The Story of Our Country Part 6

Then he turned to the governor and said, laying his hand on his sword, "I command these men, Governor Fletcher, and if you interrupt me again I will make the sun s.h.i.+ne through you in a minute." And he looked as if he meant what he said. All the governor's pomp and consequence were gone, and his face turned from red to pale. He hastily thrust the paper back into his pocket, and was not long in leaving Hartford for New York. No doubt he thought that Connecticut was not a good place for royal governors.

Suppose I now tell you the story of another royal governor and another bold captain. This was down in Virginia, but it was long after Captain Smith was dead and after Virginia had become a large and prosperous colony.

The king sent there a governor named Berkeley, who acted as if he was master and all the people were his slaves. They did not like to be treated this way; but Berkeley had soldiers under his command, and they were forced to obey. While this was going on the Indians began to murder the settlers. The governor ought to have stopped them, but he was afraid to call out the people, and he let the murders go on.

There was a young man named Nathaniel Bacon who asked Governor Berkeley to let him raise some men to fight the Indians. The governor refused.

But this did not stop brave young Bacon, for he called out a force of men and drove off the murdering savages.

Governor Berkeley was very angry at this. He said that Bacon was a traitor and ought to be treated like one, and that the men with him were rebels. Bacon at once marched with his men against Jamestown, and the haughty governor ran away as fast as he could.

But while Bacon and his men were fighting the Indians again, Governor Berkeley came back and talked more than ever about rebels and traitors.

This made Bacon and the people with him very angry. To be treated in this way while they were saving the people from the Indian knife and tomahawk was too bad. They marched against Jamestown again. This time the governor did not run away, but prepared to defend the place with soldiers and cannon.

But they did not fire their guns. Bacon had captured some of the wives of the princ.i.p.al men, and he put them in front of his line as he advanced. The governor did not dare bid his soldiers to fire on these women, so he left the town again in a hurry, and it was taken by the Indian fighters.

Bacon made up his mind that Governor Berkeley should not come back to Jamestown again. He had the town set on fire and burned to the ground.

Some of the men with him set fire to their own houses, so that they should not give shelter to the governor and his men. That was the end of Jamestown. It was never rebuilt. Only ashes remained of the first English town in America. To-day there is only an old church tower to show where it stood.

We cannot tell what might have happened if brave young Bacon had lived.

As it was, he was taken sick and died. His men now had no leader, and soon scattered. Then the governor came back full of fury, and began to hang all those who opposed him. He might have put a great many of them to death if the king had not stopped him and ordered him back to England. This was King Charles II., whose father had been put to death by Cromwell. He was angry at what Governor Berkeley had done, and said:

"That old fool has hung more men in that naked land than I did for the murder of my father."

CHAPTER VIII

OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES

WHAT a wonderful change has come over this great country of ours since the days of our grandfathers! Look at our great cities, with their grand buildings, and their miles of streets, with swift-speeding electric cars, and thousands of carriages and wagons, and great stores lit by brilliant electric lights, and huge workshops filled with rattling wheels and marvelous machines! And look at our broad fields filled with cattle or covered by growing crops, and divided by splendid highways and railroads thousands of miles in length! Is it not all very wonderful?

"But has it not always been this way?" some very young persons ask. "I have lived so many years and have never seen anything else."

My dear young friend, if you had lived fifty or sixty years, as many of us older folks have, you would have seen very different things. And if we had lived as long ago as our grandfathers did, and then come back again to-day, I fancy our eyes would open wider than Governor Andros's did when he saw that the charter was gone.

In those days, as I told you, when any one wanted to make a light, he could not strike a match and touch it to a gas jet as we do, but must hammer away with flint and steel, and then had nothing better than a home-made tallow candle to light. Why, I am sure that many of you never even saw a pair of snuffers, which people then used to cut off the candle wick.

Some of you who live in old houses with dusty lofts under the roof, full of worm-eaten old furniture, have, no doubt, found there odd-looking wooden frames and wheels, and queer old tools of various kinds.

Sometimes these wheels are brought down stairs and set in the hall as something to be proud of. And the old eight-day clocks stand there, too, with their loud "tick-tack," buzzing and ticking away to-day as if they had not done so for a hundred years. The wheels I speak of are the old spinning wheels, with which our great-grandmothers spun flax into thread. This thread they wove into homespun cloth on old-fas.h.i.+oned looms. All work of this kind used to be done at home, though now it is done in great factories; and we buy our clothes in the stores, instead of spinning and weaving and sewing them in the great old kitchens before the wood-fire on the hearth.

Really, I am afraid many of you do not know how people lived in the old times. They are often spoken of as the "good old times." I fancy you will hardly think so when I have told you something more about them.

Would you think it very good to have to get up in a freezing cold room, and go down and pump ice-cold water to wash your face, and go out in the snow to get wood to make the fire, and s.h.i.+ver for an hour before the house began to warm up? That is only one of the things you would not find pleasant. I shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about how people lived in old times, and then you can say if you would like to go back to them.

Would any boy and girl among you care to live in a little one-story house, made of rough logs laid one on another, and with a roof of thatch--that is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep out the rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or two rooms, and some of them with chimneys made of wood, plastered with clay on the inside so that they could not be set on fire. These were the oldest houses. Later on people began to build larger houses, many of which were made of brick or stone.

But I am afraid there was not much comfort in the best of them. They had no stoves, and were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big logs of wood were burned. They made a bright and cheerful blaze, it is true, but most of the heat went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a little of it got out into the room. In the winter the people lived in their kitchens, with the blazing wood-fire for heat and light, and at bed-time went s.h.i.+vering off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you would have enjoyed that?

They had very little furniture, and the most of what they had was rude and rough, much of it chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe. Some of the houses had gla.s.s windows--little diamond-shaped panes, set in lead frames--but most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which kept out as much light as it let in.

All the cooking was done on the great kitchen hearth, where the pots were hung on iron cranes and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have. Mush and milk, or pork and beans, were their usual food, and their bread was mostly made of rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice books they wanted to read often had to do so by the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell you that books were very scarce things in those days.

If any of us had lived then I know how glad we would have been to see the bright spring time, with its flowers and warm suns.h.i.+ne. But we might have s.h.i.+vered again when we thought of next winter. Of course, the people had some good times. They had Thanksgiving-day, when the table was filled with good things to eat, and election-day and training-day, when they had outdoor sports. And they had quilting and husking-parties, and spinning bees, and sleigh-rides and picnics and other amus.e.m.e.nts. A wedding was a happy time, and even a funeral was followed by a great dinner. But after all there was much more hard work than holiday, and nearly everybody had to labor long and got little for it. They were making themselves homes and a country, you know, and it was a very severe task. We, to-day, are getting the good of their work.

Down South people had more comfort. The weather was not nearly so cold, so they did not have to keep up such blazing fires or s.h.i.+ver in their cold beds. Many of the rich planters built themselves large mansions of wood or brick, and brought costly furniture from England, and lived in great show, with gold and silverware on their sideboards and fine coaches drawn by handsome horses when they went abroad.

In New York the Dutch built quaint old houses, of the kind used in Holland. In Philadelphia the Quakers lived in neat two-storied houses, with wide orchards and gardens round them, where they raised plenty of fruit. When any one opened a shop, he would hang out a basket, a wooden anchor, or some such sign to show what kind of goods he had to sell.

In New England Sunday was kept in a very strict fas.h.i.+on, for the people were very religious. It was thought wicked to play, or even to laugh, on Sunday, and everybody had to go to church. All who did not go were punished. And, mercy on us, what sermons they preached in those cold old churches, prosing away sometimes for two hours at a time! The boys and girls had to listen to them, as well as the men and women, and you know how hard it is now to listen for one hour.

If they got sleepy, as no doubt they often did, and went off into a snooze, they were soon wide awake again. For the constable went up and down the aisles with a long staff in his hand. This had a rabbit's foot on one end of it and a rabbit's tail on the other. If he saw one of the women asleep he would draw the rabbit's tail over her face. But if a boy took a nap, down would come the rabbit's foot in a sharp rap on his head, and up he would start very wide awake. To-day we would call that sort of sermons cruelty to children, and I think it was cruelty to the old folks also.

Do you think those were "good old times"? I imagine some of you will fancy they were "bad old times." But they were not nearly so bad as you may think. For you must bear in mind that the people knew nothing of many of the things we enjoy. They were used to hard work and plain food and coa.r.s.e furniture and rough clothes and cold rooms, and were more hardy and could stand more than people who sleep in furnace-heated rooms and have their tables heaped with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and meats.

But there was one thing that could not have been pleasant, and that was, their being afraid all the time of the Indians, and having to carry muskets with them even when they went to church. All around them were the forests in which the wild red men roamed, and their cruel yell might be heard at any time, or a sharp arrow might whiz out from the thick leaves.

The farm-houses were built like forts, and in all the villages were strong buildings called blockhouses, to which everybody could run in times of danger. In these the second story spread out over the first, and there were holes in the floor through which the men could fire down on the Indians below. But it makes us tremble to think that, at any time, the traveler or farmer might be shot down by a lurking savage, or might be seized and burned alive. We can hardly wonder that the people grew to hate the Indians and to kill them or drive them away.

There was much game in the woods and the rivers were full of fish, so that many of the people spent their time in hunting and fis.h.i.+ng. They got to be as expert in this as the Indians themselves, and some of them could follow a trail as well as the most sharp-sighted of the red men.

Some of you may have read Fenimore Cooper's novels of Indian life, and know what a wonderful hunter and Indian trailer old Natty b.u.mppo was.

But we do not need to go to novels to read about great hunters, for the life of Daniel Boone is as full of adventure as that of any of the heroes of Indian life.

Daniel Boone was the most famous hunter this country has ever known. He lived much later than the early times I am talking about, but the country he lived in was as wild as that found by the first settlers of the country. When he was only a little boy he went into the deep woods and lived there by himself for several days, shooting game and making a fire to cook it by. He made himself a little hut of boughs and sods, and lived in it like an Indian, and there his father and friends found him when they came seeking him in the woods.

Years afterwards he crossed the high mountains of North Carolina and went into the great forest of Kentucky, where only Indians and wild animals lived. For a long time he stayed there by himself, with the Indians hunting and trying to kill him. But he was too wide awake for the smartest of them all.

One time, when they were close on his trail, he got away from them by catching hold of a loose grape-vine and making a long swinging jump, and then running on. When the Indians came to the place they lost the marks of his footprints and gave up the chase. At another time when he was taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns, and slipped away from them without one of them waking up.

Many years afterwards, when he and others had built a fort in Kentucky, and brought out their wives and children, Boone's daughters and two other girls were carried off by Indians while they were out picking wild flowers.

Boone and other hunters were soon on their trail, and followed it by the broken bushes and bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young girls had left behind them. In this way they came up to the Indians while they were eating their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and rescued the girls. These young folks did not go out of the fort to pick wild flowers after that.

Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and would have been burned alive if an old woman had not taken him for her son. The Indians painted his face and made him wear an Indian dress and live with them as one of themselves. But one day he heard them talking, and found that they were going to attack the fort where all his friends were. Then he slipped out of the village and ran away. He had a long journey to make and the Indians followed him close. But he walked in the water to hide his footsteps, and lived on roots and berries, for fear they would hear his gun if he shot any game. In the end he got back safe to the fort. He found it in bad condition, but he set the men at work to make it strong, and when the Indians came they were beaten off.

Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and kept going farther west to get away from the new people who were coming into the Kentucky forest.

He said he wanted "elbow room." He spent all the rest of his life hunting, and the Indians looked on him as the greatest woodsman and the most wonderful hunter the white men ever had.

CHAPTER IX

A HERO OF THE COLONIES

DO you not think there are a great many interesting stories in American history? I have told you some, and I could tell you many more. I am going to tell you one now, about a brave young man who had a great deal to do with the making of our glorious country. But to reach it we will have to take a step backward over one hundred and fifty years. That is a pretty long step, isn't it? It takes us away back to about the year 1750. But people had been coming into this country for more than a hundred and fifty years before that, and there were a great many white men and women in America at that time.