Chapter I: Of American Settlements Generally

Some American Grounds, like Coffee, unsettled.—Some Settlements pulled
up by the Roots; others chilled by Fever and Ague.—Moist Soils
objected to except by Doctors.—Unexpected Crops of Tomahawks from
Wheat sown.—Settlements in America because of the Impracticability of
making any at Home with Creditors.—Wild Oats sown between
thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth Parallels.—Frequent Settlements make
long Friends.—Settlements of Old Tavern Scores in Chalky
Districts.—Religious Squalls prostrate some Plantations.—Indian
Tempests uproot others.—Growth of Virginia, although Queen Elizabeth a
_femme sole_.—Clergymen’s Settlements.—Brides unsettled.—Drake around
the World.

THE FIRST YEAR’S CROP IN THE NEW
SETTLEMENTS.
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Clergymen’s discourses, like grape clusters, usually show two sides,—a positive or sunny one and a negative or shady one.

Desirous of bringing out the native bunches of our history more roundly against the leafy background of its verdant youth, we begin by showing alternating merits and demerits. And first the negative, or shady side.

The first damp observation shows that many parts of America have never been settled at all. In certain districts, grounds are found, as in coffee, unsettled; and good grounds exist for this, and, contradictory as it may seem, these are generally discovered in poor water.

In some cases, like those of Gosnold, Raleigh, De La Roche, and others, attempts were made, and settlements actually planted, which seemed for a time to thrive; but the impatient planters, like curious boys, were so desirous of ascertaining how much their plants had grown, that they pulled them up to look at the roots,—an inspection which the plants resented by sulking and dying out. In other instances, fever and ague was mixed up with the first seed, and this had a chilling effect upon the husbandmen.

Indeed, a hard fight is still going on in many parts of the country with this strong unsettler, the record of whose assaults and charges is found in the apothecary shops and doctors’ offices. These highly colored little stockades and forts with the rosy-hued land-offices for the sale of the most desirable real estate, with water-lots running in front of them, often indeed comprise the entire settlement.

In some instances, the character of the soil interfered seriously with any permanent occupation of the place. People who had no objection to watered silks, or watered paper, entertained, it has been found, well-grounded reasons for not liking an oozy surface, paragraphed between watery curves, and punctuated with bullfrogs and other pointed characters. Some of the early settlers did venture upon these maritime risks; but policy, or no policy, they ended their speculations under weeping willows, with Keat-like epitaphs over them,—

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

Oftentimes, even where the soil was rich, the early settler became discouraged by the unexpected crops he obtained. Planting wheat, he found that it came up a rank growth of Indian corn, tasselled out into tomahawks or sharp-pointed arrows, instead of the silken tufts which he had a right to look for in the order of nature. This result frequently took place in the valleys of the Connecticut and Mohawk, along the banks of the Mystic River, and upon the otherwise pleasant slopes overlooking Narragansett Bay.

In several instances, too, as in the case of the shipped by the council of the Plymouth Company, the seed thus sent was taken from heaps of full-grown vicious specimens, to be found only in London, or other large places, instead of being judiciously selected from healthy young stocks. Such seed, of course, not only became sour and fermented, but this fermentation spoiled whatever good grain was found accidentally mixed with it. This kind of crop was even worse than that of the tomahawks or arrows. Of course, these penal crops were short-lived. The profligate and dissolute soon died in the virtuous solitudes in which they had no previous experience at home to recall and compare; and escaped as soon as possible from settlements whose greatest crime, in their eyes, was that in them they could make no scores long enough to be worth running away from.

Some attempted settlements here, because they could not succeed in making any with their creditors at home. Of this class, many were found in the bounds of the London Company, scraped up under the charter of James I., granted in 1606,—a company which sowed their wild oats between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth parallels of latitude, but whose doings, undoings, and misdoings had no parallel whatever. Some of this seed, lying dormant, sprouted up in these regions as late as 1861, and covered the Carolinas and Virginia with a crop worse than teazles or Canada thistles.

The maxim that “frequent settlements make long friends,” was doubly verified along the New England coast, where the security of the settler could only be maintained by short and decisive footings-up of and with the breech-less and treaty-breaking Picts of our history, or by such often-planted gatherings as would prevent their attempts to run up a score.

It is almost needless to say that in all the regions from the Penobscot River to St. Augustine, under all the various charters, and among all classes of colonists, English, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, or Huguenot, settlements were often made on the walls and behind the doors of taverns, where the weekly score was kept,—a geological district mapped out in a chalk formation, the size of which seemed always to astonish the settler whenever his attention was particularly invited to it. Whatever his own fields bore, here the crop was unfailing; or rather its growth was generally in the inverse ratio to that of his wheat or tobacco patch.

In a few instances settlements, fairly and permanently made were suddenly uprooted by sudden squalls or tempests, which, razing the hair from the heads of the colonists, still, as we read of their ferocity and fury, raise our own. Such was the scalping-party that swept over Deerfield, the savage whirlwind down the valley of the Wyoming, and the rapid gust that licked up the little settlement of Cherry Valley.

Now and then also occurred a religious tornado, which prostrated whole patches of plantations, and which, at one time, threatened to become the prevailing winds of our American continent, taking the place even of our strong and steadily blowing trade-winds. Thus a company of French Huguenots, sent out in 1565, by Admiral Coligni, and planted in Florida, were overwhelmed by a party of Spaniards, under Melendez, who, after murdering them all, placed over their mutilated bodies this inscription: “We do this not as unto Frenchmen, but as unto heretics.” Which was the heretical part thus mercilessly dealt with, and which the French portion not intended to be harmed, cotemporary accounts do not furnish us with materials sufficient to enable us to discriminate. They do tell us, however, that this then fashionable mode of treating religious convictions was imitated by the countrymen of the French, acting upon what was then thought to be the proper interpretation of the merciful and benign principles of The Book, viz., “doing unto others, what they do unto you”; for soon after De Gourges, sailing from France with three ships, formed a surprise party to two Spanish forts, and after executing a Spanish dance with the garrison, took them out and hung them up in the trees like dried fruit; and fearing that the specimens might be mistaken, left above them the recipe, as follows: “I do this not as unto Spaniards, or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers.”

Whether the Spaniards thus done for properly appreciated the delicate discrimination, we are not informed.

To the statistician it may be of interest to know that of the abortive attempts at settlements within the present limits of the United States, six were made by the English, one by the Swedes, two by Spaniards, and two by the French. Lovers of that branch of political history will be able to wring out of these figures results more extraordinary than any we can torture them into.

On the whole, however, notwithstanding all drawbacks and misfortunes, the settlements gained steadily on the Indians, fever and ague, the cold and exposure, tomahawks, tavern-keepers, and surprise parties. Some marriages took place, but no settlements were made on the bride, except perhaps, in the course of time, her old father-in-law and mother-in-law, who were fortunate if they brought with them, as addition to her scanty stock, two whole empty trunks, their own. Queen Elizabeth did everything to promote the growth of population in her favorite colony of Virginia, except to furnish them with a personal example; but to make up for this omission, she sent out some Episcopal clergymen, provided with surplice and stole, and with licenses to marry. These obtained settlements for themselves, and zealously stimulated them in others.

As soon as the settlements began fairly to demonstrate that they would succeed, they were of course vigorously patronized, and in fact “encumbered with help.” Plenty of people there were then who at first, at the bare mention of American settlements, had placed their thumbs to their noses, and irreverently given their fingers a quick gyratory motion in the air, but who now came forward and claimed the merit of having always been the especial friends of the colonists, and pointed, like the very lieutenants and aid-de-camps of General Success, to their uniformly entertained convictions, triumphantly exclaiming, “Did we not always tell you so?” As candid historians, we cannot withhold our pencils from sketching the portraits of these burly friends of the early years of America; these large-hearted souls, who, sitting at home over their comfortable cannel-coal fires, piled cheerily up with the dividends from the stock of some of the companies formed for planting these shores, which they would not touch until it got up to par, and who then, fearing that their attachments might not be appreciated, cried out their undeviating devotion in voices that fairly drowned all others.

From these characters, which only shine in the full noonday of prosperity, we gladly turn to Sir Francis Drake, who, as early as 1586, did not hesitate to divide his last crust with the feeble and struggling colony of Roanoke Island, succoring them by timely aid, and not sucking from them the little feeble strength which short crops and long watchings against wary foes had left them. Although born in England, Drake had a soul which compassed the world, around whose waist he passed the second girdle which had ever belted it.

DRAKE WITH HIS FLEET SAILS ROUND THE WORLD.
(p. 94)
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