History of the United States Volume I Part 9

[1534]

How the French fought for foothold in Florida and were routed by the Spaniards has just been related. So early as 1504, and possibly much earlier, before Cabot or Columbus, French sailors were familiar with the fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle of Cape Breton they gave its name in remembrance of their own Brittany. The attention of the French Government was thus early directed toward America, and it at length determined to share in the new discoveries along with the Spanish and the English.

In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was sent by Francis I. on a voyage of discovery to the New World. Sighting the sh.o.r.es of America near the present Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored the coast of New Jersey, touched land near New York Bay, and anch.o.r.ed a few days in the harbor of Newport. In this vicinity he came upon an island, which was probably Block Island. Sailing from here along the coast as far north as Newfoundland, he named this vast territory New France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Verrazano, the Florentine Navigator.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Jacques Cartier. From an old print.]

[1540]

In 1534 Cartier, a noted voyager of St. Malo, coasted along the north of Newfoundland, pa.s.sed through the Straits of Belle Isle into the water now known as St. Lawrence Gulf, and into the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Erecting a cross, he took possession of the sh.o.r.es in the name of the king of France.

In the following year he made a second voyage, going up as far as the mouth of a small river which the year before he had named St. John's. He called the waters the Bay of St. Lawrence. Ascending this, he came to a settlement of the natives near a certain hill, which he called Mont Royal, now modified into "Montreal." Cartier returned to France in 1536, only a few of his men having survived the winter.

In 1540 Lord Roberval fitted out a fleet, with Cartier as subordinate.

Cartier sailed at once--his third voyage--Roberval following the next year. A fort was built near the present site of Quebec. Roberval and Cartier disagreed and returned to France, leaving the real foundation of Quebec to be laid by Champlain, much later.

In 1604 De Monts arrived on the coast of Nova Scotia and erected a fort at the mouth of the St. Croix, New Brunswick. He also made a settlement on the sh.o.r.e of the present harbor of Annapolis, naming it Port Royal, and the country around it Acadia. De Monts is famous largely because under him the Sieur de Champlain, the real father of French colonization in America, began his ill.u.s.trious career. He had entered the St.

Lawrence in 1603. In 1608 he founded Quebec, the first permanent colony of New France. The next year he explored the lake which perpetuates his name. In 1615 he saw Lake Huron, Le Caron, the Franciscan, preceding him in this only by a few days. Fired with ardor for discovery, Champlain joined the Hurons in an attack upon the Iroquois. This led him into what is now New York State, but whether the Indian camp first attacked by him was on Onondaga or on Canandaigua Lake is still in debate. These were but the beginning of Champlain's travels, by which many other Frenchmen, some as missionaries, some as traders, were inspired to press far out into the then unknown West. We shall resume the narrative in Chapter VII of the next period. Champlain died at Quebec in 1635.

Turn back now to Columbus's time. England, destined to dominate the continent of North America, was also practically the discoverer of the same. On St. John's day, June 24, 1497, thirteen months and a week before Columbus saw South America, John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of King Henry VII., from the deck of the good s.h.i.+p Matthew, of Bristol, descried land somewhere on the coast either of Labrador or of Nova Scotia. Cabot, of course, supposed this prima vista of his to belong to Asia, and expected to reach c.i.p.ango next voyage. So late as 1543 Jean Allefonsce, on reaching New England, took it for the border of Tartary.

Andre Thevet, in 1515, in a pretended voyage to Maine, places Cape Breton on the west coast of Asia. This confusion probably explains the tradition of Norumbega as a great city, and of other populous and wealthy cities in the newly found land. Men transferred ideas of Eastern Asia to this American sh.o.r.e.

[1516]

The subsequent year Cabot made a second voyage, inspecting the American coast northward till icebergs were met, southward to the vicinity of Albemarle Sound. Possibly in his first expedition, probably in the second, John Cabot was accompanied by his more famous son, Sebastian.

For many years after the Cabots, England made little effort to explore the New World. Henry VII. was a Catholic. He therefore submitted to the Pope's bull which gave America to Spain. Henry VIII. had married Catherine of Aragon. He allowed Ferdinand, her father, to employ the skill and daring of Sebastian Cabot in behalf of Spain. It was reserved for the splendid reign of Elizabeth to show what English courage and endurance could accomplish in extending England's power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sebastian Cabot. From an old print.]

[1576]

Like those before him, Martin Frobisher was in earnest to find the northwest pa.s.sage, in whose existence all navigators then fully believed. Like Columbus, he vainly sought friends to aid him. At last, after he had waited fifteen years in vain, Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, helped him to an outfit. His little fleet embraced the Gabriel, of thirty-five tons, the Michael of thirty, and a pinnace of ten. As it swept to sea past Greenwich, the Queen waved her hand in token of good-will. Sailing northward near the Shetland Isles, Frobisher pa.s.sed the southern sh.o.r.e of Greenland and came in sight of Labrador, 1576.

He effected a landing at Hall's Island, at the mouth of the bay now called by his name, but which he thought to be a strait, his discovery thus strengthening his belief in the possibility of reaching Asia by this westward course. He sailed up the bay as far as Butcher's Island, where five of his men were taken prisoners by the natives. All effort to rescue them was made, but to no purpose. Among the curiosities which he brought home was a piece of stone, or black ore, which gave rise to the belief that gold was to be found in this new country.

[1577]

A second and larger expedition sailed in 1577. The Queen gave 1,000 pounds and lent the royal s.h.i.+p Aid, of two hundred tons. The Gabriel and the Michael of the former year were again made ready, besides smaller craft. This voyage was to seek gold rather than to discover the northwest pa.s.sage. The fleet set sail May 27th, and on July 18th arrived off North Foreland, or Hall's Island, so named for the man who had brought away the piece of black earth. Search was made for this metal, supposed to be so valuable, and large quant.i.ties were found. The fleet sailed back to England with a heavy cargo of it.

In 1578 a third and the last voyage was made to this region, to which the name meta incognita was given. Two large s.h.i.+ps were furnished by the Queen, and these were accompanied by thirteen smaller ones.

[1578-1580]

It was now the purpose to found a colony. The expedition set sail May 31st, going through the English Channel, and reaching the coast of Greenland June 21st. Frobisher and a few of his sailors landed where, perhaps, white men had never trodden before. As he came near the bay he was driven south by stormy weather, and entered, not knowing his whereabouts, the waters of Hudson's Straits, which he traversed a distance of sixty miles. He succeeded at length in retracing his course, and anch.o.r.ed on the southern sh.o.r.e of Frobisher's Bay, in the Countess of Warwick's Sound. But the desire for gold, the bleak winds, barren sh.o.r.es, and drifting icebergs, all combined to dispel the hopes of making a successful settlement, and the adventurers turned their faces homeward, carrying once more a cargo of ore, which proved, like the first, to be of no value whatever.

Almost three hundred years later Captain Hall, the American explorer, visited the Countess's Island and Sound. Among the Eskimos, from 1860 to 1862, he learned the tradition of Frobisher's visits, which had been preserved and handed down. They knew the number of s.h.i.+ps; they spoke of the three times that white men had come; how five of these strangers had been taken captive, and how, after remaining through the winter, they had been allowed to build a boat, and to launch themselves upon the icy seas, never to be heard of more. Captain Hall was shown many relics of Frobisher's voyages, some of which he sent to the Royal Geographical Society of London, a part to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute at Was.h.i.+ngton.

The small English house of lime and stone on this island was still standing in good condition, and there was also a trench where they had built their ill-fated boat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Indian Village at the Roanoke Settlement.]

A contemporary of Frobisher, Sir Francis Drake, also entertained the idea of making the northwest pa.s.sage. While engaged in privateering or piratical expeditions against the Spanish, Drake landed on the Isthmus of Panama, saw the Pacific for the first time, and determined to enter it by the Straits of Magellan. In 1577 he made his way through the straits, plundered the Spanish along the coast of Chili and Peru, and sailed as far north as the 48th parallel, or Oregon, calling the country New Albion. Steering homeward by the Cape of Good Hope, he arrived at Plymouth, his starting-point, in 1580, having been absent about two years and ten months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Humphrey Gilbert.]

Thomas Cavendish had been with Grenville in the voyage of 1585 to Virginia. Frobisher's attempts inspired him with the ambition of the age. In 1586 he, too, sailed through the Straits of Magellan, burning and plundering Spanish s.h.i.+ps, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Plymouth in 1588, having been gone about two years and fifty days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Walter Raleigh. From a portrait attributed to Zuccaro in the National Portrait Gallery, London.]

[1584]

These half-piratical attempts against Spain led continually into American waters, till the notion of forming a permanent outpost here as base for such adventures suggested to Sir Humphrey Gilbert the plan, which he failed to realize, of founding an American settlement. Gilbert visited our sh.o.r.es in 1579, and again in 1583, but was lost on his return from the latter voyage.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent two captains, Amidas and Barlow, to inspect the coast off what is now North Carolina. They reported so favorably that he began, next year, a colony on Roanoke Island. England was now a Protestant land, and no longer heeded Spanish claims to the transatlantic continent, save so far as actual settlements had been made.

[1586]

Sir Richard Grenville commanded this expedition, but was to return on seeing the one hundred and eight colonists who accompanied him well established. Queen Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the new country.

Drake, tending homeward from one of his raids on the Spanish coast, in 1586, offered the settlers supplies, but finding them wholly discouraged, he carried them back to England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Queen Elizabeth.]

[1587]

Determined to plant an agricultural community, Raleigh next time, l587, sent men with their families. A daughter to one of these, named Dare, was the first child of English parents born in America. Becoming dest.i.tute, the colony despatched its governor home for supplies. He returned to find the settlement deserted, and no tidings as to the fate of the poor colonists have ever been heard from that day to our own. The Jamestown settlers mentioned in the next chapter found among their Indian neighbors a boy whose whitish complexion and wavy hair induced the interesting suspicion that he was descended from some one of these lost colonists of Roanoke.

Thus Sir Walter's enterprise had to be abandoned. In the 40,000 pounds spent upon it his means were exhausted. Besides, England was now at war with Spain, and the entire energies of the nation were in requisition for the overthrow of the Spanish Armada.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

[1606]

We have now arrived at the seventeenth century. In 1606 King James I.

issued the first English colonial charter. It created a first and a second Virginia Company, the one having its centre in London, and coming to be known as the London Company; the other made up of Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth men, and gradually taking the t.i.tle of the Plymouth Company. This latter company, the second, or Plymouth Company, authorized to plant between 38 degrees and 45 degrees north, effected a settlement in 1607 at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Little came of it but suffering, the colonists, after a severe winter, returning to England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: King James I. Mr. Henry Irving's Collection.]

[1607]

A colony of one hundred and five planters sent out by the first or London Company, proceeded, also in 1607, to Chesapeake Bay, entering James River, to which they indeed gave this name, and planted upon its banks Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on the continent.

This London Company consisted of a council in England, appointed by the king, having the power to name the members of a local council which was to govern the colony, the colonists themselves having no voice.

It is well known that the very earliest population of the Old Dominion was not of the highest, but predominantly idle and thriftless. Vagabonds and homeless children picked up in the streets of London, as well as some convicts, were sent to the colony from England to be indented as servants, permanently, or for a term of years. Persons of the better cla.s.s, to be sure, came as well, and the quality of the population, on the whole, improved year by year. Settlement here followed a centrifugal tendency, except as this was repressed by fear of the Indians. In 1616 the departments of Virginia were Henrico, up the James above the Appomattox mouth, West and s.h.i.+rley Hundreds, Jamestown, Kiquoton, and King's Gift on the coast near Cape Charles--a wide reach of territory to be covered by a total population of only three hundred and fifty.