alarmed by surf breaking on a point of land that projected across his course. In trying to double this point, he narrowly escaped running aground on shoals that stretched out from it, but finally, by a smart bit of seamanship, he got safely into deep water and rounded the point. He called the surf Tucker’s Terror and the point Point Care. Tucker’s Terror is best identified as Île Nauset, a point of considerable size which once stretched seaward from Eastham. Point Care was Gosnold’s name for the northeast extremity of this point. Once around it, he breathed more freely and, coming up under the mainland, anchored for the night. The next day, May 17, a fresh breeze kicked up enough sea to show him that he was not yet out of trouble, for it broke white on shoals that lay off a sandy point to the south’ard.

The next morning the weather moderated, and Gosnold sent a boat to test the depth of water off this point, which he called Point Gilbert, now Monomoy Point. [See notes to Chapter II.] Next day he brought his vessel safely round Monomoy and anchored well inside it. The following morning he weighed anchor and coasted along westerly, passing an opening which he judged to be the other end of Shoal Hope. This may have been Lewis Bay in Hyannis, or possibly Cotuit Harbor. Because of shallow water, Gosnold sailed by without investigating it and arrived the same day at one of the Elizabeth Islands which he called Martha’s Vineyard--not to be confused with the present large island of the same name. Here he spent a day fishing and exploring. He sailed on past another of the Elizabeth Islands, naming it Dover Cliff (perhaps a part of the present island of Naushon) to the ‘stateliest Sound I ever was in’--Buzzards Bay itself, which he named Gosnold’s Hope. He decided to settle on an island that lay about ten miles off shore, which he named Elizabeth’s Isle. But the crew were better sailors than they were pioneers; and all wanted to go home. After a short sojourn, therefore, during which they built a house and a fort and cut a cargo of cedar and sassafras, the Concord set sail for Exmouth, June 17, and arrived in the remarkably good time of thirty-six days.

The next explorer to visit the Cape was Champlain, an extremely intelligent young Frenchman, a good cartographer, and a man whose lively interest in anything new made him a keen observer. He made, in fact, two expeditions to the Cape. The first one sailed early in the summer of 1605, from the French colony on the St. Croix River, in search of a warmer climate. He coasted along for a month, was hooked in by the end of the Cape, took a look at Wellfleet with its harbor, though he did not land, named it St. Suzanne de Cap Blanc, as being a sort of adjunct to Provincetown (which he called Cap Blanc), rounded the Cape, and, late in July, sailed into Nauset Harbor. He had to hurry back for lack of provisions and so spent only three or four days in Eastham. But he had seen enough to tempt him to come again the following year.

Accordingly in the fall of 1606 Champlain again left the St. Croix River, this time with Poutrincourt in command of the expedition, to reëxplore the regions around Eastham and Chatham, still with a view, albeit a somewhat vague one, of establishing a colony there. They were a little out of their reckoning, and, instead of raising Provincetown, as they intended, they dropped anchor an hour before daylight somewhere inside Cape Cod Bay, two or three miles from land. As soon as it was light, they went ashore in their tender and explored a harbor which they called Port aux Huitres because of the abundance of oysters. It has been thought that this was Wellfleet, but, as Champlain had visited Wellfleet the year before and named it, he could hardly have failed--accurate observer that he was--to recognize it now. Barnstable Harbor is a better guess, for although there are no oysters there to-day, huge oyster shells of great age are sometimes picked up on the flats, and they may have been abundant in 1606. But before they could land, a favorable slant of wind sprang up and proved a stronger temptation than the lure of an unknown shore. They therefore sailed fifteen miles northeast, rounded Provincetown, and arrived off Eastham, which they named Mallebarre.

Here a southerly blow compelled them to anchor and Poutrincourt went ashore, where he was greeted by a hundred and fifty inquisitive Indians. When the weather moderated, they skirted the coast southerly, got in trouble among the Monomoy shoals (which Champlain called Cape Batturier), smashed their rudder, and, despairing of ever extricating themselves without aid, anchored and went ashore in the shallop. They found an Indian who consented to act as pilot, and brought him off to the vessel, which he took safely round Monomoy Point into Stage Harbor, Chatham. Some of the ship’s company stayed there to mend the rudder, while others in the shallop coasted along southerly with an Indian as guide. The strain of being alone among white men proved too great for the Indian, and he took to the woods somewhere in the neighborhood of Point Gammon. The Frenchmen were afraid to proceed without him, and made their way back to Chatham.

The anchorage was so good that Poutrincourt was reluctant to leave, and the explorers made themselves very much at home, taking frequent excursions inland, inspecting the Indian villages, and doubtless bringing back with them whatever of interest or value the country yielded. They also built baking ovens on the shore, where they made their bread. After this had gone on for a fortnight, the Indians began to wonder what the end would be. A friendly visit was one thing; a permanent settlement quite another; so they decided to speed their guests into departure. Accordingly one afternoon they began to take down their lodges and send the women and children off into the woods. The French rightly interpreted these demonstrations as the preliminaries of an attack, and toward evening Poutrincourt sent the shallop ashore to bring off the men, for some of them always slept on the beach near the ovens. But they found the shore more comfortable than the ship, and refused to leave. The shallop returned without them. Early in the morning, the Indians crept up on the shore party, found all but one of them asleep, and let fly four hundred arrows, such a volley that ‘to rise up was death.’ The Frenchmen fled in bewildered disorder and with some losses, the Indians meanwhile making a ‘desperate noise with roaring which it was terrible to hear.’ To add to the confusion, the shallop, which started from the vessel to help the fleeing Frenchmen, stuck on a sand bar, and the rescuers had to jump overboard and plough their way ashore through the water. On their arrival, the Indians fled, and the explorers, prudently concluding not to follow them, buried their dead, erected a cross over the grave, and returned to the bark.

No sooner were they aboard than the Indians emerged from the woods, dug up the corpses and threw down the cross. The French went ashore again, reburied the dead, replaced the cross, returned to their vessel, and the next morning sailed away south, naming the place Port Fortuné because of their disastrous experience there. They sighted what may have been Martha’s Vineyard and perhaps saw Buzzards Bay, but head winds made progress too slow with winter at hand. Discouraged and in an ill frame of mind, they returned to vent their spleen on the Chatham Indians. Their object was to carry off some of them as slaves, and to accomplish their design they hatched a plot that would have done credit to Machiavelli. This was the scheme: they would land and approach the natives with a string of beads in one hand and a fathom of rope in the other, and thus try to lure them into the shallop. If they refused to be lured, the plan was to put the string of beads around the Indian’s neck and at the same time lasso him with the rope; then he could be dragged to the shallop. If, even though snared, the Indians proved ‘too boisterous,’ they were to be held by the rope and stabbed to death. If, by any chance, the stabbing failed, there were to be men standing by with swords. Meanwhile cannon on the bark should be ready to fire on any Indian reënforcements, and under this barrage the shallop was to row out with its captives. This plot helps to explain, perhaps, why the French were indifferent colonizers. It failed to bag any slaves, but a few Indians were murdered according to schedule.

It is interesting, and not without significance, to contrast the attitude of these Frenchmen toward Indian thieving with Gosnold’s. One day after the latter had landed on the Elizabeth Islands, he was visited by a party of inquisitive Indians. After they had been parleying in friendly fashion for some time, the English saw an Indian take a shield from the shallop and put it into a canoe. Gosnold called the attention of the chief to the procedure, being curious to see what authority he had over his subjects. Instantly the chief gave orders; the shield was returned, and the day ended as genially as it had begun. Truly with nations, as with individuals, there are diversities of talents.

The next explorer of importance is the celebrated Captain John Smith, who came in 1614. He is in one respect unique among the early navigators of the New England coast; he thoroughly enjoyed the business, and his accounts of his discoveries and of the beauties and excellences of the country for any purpose, from mining gold to raising corn, are full of the ardor of the enthusiast. His catalogue of the abundance and variety of fish and game reads like ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ but it was substantially true. He had no doubt that gold and copper were to be found with a little patience. Corn, he declared, sprang into ripeness with unexampled speed. The climate was that of Devonshire. But Smith did more than rhapsodize over New England; he made an amazingly accurate map of its coast as far south as Cape Cod, and he was honest enough to stop drawing where his own knowledge ended. Thus we have a first-rate outline of the Bay side of the Cape, the best sketch of Provincetown Harbor that had been done up to that date, and the beginning of the back side about as far along as Truro. Farther than that the Captain does not commit himself, but says that the Indians tell him there are shoals beyond. Because of his candor here, it is safe to conclude that what else he tells us of his coasting is also true; that he skirted alongshore in a small boat, past Plymouth, Sandwich, Barnstable, and so on out of the Bay and past Provincetown. He stopped short of Île Nauset and it does not appear that he landed at any of these places for more than an hour or so, here and there. Fish and furs comprise the burden of his song, and, loading his vessel with these and a little whale oil, he returned to England, leaving Captain Thomas Hunt in command of the second ship to load with fish for Malaga. The only foolish thing that Smith did was to try to alter Gosnold’s name, Cape Cod, to Cape James. Happily this change never spread beyond his own writings. Smith started another voyage to New England in 1615, but fell in with pirates, and eventually returned home without reaching our coast.

Hunt, realizing that he might never again have such a chance, seized twenty-four Indians, some of them Nausets, and carried them to Spain along with a cargo of fish. There he ‘sold those silly savages for rials of eight,’ and thereby burned his bridges so far as New England was concerned. Much pious indignation has been hurled at Hunt for this transaction, and certainly Hunt was a villain. But his performance differed from that of many generations of the descendants of his critics merely in geography and in degree. He stole two dozen natives from New England; they stole thousands from Africa. Yet they were men who read their Bibles and were doubtless familiar with the parable of the mote and the beam.

So far, all the men who visited the Cape were frankly explorers; love of adventure and desire for gold tempted them to come, and when they had had enough excitement and had looked in vain for the gold, they sailed back again. Quite different from these irresponsible gentlemen were the next arrivals on Cape soil--the Pilgrims in the Mayflower.

After a series of disappointments and deceptions that would have utterly discouraged any mere explorers and would have killed any motive but a stubborn desire to worship God as they chose--deceptions, too, which so delayed their departure that they landed at the beginning of a New England winter instead of in May or June--the Pilgrims, battered and exhausted, sighted the end of Cape Cod and identified it with rejoicing. They shaped their course so as to bring them outside it, and began the last leg of their voyage, which was to land them somewhere near the mouth of the Hudson River; but after half a day, they encountered, as Gosnold had encountered before them, the white breakers on Île Nauset, and despairing of finding a passage through them, returned to the shelter of Provincetown Harbor, where they dropped anchor on November 11, 1620. Provincetown was not the destination they had had in mind, but after more than two months in the cramped quarters of the Mayflower, any port and any land looked like the Garden of Eden to these sea-weary voyagers. Not knowing how soon now they might find themselves established on shore, and having, along with their idealism, a good share of sturdy common sense, they decided to draw up a constitution for their new government before they landed. This measure was the more necessary as some adventurers, who, in spite of precautions, had secured passage on the Mayflower, had been overheard during the voyage in seditious boasts as to what they would do when they got ashore; furthermore, the Pilgrims’ patent, being for Virginia, was worthless in New England. They therefore assembled in the cabin and composed the famous Mayflower Compact, the text of which follows:

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal
subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God,
of Great Britain, France, Ireland, King, defender of the faith, etc.

Having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the
Christian Faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant
the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these
presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one
another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body
politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furthermore
of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute,
and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions,
offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the general good of the Colony: unto which we promise
all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunto
subscribed our names. Cape Cod, eleventh of November, in the year of
the reign of our sovereign Lord King James of England, France and
Ireland 18, and of Scotland 54. Anno Domini, 1620.

This document has been called the germ of our Declaration of Independence; but such an interpretation is too sentimental. What the Pilgrims did in this Compact was to assert the right to modify the existing laws of England to suit new and unprecedented conditions which they were sure to encounter in New England. Such right of interpretation was often expressly granted in the patents given to colonists, and was in accord with the general policy of the Virginia Company, under whose ægis the Pilgrims had set sail. In drawing up this Compact, therefore, they were merely assuming, here in New England, rights which would have been theirs if they had landed, as they expected, on territory that was under the Virginia Company’s jurisdiction. There was nothing revolutionary or unprecedented about it.

After the first flush of gratitude at being safe in harbor had worn off, sober second thoughts assailed the little band. They had reached their goal and were face to face with the reality that heretofore they had idealized. Bradford saw the solemnity of their situation clearly and has expressed it with eloquence:

they had now no freinds to wellcome them, nor inns to entertiane or
refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes
to repaire too to seek for succoure.... And for the season it was
winter, and they that know the winters of that cuntrie know them to
be sharp and violent, and subjecte to cruell and feirce stormes,
deangerous to travill to known places, much more to search an unknown
coast. Besides, what could they see but a hidious and desolate
wildnes, full of wild beasts and wild men? and what multitudes ther
might be of them they knew not.... If they looked behind them,
ther was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a
maine barr and goulfe to seperate them from all civill parts of the
world....

From every point of view action was imperative. The shallop had been damaged during the voyage, and several days would be needed to repair it; so a number of them took the longboat and rowed ashore at Long Point. They spent the day tramping about, keeping always a weather eye open for Indians; but they saw none, and having walked perhaps as far as what is to-day the west edge of the town, they returned at dusk to the Mayflower, much refreshed by the excursion.

The next day was Sunday, and, though the shore must have looked to the cramped voyagers as alluring as the Swiss landscape looked to the Prisoner of Chillon, they stayed piously on board, thinking about heaven and to-morrow. This Sunday, beyond a doubt, was the longest day in the lives of any of them; but it passed, and on Monday morning, November 13, all hands--Pilgrims, sailors and servants--hurried ashore, landing in the very middle of the present shore front of Provincetown. While the women were busy washing the clothes, the men dragged the damaged shallop up above high-water mark for repairs. Two days later, under the command of Captain Miles Standish, a party of sixteen, wearing corselets and armed with swords and muskets, set out to explore the region. The party proceeded alongshore for a little way, heading east, in single file and at equal intervals: the Captain was a believer in military discipline. But before long they forgot their marching order in the excitement of following a couple of Indians that they saw running inland. The Pilgrims, hoping to find the Indians’ village, and guided by the footprints of the natives in the sand, persevered in the unequal race, until nightfall found them close to the Back Beach and near Stout’s Creek (a branch of East Harbor). Here they camped for the night, and the next morning, still following the Indians’ footprints, they made their way round the head of East Harbor Creek, and lost the trail in some pines. They had to plough through briars that ‘tore their very armour in pieces,’ until finally, suffering severely from thirst and fatigue, they came upon a spring near the edge of the marsh behind High Head, in Truro. Here they drank their first draughts of New England water and stopped for a rest. Disappointed in their hope of finding any Indian settlements, they decided to make for the mouth of Pamet River, of which they had caught glimpses from the deck of the Mayflower, on the chance that this region might turn out to be a good place to settle.

With this goal in mind they headed for the shore of the Bay, and skirted the water’s edge southeasterly, through the present villages of North Truro and Truro, where they came upon Indian stubble fields and graves. They poked round a bit in the graves, but took nothing, thinking, as they piously expressed it, ‘that it would be odious unto them to ransack their sepulchres.’ They had no scruples, however, about helping themselves to some corn that they found a bit farther on, buried in grass baskets in the sand. They took away as much of this as they could carry, and also a ship’s kettle which they found with it.

On their way back, the Pilgrims, after spending the night on the shore of the pond that gives Pond Village its name, lost themselves in the woods while trying to make their way round the head of East Harbor Creek, and finally came out on the Back Beach not far from Highland Light. Here they got their bearings once more and returned to the Mayflower, where they found their friends enjoying themselves ashore while the carpenters hammered away on the shallop. This expedition is known as the First Discovery.

For the next ten days all hands busied themselves pleasantly, cutting wood, fashioning axe-helves and getting into condition again after the enforced idleness of the long voyage. At the end of that time the shallop was ready, and on November 27 a party of thirty-four, including Captain Jones, set out for Pamet River, Truro. The weather was bitterly cold, and their boat was driven for shelter into East Harbor; in getting ashore every one was forced to wade knee deep, and this, with the subsequent night of exposure, gave them colds from which some of the party never recovered. Rather than spend the night shivering, half the group set out alongshore on foot toward Pamet River, and were picked up next morning by the shallop. They landed on Indian Neck between the two branches of the river. The ground was frozen and covered with snow; so after an abortive excursion inland, they returned to the spot where they had previously found the corn, and helped themselves to some ten bushels more, naming the place Cornhill. Jones then returned to the Mayflower, taking with him the corn and a number of sick men.

The next day those who remained continued their explorations and came upon some more Indian graves, and one in which the bodies of a child and a sailor had been buried together. Truly more things than are known occurred around Provincetown before 1620. They found also a couple of Indian houses, which had apparently been abandoned in hot haste, for utensils of all sorts were lying about. ‘Some of the best things we took away with us,’ says Mourt’s ‘Relation,’ ‘and left the houses standing still as they were.’ The theft of the corn can be excused, for hunger is a stern dictator; but how is such filching as this to be justified? Toward evening they returned to the shallop, which had arrived to pick them up, and reached the Mayflower the same night. There they learned of the birth, during their absence, of Peregrine White, the first English child to be born in New England. This excursion is known as the Second Discovery.

The third and last Discovery was undertaken only after considerable discussion. Truro looked so good to some of the Pilgrims that they were in favor of settling there, believing that they might go farther and fare worse. But another and more adventurous group was for making wider explorations before they came to a decision. This party prevailed, and, on December 6, ten Pilgrims and eight sailors, under command of Miles Standish, set out in the shallop in freezing weather to examine the whole Bay shore. Their pilot, one Robert Coppin, told them of a place where he had once been, ‘on the other headland of this Bay almost right over against Cape Cod, being a right line not much above eight leagues distant.’ This, Coppin said, he and his fellow explorers had named Thievish Harbor because an Indian had stolen a harpoon from them there. It was of course none other than Plymouth. This place, it was decided, should be the limit of their explorations, and if they found a good spot nearer at hand, so much the better.

They had no more than started when the whole party were drenched with spray which froze as fast as it struck them, but they persevered and coasted along as far as Billingsgate Point. In sailing across the mouth of the harbor, they grounded on the Eastham flats and waded ashore through icy water, a process they were beginning to regard as inevitable. They spent the night round a fire on the beach, and in the morning part of them explored Wellfleet Harbor, named it Grampus Bay from the numbers of stranded blackfish they found, and returned to their first landing-place at Eastham. Here they were joined by the rest of the party, who had struck inland and who returned at night with the report that they had found more elaborate and extensive Indian burying grounds than any they had yet seen, and had also come upon the dismantled frames of a few Indian houses. They all camped again on the beach, barricaded against a possible attack.

In the gray of the dawn, while they were preparing to embark, the attack came; some shots were exchanged amid great excitement and confusion on the part of the Pilgrims; but nobody was hurt, and the Indians soon withdrew. The affair seems to have been a mere flash of hostility rather than an organized onslaught, but it so impressed the settlers that they named the spot the First Encounter.

After this lively interruption, they continued coasting along and soon ran into bad weather with a high wind and such a thick snowstorm that they sailed past the entrance to Barnstable Harbor without seeing it. The wind increased until by the middle of the afternoon it was blowing a gale. Their rudder broke, and their mast snapped in three pieces. They were in grave danger of swamping at any moment. However, they found to their joy that they were off Clark’s Island at the mouth of Plymouth Harbor, and managed to make a landing there. They shivered through the night in the rain, and spent the next two days thawing out and resting. On Monday morning, December 11, they made their way into Plymouth Harbor, where they found cleared land all ready to be occupied and plenty of fresh water. This they decided was the very place they had been looking for; they had had enough exploring to last them for a long time. They, therefore, sailed back straight across the mouth of Cape Cod Bay, carrying the good news to those who had stayed on the Mayflower. On the morning of December 15, the Mayflower set sail from the anchorage where she had lain for more than a month, and the next day dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor. This was on a Saturday. The piety of the Pilgrims would allow them to do nothing until Monday; so they waited within a stone’s throw of the goal they had been seeking through so many weary months, and did not go ashore until the Sabbath lay behind them.