Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, so Henry Hudson determined to find a
northwest passage from ocean to ocean. The reason for wishing to cross
in the north from one ocean to the other was to save going “round the
Horn,” as sailors call the long voyage around Cape Horn, the southern
point of South America. We now know that there is no northwest passage;
at least, if there is such a waterway it is so near the North Pole that
it is always frozen up. But Henry Hudson, like all sailors in his time,
thought that it would be a simple matter to sail through the open polar
sea and pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific north of North America.
In 1607 this bold British navigator undertook a voyage in the employ, as
he wrote in his journal, of “certain worshipful Merchants of London.”
The object of this voyage was to explore the coast of Greenland and, as
he explained, “for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and
China.” His crew numbered only twelve persons, including one boy, his
own son John. After sailing about for five months, suffering great
hardships, Hudson returned to London without discovering that northern
passage. The next year he started out again, this time sailing
north-east along the coast of Norway, and returned after four months
without finding anything but hardships.
Hudson’s third voyage was made in the employ of the Dutch East India
Company. He sailed from Amsterdam, Holland, with a crew of twenty men
and his young son, on the _Half Moon_. He started out a second time for
a north-east passage, but he found so many difficulties that he turned
his prow westward again, determined to discover the way past North
America. About the 4th of July, 1609, he came to the Grand Banks of
Newfoundland, where he saw a fleet of Frenchmen fishing for cod. After
catching over a hundred of these fish for themselves, the crew of the
_Half Moon_ proceeded to the southwest, as Hudson had heard from his
friend, Captain John Smith, that there was an open way to the Pacific
south of Virginia.
After wandering down the coast and back, the _Half Moon_ entered a broad
bay and anchored beside an island which the natives called Manhattan.
Hudson took possession of this region in the name of his Dutch employers
and named it New Netherland. Here he traded with the Indians and sailed
a little way up the beautiful river which now bears his name. “Here,”
one of his men wrote in the journal, “the land grew very high and
mountainous.” Hudson and his crew were afraid of the Indians. They
captured two red men and tried to hold them as prisoners. They thought
that the other Indians would treat the white men well for fear that
Hudson would kill these two prisoners. But they made their escape
through a porthole and swam to the shore. As the _Half Moon_ got under
way again, the two Indians and their friends stood on the bank,
war-whooping, brandishing tomahawks, and calling for vengeance.
The _Half Moon_ sailed on upstream, and towards night came to anchor
near what is now Catskill Landing. “There,” as it is written in the
journal of the voyage, “we found very loving people and very old men,
where we were well used. Our boat went to fish and caught great store of
very good fish.”
The next morning the fishing was not so good, “the
[Illustration: THE DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER
_From the painting by Warren Sheppard © 1895, by The Woolfall Co._]
savages having been there in their canoes all night.” In the two days
following the ship went only five miles farther up the river. Hudson was
kindly received by an old chief who gave him the best cheer he could.
The natives came flocking on board the ship, bringing grapes, pumpkins,
and beaver and otter skins, which they traded with the sailors for
hatchets, knives, beads, and trinkets.
The ship’s “log” states that they gave some of the savages brandy to
drink. One of these men fell sound asleep, to the astonishment of the
others, who feared he had been poisoned. They took to their canoes and
paddled for shore. After a long powwow a few of the Indians returned
with a quantity of beads. They wanted to pay the white men to lift the
spell which they had put upon the sleeping Indian. The next day the
intoxicated Indian was walking about, well and happy, after his first
taste of “firewater.” This made his friends believe in the white men
again, and the journal goes on to say:
“So, at three of the clock in the afternoon they came aboard, and
brought tobacco and more beads, and gave them to our master; and
made an oration, and showed him all the country round about. Then
they sent one of their company on land, who presently returned, and
brought a great platter full of venison dressed by themselves, and
they caused him to eat with them. Then they made him reverence and
departed, all save the old men that lay aboard.”
Hudson found that it would not be safe to take the ship beyond the site
of the present city of Albany; so the _Half Moon’s_ prow was turned down
stream. On the way back the sailors were met by the two escaped
prisoners with quite a company of savages. More than a hundred braves
surrounded the ship. One climbed up the rudder and others swarmed over
the sides. The crew fired upon them with their muskets, and with the
cannon, blew holes in their canoes. The “thunder and lightning” from the
guns frightened the Indians so that they fled to the shore and took to
the woods.
Hudson himself had had enough. The _Half Moon_ lifted its anchor and
sailed away from the river whose name is Henry Hudson’s most glorious
monument. Stopping in England on his way to Holland, he was engaged by
the London Company to make another voyage in their behalf the following
year. This time the ship he commanded was the _Discovery_. The course
was past Iceland, around the southern part of Greenland, sighting
Desolation Island, which he charted as in the northern part of Davis
Strait. Through the strait which now bears his name he entered the sea
known for all time as Hudson Bay.
This crew was a bad set of men. One young fellow whom Captain Hudson had
picked up and befriended in London proved the worst of the gang. They
did not face their hardships and sufferings with real courage. When
starvation stared them in the face, every man looked out for himself.
They hoarded food, and robbed and fought one another like wild beasts.
At last they turned against Hudson, saying that he had brought them
there to starve.
The young man to whom Hudson had been kindest of all bound his master.
The rest tied up the six men who were most loyal to their chief, and
Hudson’s son. These eight men were put bound into the ship’s boat. Then
the crew hoisted the sail of the _Discovery_. They towed the little boat
for a time, as if they were loath to do the dastardly deed that they had
planned. But when they reached the open sea they cut the rope, and the
little boat containing Henry Hudson and his son was never again seen by
white men.
The ungrateful young man met a fate he richly deserved. In a fight with
Arctic savages he was killed, and several of the rest were mortally
wounded. Still others died of want before the few remaining deserters
were picked up, starving, by a passing vessel. Their names are
forgotten, and they are only remembered at all because of their wicked
treachery. But the map of North America is a fitting monument to the
heroic but ill-fated adventurer and discoverer, Henry Hudson.
LA SALLE AND THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI
Little is known now of the early life of Robert Cavelier de la Salle,
until, at twenty-five or a little less, he came from Rouen, France, to
Montreal. But of his life in America, in those days when the land was
still a howling wilderness, there is much to tell. He was born a century
and a half after Columbus thought he had found the coast of China; yet
this young Frenchman still believed that China was only a little farther
west than the land Columbus found, for he had but a narrow idea of the
width of America.
The people who were living in Canada, the new country along the River
St. Lawrence, were French. They traded with the Indians and trapped and
skinned wild animals for their fur. Those were the days of Indian scouts
and wigwams, and of war and scalp dances. Many of the French lived like
Indians; they played Indian games--running, shooting, snowshoeing,
lacrosse--and they learned to hunt and hide, and to travel stealthily
through the forests, like real red men.
So the Indians liked the French people better than they liked other
white settlers. The French called their scouts wood-runners. These
brave, shrewd messengers went out among the Indian tribes and learned
their languages and customs. Many of them ran from tribe to tribe,
thousands of miles into the wilderness, and came back to the French
settlement with skins of the mink, beaver, otter, and other animals.
They also had strange stories to tell of meadows, which they called
prairies, as level as a floor and hundreds of miles wide, where there
were no trees except along the rivers. Down through this thousand-mile
prairie region they said there were rivers which flowed together into a
wide stream which the Indians called the Mississippi, or Father of
Waters, which kept on in a mighty flood to the unknown south country.
These stories fired the fervent soul of Robert La Salle. He believed
that mighty river should be used as a water highway to the South Sea--as
the Pacific Ocean was still called; and that if they could sail down to
its mouth they would find an outlet to China like the outlet which the
St. Lawrence gave toward Europe. He was always talking about China and
trying in every way he could to raise money for canoes and food and
Indian guides to find the way to China through the western wilderness.
The French people laughed at his enthusiasm and called some land which
he owned beside the rapids above Montreal _La Chine_--French for China.
That suburb of Montreal is still called Lachine, and the rapids are the
Lachine Rapids.
Not having wealth enough of his own, La Salle went to France to ask the
king to approve his plan, and to provide money for the planting of the
lilies of France on the banks of the Mississippi. La Salle’s practical
way of planting French lilies was to build and maintain forts at
different points through all that great western country. Already Fort
Frontenac had been built near the outlet of Lake Ontario, and Father
Marquette, a heroic French missionary, accompanied by a trader named
Joliet had found the Mississippi and explored that great river for
hundreds of miles. On his return to a French settlement Joliet wrote to
Count Frontenac, governor of Canada, telling of the dangers of his
voyage:
“I had escaped every peril of the Indians. I had passed forty-two
rapids; and was at the point of debarking, full of joy at the
success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when my canoe
capsized, after all the danger seemed over. I lost two men and my
box of papers within sight of the first French settlements, which I
had left almost two years before. Nothing remains to me but life,
and the ardent desire to employ it on any service which you may
please to direct.”
When Robert La Salle had permission from the king and his treasurer, and
had borrowed money of his rich relatives in France, he returned to
Canada and made up a party of brave French and Indian guides, scouts,
and interpreters, who were to fight, if need be, to plant the lilies and
forts of France in the great western valley of the Father of Waters.
After they had paddled through Lake Ontario and carried their canoes
past Niagara Falls and the rapids above the Falls, they built their
sailboat, the _Griffin_. On this ship they sailed through the lakes to
the lower end of Lake Michigan. They paddled their canoes down along the
shore of that lake to the St. Joseph River, where they built Fort St.
Joseph. Canoeing up this river, which flows into Lake Michigan, they
carried their barks across to a little stream which led away from the
lake toward the greater rivers of the south country. On their way they
saw Indians of the Illinois tribes, and smoked the calumet, or peace
pipe, with most of these red men. Some tribes were so savage and
unfriendly that the white travelers were afraid to shoot game for food,
or even to build a fire lest a band of Indians on the warpath should see
it and come to kill and scalp them all. But it seems to have been the
fate of most discoverers to find their bitterest foes among those who
should be their friends. One of La Salle’s own party was caught just in
time to keep him from shooting their leader in the back.
Floating down a small stream the travelers came to the Illinois River.
On their way, among friendly tribes, they shot plenty of game. Once they
captured a huge bison, or buffalo, stuck in a swamp and left behind by
the rest of the herd, and feasted on buffalo meat for many days.
At last they came to a place, now called Lake Peoria, where the Illinois
is several miles wide. They decided that this would be a good place to
build a fort. Seeing smoke, they guessed that it proceeded from the
campfire of an Illinois tribe which was said to be hostile to the
French. Seeing wigwams in the distance La Salle arranged the canoes in
rows, and pulled up to the Indian camp. There was a stir in the Illinois
village. The Indian braves came out and received the white men as
friends, and there were feasts and games and dances in honor of their
French guests.
The Indians said that La Salle and his friends might build a fort there.
Built without delay, the fort was named Fort Breakheart, for Robert La
Salle had been going through some heartrending experiences. One of these
was the loss of the lake boat, the _Griffin_, with all the supplies and
equipments.
When La Salle explained to the Illinois tribe what he was seeking, the
chief gave him and his men a solemn warning of perilous falls and
precipices, of cannibal tribes and man-eating monsters. He said that if
they should get by those awful dangers, the mouth of the river was an
awful whirlpool which would engulf them, for no man who had ever gone
down into the mouth of the Father of Waters had returned alive. These
stories so frightened the men of the party--both red and white--that
they deserted their leader. They preferred to endure the ills they had
and risk their lives among savages known to be cruel, rather than fly to
ills they knew not of.
[Illustration: THE SHIPS OF FRANCE AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI
_From the painting in the Versailles Collection_]
So La Salle had to go hundreds of miles back to Canada for more men,
funds, and supplies, before he could venture to make the rest of the
trip. After many months’ delay he started out again from Montreal.
There were now fifty-four in his party--twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen
braves, ten squaws to do the cooking, and three papooses. When they got
back to Fort Breakheart, La Salle gave up building a ship, as he had
decided to make the voyage down the Mississippi in canoes. There was
plenty of game along the river, and in its muddy waters they caught
catfish six feet long and weighing about two hundred pounds. They saw
wild beans along the banks with stalks “as big as your arm,” reminding
one of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” They had varied experiences
with the different tribes of Indians--Chickasaw, Arkansas,
Natchez--along their course, and found that the “man-eating monsters”
described by the Illinois chief were only alligators. When at last they
reached the mouth of the Father of Waters, there was no whirlpool to
swallow them down; but the river calmly divided into three mouths, each
leading into a broad expanse of salt water which, they learned, was not
the Pacific Ocean but the Gulf of Mexico. On a hill near by, La Salle
raised a wooden pillar on which he nailed the coat-of-arms bearing the
lilies of France, and buried near it a leaden plate on which letters
were engraved to tell future comers that the whole country drained by
the Mississippi belonged to France.
At last, the patient worker and traveler had triumphed. He went back to
Paris and reported all he had done in the name of his beloved king and
country. Robert Cavelier de la Salle had done a greater thing than he
realized. One hundred and twenty years later, Napoleon, Emperor of the
French, sold to the United States the territory of Louisiana, claimed by
La Salle, which is now half of the great republic. This was an
achievement which meant more than the discovery of an outlet to China.
Although a boat may be sailed through long rivers and short canals from
the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, this fact
is hardly thought worthy of mention in these days. A far greater benefit
to America and the whole world was achieved by Robert La Salle, because
he enabled the French government to give to the United States her broad
empire of the west.
LIVINGSTONE, THE WHITE MAN OF THE DARK CONTINENT
Little Davie Livingstone was a queer, quiet Scotch laddie. His father
was a high-minded man, but he was so poor that he had to take Davie out
of the village school when he was ten. In those days, the early part of
the nineteenth century, children began to work when they were very
young. So Mr. Livingstone sent the lad to work, with other boys of his
own age, as a piecer in a cotton mill. David worked from six in the
morning till eight at night, stopping only for lunch.
With his first week’s wages the ten-year-old boy bought a Latin grammar.
He was so eager to learn that he went to night school from eight to ten
at night. He studied till midnight, and even later, when his mother did
not take his books away and send him to bed. His great desire was to be
a missionary. So he took up other languages besides Latin, and such
studies as would fit him for missionary work. As soon as he was able, he
went to London and
[Illustration: DAVID LIVINGSTONE, THE BRAVE SCOTCH MISSIONARY
_From a photograph taken in 1867_]
elsewhere to study, working part of the time, to earn enough to pay his
way.
On a visit to London Livingstone met Doctor Moffat, a leading missionary
in South Africa, and soon decided to work in Africa himself. He had
prepared himself to help men’s bodies as well as their souls. So he went
first as a medical missionary.
Doctor Livingstone’s first mission station, or center, was seven hundred
miles farther north than Doctor Moffat’s, in a region which was
dangerous because of savage men, wild beasts, and, worst of all, an
unhealthful climate. In this lonely place the new missionary began to
tell the ignorant black people about the one true God. He cured them of
their illnesses, and showed them how to dig canals and build dams to
water their little farms. He also taught them to till these farms in a
better way than they had known.
In the region there were many lions. One day, when the missionary was
out with a band of natives, he met one of the big beasts. Livingstone
and one of his black men shot at the lion, which sprang up with a roar
and bounded into the bushes, through the circle the men had made around
him. Then two more lions appeared. Before Livingstone could reload his
gun, he saw one great brute with bristling mane and angry eyes springing
upon him. Its weight bore him to the earth. The lion seized his shoulder
with jaws strong enough to carry off an ox. When some one asked him
afterward what he thought just then, Doctor Livingstone replied, “I was
wondering what part of me he would eat first.” In a letter the doctor
described this adventure:
“With his terrible roar sounding in my ear, the lion shook me as a dog
does a rat; but, strange to say, I felt neither pain nor fear, though
fully conscious of all that passed. As I turned to escape the weight of
his paw, which was resting on my head, I saw his eyes turn toward
Mebalwe [one of the natives], who was about to fire, but his gun missed
fire in both barrels. Instantly the lion quitted his hold of me and
leaped on Mebalwe, biting him badly in the thigh; then he dashed at
another man who was about to attack him with his spear. But at that
moment the previous shots the lion had received took effect and he
dropped to the ground dead.”
Livingstone was bitten in eleven places, his arm was badly mangled, and
bones were broken in several places. It was many months before he was
well. The broken arm was always weak, and he bore the marks of that big
lion’s teeth to his dying day.
While recovering from his wounds, Livingstone made the long journey to
the home of Doctor Moffat, and married that gentleman’s daughter Mary.
Miss Moffat was born in South Africa, so that she knew the language and
ways of the people. This made her a true helpmeet to her husband in his
noble work.
Livingstone called himself “Jack-of-all-trades.” “I read in journeying,”
he wrote, “but little at home. Building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring,
tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering (horse-doctoring and
shoeing), wagon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing in divinity to
a class of three, fill up my time.”
When Livingstone reached the country of one of the black tribes,
thousands of miles to the north, all the people of the region, numbering
six or seven thousand, poured out to see the white man. The missionary
was greatly relieved to find that the chief of this region, who was only
eighteen years old, was disposed to be friendly. The white man and his
party were well cared for and given plenty of good food, of which they
were badly in need. They were nearly starved, because unfriendly natives
on the way had refused to sell them food. In regions where the Arab
slave-traders had robbed, killed, and carried away and sold many of the
natives, the people were afraid of Livingstone, for they thought all
white men must be robbers and murderers. But in reality the brave Scotch
missionary was a great worker against the slave-trade, writing and
saying all he could to make people in Europe and England know how wicked
it was.
Although Livingstone journeyed about so much, travel was very hard and
dangerous. He and his faithful men often had to go up to their necks in
swamps where the hot, moist air was filled with poisonous insects, and
to cross rivers in great peril from the crocodile and hippopotamus. Not
only did Livingstone have numerous hairbreadth escapes from lions,
elephants, and other wild beasts, but he was many times stricken with
the terrible African fever. Because of his wonderful recoveries the
natives thought his life was charmed, and they were afraid he was a
wizard who worked cures by magic from the devil. But the good doctor
soon won their friendship by his great kindness to them.
Livingstone traveled thousands of miles by water, in clumsy boats. He
wrote to a friend, describing the life on one of these river trips:
“We rise a little before five, when it is daylight. While I am dressing,
the coffee is made, and after I have filled my little coffeepot, I leave
the rest for my companions, who eagerly swallow the refreshing drink.
Meanwhile the servants are busy loading the boats, which done, we
embark. The next two hours, while the men row swiftly onward, are the
pleasantest of the whole day. About eleven we land and eat our luncheon,
which consists of what is left from supper the evening before, or of
zwieback with honey and water.
“After resting for an hour we enter the boats again, and take our places
under an umbrella. The heat is oppressive, and as I am still weak from
my recent attack of fever, I cannot go ashore and hunt. The rowers, who
are exposed to the sun without cover, drip with sweat and begin to tire
by afternoon. We often reach a suitable spot to spend the night two
hours before sundown, and as we are all tired, we gladly make a halt.
“As soon as we are ashore the men cut grass for my bed and poles for my
tent. The bed is then made, the boxes with our supplies piled on each
side of it, and lastly the tent is stretched above. Four or five paces
in front of it a huge fire is lighted, beside which each man has his own
place, according to the rank he occupies. Two of the Makololos are
always at my right and left, both in eating and sleeping, while Machana,
my head boatman, lies down before the door of my tent as soon as I go to
bed.
“A space beyond the fire is staked out for the cattle, in the shape of a
horseshoe. The evening meal consists of coffee and zwieback, or of bread
made from maize or Kaffir corn, unless we are lucky enough to shoot
something to supply us with a pot of meat. We go to bed soon after, and
silence descends upon the camp. On moonlight nights the fire is allowed
to go out.”