the French king whistled, and we were so weak that the Dutch burned our
fleet in London River. Every year a Spanish fleet came from the West
Indies to Cadiz, laden deep with gold, silver, gems, spices and all
sorts of precious merchandise.
Much as our sailors hated to see all that treasure wasted on Spaniards,
England had to keep the peace with Spain, because Charles II had his
crown jewels in pawn and no money for such luxuries as war. The Spanish
envoy would come to him making doleful lamentations about our naughty
sailors, who, in the far Indies, had insolently stolen a galleon or
sacked a town. Charles, with his mouth watering at such a tale of loot,
would be inexpressibly shocked. The “lewd French” must have done this,
or the “pernicious Dutch,” but not our woolly lambs--our innocent
mariners.
The buccaneers of the West Indies were of many nations besides the
British, and they were not quite pirates. For instance, they would
scorn to seize a good Protestant shipload of salt fish, but always
attacked the papist who flaunted golden galleons before the nose of
the poor. They were serious-minded Protestants with strong views on
doctrine, and only made their pious excursions to seize the goods of
the unrighteous. Their opinions were so sound on all really important
points of dogmatic theology that they could allow themselves a little
indulgence in mere rape, sacrilege, arson, robbery and murder, or fry
Spaniards in olive oil for concealing the cash box. Then, enriched by
such pious exercises, they devoutly spent the whole of their savings on
staying drunk for a month.
The first buccaneers sallied out in a small boat and captured a
war-ship. From such small beginnings arose a pirate fleet, which,
under various leaders, French, Dutch, Portuguese, became a scourge to
the Spanish empire overseas. When they had wiped out Spain’s merchant
shipping and were short of plunder, they attacked fortified cities,
held them to ransom, and burned them for fun, then in chase of the
fugitive citizens, put whole colonies to an end by sword and fire.
Naturally only the choicest scoundrels rose to captaincies, and the
worst of the lot became admiral. It should thrill the souls of all
Welshmen to learn that Henry Morgan gained that bad eminence. He had
risen to the command of five hundred cutthroats when he pounced down on
Maracaibo Bay in Venezuela. At the entrance stood Fort San Carlos, the
place which has lately resisted the attack of a German squadron. Morgan
was made of sterner stuff than these Germans, for when the garrison
saw him coming, they took to the woods, leaving behind them a lighted
fuse at the door of the magazine. Captain Morgan grabbed that fuse
himself in time to save his men from a disagreeable hereafter.
Beyond its narrow entrance at Fort San Carlos, the inlet widens to an
inland sea, surrounded in those days by Spanish settlements, with the
two cities of Gibraltar and Maracaibo. Morgan sacked these towns and
chased their flying inhabitants into the mountains. His prisoners, even
women and children, were tortured on the rack until they revealed all
that they knew of hidden money, and some were burned by inches, starved
to death, or crucified.
These pleasures had been continued for five weeks, when a squadron of
three heavy war-ships arrived from Spain, and blocked the pirates’ only
line of retreat to the sea at Fort San Carlos. Morgan prepared a fire
ship, with which he grappled and burned the Spanish admiral. The second
ship was wrecked, the third captured by the pirates, and the sailors of
the whole squadron were butchered while they drowned. Still Fort San
Carlos, now bristling with new guns, had to be dealt with before the
pirates could make their escape to the sea. Morgan pretended to attack
from the land, so that all the guns were shifted to that side of the
fort ready to wipe out his forces. This being done, he got his men on
board, and sailed through the channel in perfect safety.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY MORGAN]
And yet attacks upon such places as Maracaibo were mere trifling, for
the Spaniards held all the wealth of their golden Indies at Panama.
This gorgeous city was on the Pacific Ocean, and to reach it, one
must cross the Isthmus of Darien by the route in later times of
the Panama railway and the Panama Canal, through the most unwholesome
swamps, where to sleep at night in the open was almost sure death
from fever. Moreover, the landing place at Chagres was covered by a
strong fortress, the route was swarming with Spanish troops and wild
savages in their pay, and their destination was a walled city esteemed
impregnable.
By way of preparing for his raid, Morgan sent four hundred men who
stormed the castle of Chagres, compelling the wretched garrison to jump
off a cliff to destruction. The English flag shone from the citadel
when Morgan’s fleet arrived. The captain landed one thousand two
hundred men and set off up the Chagres River with five boats loaded
with artillery, thirty-two canoes and no food. This was a mistake,
because the Spaniards had cleared the whole isthmus, driving off
the cattle, rooting out the crops, carting away the grain, burning
every roof, and leaving nothing for the pirates to live on except the
microbes of fever. As the pirates advanced they retreated, luring them
on day by day into the heart of the wilderness. The pirates broiled
and ate their sea boots, their bandoleers, and certain leather bags.
The river being foul with fallen timber, they took to marching. On
the sixth day they found a barn full of maize and ate it up, but only
on the ninth day had they a decent meal, when, sweating, gasping and
swearing, they pounced upon a herd of asses and cows, and fell to
roasting flesh on the points of their swords.
On the tenth day they debouched upon a plain before the City of Panama,
where the governor awaited with his troops. There were two squadrons
of cavalry and four regiments of foot, besides guns, and the pirates
heartily wished themselves at home with their mothers. Happily the
Spanish governor was too sly, for he had prepared a herd of wild bulls
with Indian herders to drive into the pirate ranks, which bulls, in
sheer stupidity, rushed his own battalions. Such bulls as tried to fly
through the pirate lines were readily shot down, but the rest brought
dire confusion. Then began a fierce battle, in which the Spaniards lost
six hundred men before they bolted. Afterward through a fearful storm
of fire from great artillery, the pirates stormed the city and took
possession.
Of course, by this time, the rich galleons had made away to sea with
their treasure, and the citizens had carried off everything worth
moving, to the woods. Moreover, the pirates were hasty in burning
the town, so that the treasures which had been buried in wells or
cellars were lost beyond all finding. During four weeks, this splendid
capital of the Indies burned, while the people hid in the woods; and
the pirates tortured everybody they could lay hands on with fiendish
cruelty. Morgan himself, caught a beautiful lady and threw her into
a cellar full of filth because she would not love him. Even in their
retreat to the Atlantic, the pirates carried off six hundred prisoners,
who rent the air with their lamentations, and were not even fed until
their ransoms arrived.
Before reaching Chagres, Morgan had every pirate stripped to make sure
that all loot was fairly divided. The common pirates were bitterly
offended at the dividend of only two hundred pieces of eight per man,
but Morgan stole the bulk of the plunder for himself, and returned a
millionaire to Jamaica.
Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica as a reward
for robbing the Spaniards. Afterwards his majesty changed his mind, and
Morgan died a prisoner in the tower of London as a punishment for the
very crime which had been rewarded with a title and a vice-royalty.
XXXVII
A. D. 1682
THE VOYAGEURS
This chapter must begin with a very queer tale of rivers as adventurers
exploring for new channels.
Millions of years ago the inland seas--Superior, Michigan and
Huron--had their overflow down the Ottawa Valley, reaching the Saint
Lawrence at the Island of Montreal.
But, when the glaciers of the great ice age blocked the Ottawa Valley,
the three seas had to find another outlet, so they made a channel
through the Chicago River, down the Des Plaines, and the Illinois, into
the Mississippi.
And when the glaciers made, across that channel, an embankment which is
now the town site of Chicago, the three seas had to explore for a new
outlet. So they filled the basin of Lake Erie, and poured over the edge
of Queenstown Heights into Lake Ontario. The Iroquois called that fall
the “Thunder of Waters,” which in their language is Niagara.
All the vast region which was flooded by the ice-field of the great
ice age became a forest, and every river turned by the ice out of its
ancient channel became a string of lakes and waterfalls. This beautiful
wilderness was the scene of tremendous adventures, where the red
Indians fought the white men, and the English fought the French, and
the Americans fought the Canadians, until the continent was cut into
equal halves, and there was peace.
Now let us see what manner of men were the Indians. At the summit of
that age of glory--the sixteenth century--the world was ruled by the
despot Akbar the Magnificent at Delhi, the despot Ivan the Terrible
at Moscow, the despot Phillip II at Madrid, and a little lady despot,
Elizabeth of the sea.
Yet at that time the people in the Saint Lawrence Valley, the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas and, in the middle, the Onondagas, were free
republics with female suffrage and women as members of parliament.
Moreover the president of the Onondagas, Hiawatha, formed these five
nations into the federal republic of the Iroquois, and they admitted
the Tuscaroras into that United States which was created to put an end
to war. In the art of government we have not yet caught up with the
Iroquois.
They were farmers, with rich fisheries, had comfortable houses, and
fortified towns. In color they were like outdoor Spaniards, a tall,
very handsome race, and every bit as able as the whites. Given horses,
hard metals for their tools, and some channel or mountain range to keep
off savage raiders, and they might well have become more civilized than
the French, with fleets to attack old Europe, and missionaries to teach
us their religion.
Their first visitor from Europe was Jacques Cartier and they gave him a
hearty welcome at Quebec. When his men were dying of scurvy an Indian
doctor cured them. But to show his gratitude Cartier kidnaped the
five principal chiefs, and ever after that, with very brief intervals,
the French had reason to fear the Iroquois. Like many another Indian
nation, driven away from its farms and fisheries, the six nation
republic lapsed to savagery, lived by hunting and robbery, ravaged the
white men’s settlements and the neighbor tribes for food, outraged and
scalped the dead, burned or even ate their prisoners.
The French colonies were rather over-governed. There was too much
parson and a great deal too much squire to suit the average peasant,
so all the best of the men took to the fur trade. They wore the Indian
dress of long fringed deerskin, coon cap, embroidered moccasins,
and a French sash like a rainbow. They lived like Indians, married
among the tribes, fought in their wars; lawless, gay, gallant, fierce
adventurers, the voyageurs of the rivers, the runners of the woods.
With them went monks into the wilderness, heroic, saintly Jesuits and
Franciscans, and some of the quaintest rogues in holy orders. And
there were gentlemen, reckless explorers, seeking a way to China. Of
this breed came La Salle, whose folk were merchant-princes at Rouen,
and himself pupil and enemy of the Jesuits. At the time of the plague
and burning of London he founded a little settlement on the island of
Mount Royal, just by the head of the Rapids. His dream was the opening
of trade with China by way of the western rivers, so the colonists,
chaffing him, gave the name La Chine to his settlement and the rapids.
To-day the railway trains come swirling by, with loads of tea from
China to ship from Montreal, but not to France.
During La Salle’s first five years in the wilderness he discovered
the Ohio and the Illinois, two of the head waters of the Mississippi.
The Indians told him of that big river, supposed to be the way to
the Pacific. A year later the trader Joliet, and the Jesuit Saint
Marquette descended the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. So La Salle
dreamed of a French empire in the west, shutting the English between
the Appalachians and the Atlantic, with a base at the mouth of the
Mississippi for raiding the Spanish Indies, and a trade route across
the western sea to China. All this he told to Count Frontenac, the new
governor general, a man of business who saw the worth of the adventure.
Frontenac sent La Salle to talk peace with the Iroquois, while he
himself founded Fort Frontenac at the outlet of Lake Ontario. From here
he cut the trade routes of the west, so that no furs would ever reach
the French traders of Montreal or the English of New York. The governor
had not come to Canada for his health.
La Salle was penniless, but his mind went far beyond this petty
trading; he charmed away the dangers from hostile tribes; his heroic
record won him help from France. Within a year he began his adventure
of the Mississippi by buying out Fort Frontenac as his base camp. Here
he built a ship, and though she was wrecked he saved stores enough to
cross the Niagara heights, and build a second vessel on Lake Erie.
With the _Griffin_ he came to the meeting place of the three upper
seas--Machilli-Mackinac--the Jesuit headquarters. Being a good-natured
man bearing no malice, it was with a certain pomp of drums, flags
and guns that he saluted the fort, quite forgetting that he came as
a trespasser into the Jesuit mission. A Jesuit in those days was a
person with a halo at one end and a tail at the other, a saint with
modest black draperies to hide cloven hoofs, who would fast all the
week, and poison a guest on Saturday, who sought the glory of martyrdom
not always for the faith, but sometimes to serve a devilish wicked
political secret society. Leaving the Jesuit mission an enemy in his
rear, La Salle built a fort at the southern end of Lake Michigan, sent
off his ship for supplies, and entered the unknown wilderness. As
winter closed down he came with thirty-three men in eight birchbark
canoes to the Illinois nation on the river Illinois.
Meanwhile the Jesuits sent Indian messengers to raise the Illinois
tribes for war against La Salle, to kill him by poison, and to persuade
his men to desert. La Salle put a rising of the Illinois to shame, ate
three dishes of poison without impairing his very sound digestion, and
made his men too busy for revolt; building Fort Brokenheart, and a
third ship for the voyage down the Mississippi to the Spanish Indies.
Then came the second storm of trouble, news that his relief ship from
France was cast away, his fort at Frontenac was seized for debt, and
his supply vessel on the upper lakes was lost. He must go to Canada.
The third storm was still to come, the revenge of the English for the
cutting of their fur trade at Fort Frontenac. They armed five hundred
Iroquois to massacre the Illinois who had befriended him in the
wilderness.
[Illustration: ROBERT CAVALIER DE LA SALLE]
At Fort Brokenheart La Salle had a valiant priest named Hennepin,
a disloyal rogue and a quite notable liar. With two voyageurs Pere
Hennepin was sent to explore the river down to the Mississippi, and
there the three Frenchmen were captured by the Sioux. Their captors
took them by canoe up the Mississippi to the Falls of Saint Anthony, so
named by Hennepin. Thence they were driven afoot to the winter villages
of the tribe. The poor unholy father being slow afoot, they mended his
pace by setting the prairie afire behind him. Likewise they anointed
him with wildcat fat to give him the agility of that animal. Still
he was never popular, and in the end the three wanderers were turned
loose. Many were their vagabond adventures before they met the explorer
Greysolon Du Luth, who took them back with him to Canada. They left La
Salle to his fate.
Meanwhile La Salle set out from Fort Brokenheart in March, attended by
a Mohegan hunter who loved him, and by four gallant Frenchmen. Their
journey was a miracle of courage across the unexplored woods to Lake
Erie, and on to Frontenac. There La Salle heard that the moment his
back was turned his garrison had looted and burned Fort Brokenheart;
but he caught these deserters as they attempted to pass Fort Frontenac,
and left them there in irons.
Every man has power to make of his mind an empire or a desert. At
this time Louis the Great was master of Europe, La Salle a broken
adventurer, but it was the king’s mind which was a desert, compared
with the imperial brain of this haughty, silent, manful pioneer. The
creditors forgot that he owed them money, the governor caught fire
from his enthusiasm, and La Salle went back equipped for his gigantic
venture in the west.
The officer he had left in charge at Fort Brokenheart was an Italian
gentleman by the name of Tonty, son of the man who invented the tontine
life insurance. He was a veteran soldier whose left hand, blown off,
had been replaced with an iron fist, which the Indians found to be
strong medicine. One clout on the head sufficed for the fiercest
warrior. When his garrison sacked the fort and bolted, he had two
fighting men left, and a brace of priests. They all sought refuge in
the camp of the Illinois.
Presently this pack of curs had news that La Salle was leading an army
of Iroquois to their destruction, so instead of preparing for defense
they proposed to murder Tonty and his Frenchmen, until the magic of
his iron fist quite altered their point of view. Sure enough the
Iroquois arrived in force, and the cur pack, three times as strong,
went out to fight. Then through the midst of the battle Tonty walked
into the enemy’s lines. He ordered the Iroquois to go home and behave
themselves, and told such fairy tales about the strength of his curs
that these ferocious warriors were frightened. Back walked Tonty to
find his cur pack on their knees in tears of gratitude. Again he went
to the Iroquois, this time with stiff terms if they wanted peace, but
an Illinois envoy gave his game away, with such extravagant bribes
and pleas for mercy that the Iroquois laughed at Tonty. They burned
the Illinois town, dug up their graveyard, chased the flying nation,
butchered the abandoned women and children, and hunted the cur pack
across the Mississippi. Tonty and his Frenchmen made their way to their
nearest friends, the Pottawattomies, to await La Salle’s return.
And La Salle returned. He found the Illinois town in ashes, littered
with human bones. He found an island of the river where women and
children by hundreds had been outraged, tortured and burned. His fort
was a weed-grown ruin. In all the length of the valley there was no
vestige of human life, or any clue as to the fate of Tonty and his
men. For the third time La Salle made that immense journey to the
settlements, wrung blood from stones to equip an expedition, and coming
to Lake Michigan rallied the whole of the native tribes in one strong
league, a red Indian colony with himself as chief, for defense from the
Iroquois. The scattered Illinois returned to their abandoned homes,
tribes came from far and wide to join the colony and in the midst, upon
Starved Rock, La Salle built Fort Saint Louis as their stronghold. When
Tonty joined him, for once this iron man showed he had a heart.
So, after all, La Salle led an expedition down the whole length of the
Mississippi. He won the friendship of every tribe he met, bound them to
French allegiance, and at the end erected the standard of France on the
shores of the Gulf of Mexico. “In the name of the most high, mighty,
invincible and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God,
King of France and of Navarre,” on the nineteenth of April, 1682. La
Salle annexed the valley of the Mississippi from the Rocky Mountains
to the Appalachians, from the lakes to the gulf, and named that empire
Louisiana.
As to the fate of this great explorer, murdered in the wilderness by
followers he disdained to treat as comrades, “his enemies were more in
earnest than his friends.”
XXXVIII
A. D. 1741
THE EXPLORERS
From the time of Henry VII of England down to the present day, the
nations of Europe have been busy with one enormous adventure, the
search for the best trade route to India and the China seas. For four
whole centuries this quest for a trade route has been the main current
of the history of the world. Look what the nations have done in that
long fight for trade.
Portugal found the sea route by Magellan’s Strait, and occupied Brazil;
the Cape route, and colonized the coasts of Africa. She built an empire.
Spain mistook the West Indies for the real Indies, and the red men for
the real Indians, found the Panama route, and occupied the new world
from Cape Horn up to the southern edge of Alaska. She built an empire.
France, in the search of a route across North America, occupied
Canada and the Mississippi Valley. She built an empire. That lost,
she attempted under Napoleon to occupy Egypt, Palestine and the whole
overland road to India. That failing, she has dug the Suez Canal and
attempted the Panama, both sea routes to the Indies.
Holland, searching for a route across North America, found Hudson’s Bay
and occupied Hudson River (New York). On the South Sea route she built
her rich empire in the East Indian Islands.
Britain, searching eastward first, opened up Russia to civilization,
then explored the sea passage north of Asia. Searching westward, she
settled Newfoundland, founded the United States, built Canada, which
created the Canadian Pacific route to the Indies, and traversed the sea
passage north of America. On the Panama route, she built a West Indian
empire; on the Mediterranean route, her fortress line of Gibraltar,
Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Adon. By holding all routes, she holds her Indian
empire. Is not this the history of the world?
But there remains to be told the story of Russia’s search for routes
to India and China. That story begins with Martha Rabe, the Swedish
nursery governess, who married a dragoon, left him to be mistress of a
Russian general, became servant to the Princess Menchikoff, next the
lover, then the wife of Peter the Great, and finally succeeded him
as empress of all the Russias. To the dazzling court of this Empress
Catherine came learned men and travelers who talked about the search of
all the nations for a route through North America to the Indies. Long
ago, they said, an old Greek mariner, one Juan de Fuca, had bragged on
the quays of Venice, of his voyages. He claimed to have rounded Cape
Horn, and thence beat up the west coast of America, until he came far
north to a strait which entered the land. Through this sea channel he
had sailed for many weeks, until it brought him out again into the
ocean. One glance at the map will show these straits of Juan de Fuca,
and how the old Greek, sailing for many weeks, came out again into the
ocean, having rounded the back of Vancouver’s Island. But the legend as
told to Catherine the Great of Russia, made these mysterious straits of
Anian lead from the Pacific right across North America to the Atlantic
Ocean. Here was a sea route from Russia across the Atlantic, across
North America, across the Pacific, direct to the gorgeous Indies. With
such a possession as this channel Russia could dominate the world.