enough. During the next thirty years such men as Amerigo Vespucci (who
enjoyed the not singular distinction of having his name associated with
the discovery of another man), the Cabots, father and son; Balboa, and
Magellan, crossed the sea and visited the new domain. Magellan
performed the only unprecedented feat left for mariners by sailing
round the earth by way of the South American straits that bear his
name; but Vasco da Gama had already entered the Pacific by the Cape of
Good Hope. It was by this time beginning to be understood that the new
land was really new, and not the other side of the old one; but this
only prompted the adventurers to get past or through it to the first
goal of their ambition. They had not yet realized the vastness of the
Pacific, and took America to be a mere breakwater protecting the
precious shores of Cathay. Later, they found that America repaid
looting on her own account; but meanwhile there was set on foot that
search for the Northwest Passage which resulted in the discovery of
almost everything except the Passage itself. To the craze for a
Northwest Passage is due the exploration of Baffin's and Hudson's Bays,
of the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, and of the Great Lakes; the
establishment of the English and French fur-trading Companies, which
hastened the development of Canada; and the settlement of Oregon and
Washington. It led English and Spanish explorers and freebooters up the
California coast, and on to Vancouver and Bering Straits; Alaska was
circumvented, and the Northwest Passage was found, though the
everlasting ice mocked the efforts of the finders. In short, the entire
continent was tapped and sounded with a view to forcing a way through
or round it; and by the time the attempt was finally given up, the
contour, size, and possible value of America had been estimated much
more quickly and accurately than they would have been, had not India
lain west of it.
All this time Spain had been having the best of the bargain. She had
fastened upon the West Indies, Mexico, and Central and South America,
and had found gold there in abundance; she bade other nations keep
hands off, and was less solicitous than they about the rumored riches
of the Orient. Spain, in those days, was held to be invincible on the
sea; England's fight with the Spanish Armada was yet to come. But there
were already Englishmen of the Drake and Frobisher type who liked
nothing better than to capture a Spanish galleon, and "singe the king
of Spain's beard"; and these independent sea-rovers were becoming so
bold and numerous as to put the Spaniards to serious inconvenience and
loss. But the latter could not be ousted from their vantage ground; so
the English presently bethought themselves that there might be gold in
the more northerly as well as in the central parts of the Continent;
and they turned to seek it there. Nothing is more noticeable in every
phase of these events than the constant involuntary accomplishment of
something other--and in the end better--than the thing attempted. As
Columbus, looking for Indian spices, found America; as seekers of all
nations, in their quest for a Northwest Passage, charted and developed
the continent: so Sir Walter Raleigh and his companions, hunting for
gold along the northern Atlantic seaboard, took the first steps toward
founding the colonies which were in the sequel to constitute the germ
of the present United States.
Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England; more than ninety years
had passed since Columbus had landed on his Caribbean island. In 1565 a
colony of French Huguenots at St. Augustine had, by a characteristic
act of Spanish treachery, been massacred, men, women, and children, at
the order of Melendez, and the French thus wiped out of the southern
coast of North America forever. While England remained Catholic, the
influence of Papal bulls in favor of Spanish authority in America, and
matrimonial alliances between the royal families of Spain and England,
had restrained English enterprise in the west. Henry VIII. had indeed
acted independently both of the Spaniard and of the Pope; but it was
not until Elizabeth's accession in 1558, bringing Protestantism with
her, that England ventured to assert herself as a nation in the new
found world. Willoughby had attempted, in 1553, the preposterous
enterprise of reaching India by sailing round Norway and the north of
Asia; but his expedition got no farther than the Russian port of
Archangel. In 1576 and the two succeeding years, Martin Frobisher went
on voyages to Labrador and neighboring regions, at first searching for
the Northwest Passage, afterward in quest of gold. The only result of
his efforts was the bringing to England of some shiploads of earth,
which had been erroneously supposed to contain the precious metal. In
1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert had obtained a patent empowering him to
found a colony somewhere in the north; his object being rather to
develop the fisheries than to find gold or routes to India. He was
stepbrother of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the latter started with him on
the first voyage; but they were forced to put back soon after setting
out. Gilbert went again in 1583, and reached St. John's, where he
erected a pillar commemorating the English occupation; but he was
drowned in a storm on the way home. Raleigh, who had stayed in England,
and had acquired royal favor and a fortune, remained to carry out, in
his own way, the designs which Gilbert's death had left in suspense. In
1584 he began the work.
Raleigh perhaps deserves to be regarded as the greatest English
gentleman who ever lived. In addition to the learning of his time, he
had a towering genius, indomitable courage and constancy, lofty and
generous principles, far-seeing wisdom, Christian humanity, and a
charity that gave and forgave to the end. He was a courtier and a
statesman, a soldier and a sailor, a merchant and an explorer. His life
was one of splendid and honorable deeds; he was not a talker, and found
scant leisure to express himself in writing; though when he chose to
write poetry he approved himself best in the golden age of English
literature; and his "History of the World," composed while imprisonment
in the Tower prevented him from pursuing more active employments, is
inferior to no other produced up to that time. Such reverses as he met
with in life only spurred him to fresh efforts, and his successes were
magnificent, and conducive to the welfare of the world. He was a
patriot of the highest and purest type; a champion of the oppressed; a
supporter of all worthy enterprises, a patron of literature and art.
Withal, he was full of the warm blood of human nature; he had all the
fire, the tenderness, and the sympathies that may rightly belong to a
man. The mind is astonished in contemplating such a being; he is at
once so close to us, and so much above the human average. King James I.
of England, jealous of his greatness, imprisoned him for twelve years,
on a groundless charge, and finally slew him, at the age of sixty-six,
broken by disease, and saddened, but not soured, by the monstrous
ingratitude and injustice of his treatment. Upon the scaffold, he felt
of the edge of the ax which was to behead him, and smiled, remarking,
"A sharp medicine to cure me of my diseases!" Such are the exploits of
kings.
Raleigh was the first man who perceived that America was to be the home
of a white people: that it was to be a dwelling-place, not a mere
supply-house for freebooters and home traders. He resolved to do his
part toward making it so; he impoverished himself in the enterprise;
and though the colony which he planted in what is now North Carolina,
but was then called Virginia, in honor of the queen, who was pleased
thus to advertise her chastity--though this failed (by no fault of
Raleigh's) of its immediate object, yet the lesson thus offered bore
fruit in due season, and the colonization of the New World, shown to be
a possibility and an advantage, was taken up on the lines Raleigh had
drawn, and resulted in the settlement whose heirs we are.
In 1585, after receiving the favorable report of a preliminary
expedition, Raleigh sent out upward of a hundred colonists under the
command of Sir Richard Grenville, one of the heroic figures of the
time, a man of noble nature but fearful passions. They landed on the
island of Roanoke, off the mouth of the river of that name, and were
well received by the native tribes, who thought they were immortal and
divine, because they were without women, and possessed gunpowder. It
would have been well had the English responded in kind; but within a
few days, Grenville, angry at the non-production of a silver cup which
had been stolen from his party during a visit to a village, burned the
huts and destroyed the crops; and later, Lane, who had been left by
Grenville in command of the colony, invited the principal chief of the
region to a friendly conference, and murdered him. This method of
procedure would not have been countenanced by the great promoter of the
expedition; nor would he have encouraged the hunt for gold that was
presently undertaken. This was the curse of the time, and ever led to
disaster and blood. Nor did Lane escape the delusion that a passage
could be found through the land to the Indies; the savages, humoring
his ignorance for their own purposes, assured him that the Roanoke
River (which rises some two hundred miles inland) communicated with the
Pacific at a distance of but a few days' journey. Lane selected a party
and set hopefully forth to traverse fifty degrees of latitude; but ere
long his provisions gave out, and he was forced to go starving back
again. He arrived at the settlement just in time to save it from
annihilation by the Indians.
But there were able men among these colonists, and some things were
done which were not foolish. Hariot, who had scientific knowledge, and
was a careful observer, made notes of the products of the land, and
became proficient in tobacco smoking; he also tested and approved the
potato, and in other ways laid the foundation for a profitable export
and import trade. John White, an artist, who afterward was put in
charge of another colony, made drawings of the natives and their
appurtenances, which still survive, and witness his fidelity and skill.
Explorations up and down the coast, and for some distance inland, were
made; the salubrity of the climate was eulogized, and it was admitted
that the soil was of excellent fertility. In short, nothing was
lacking, in the way of natural conditions, to make the colony a
success; yet the Englishmen grew homesick and despondent, and longed to
return to England and English women. The supplies which they were
expecting from home had not arrived; and their situation was rendered
somewhat precarious, by the growing hostility of the natives, who had
come to the conclusion that these godlike white men were not persons
with whom it was expedient for them to associate.
At this juncture, down upon the coast suddenly swooped a fleet of over
twenty sail with the English flag flying, and no less a personage than
Sir Francis Drake in command. He was returning from a profitable
pirating expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, and
desired to see for himself how the colony sent out by his friend
Raleigh was prospering. Out of his easily-got abundance he generously
supplied the needs of the colonists, and presented them with a ship
into the bargain, in which they might sail home should circumstances
demand it. A couple of his most experienced officers, too, were added
to the gift of the generous freebooter; and the outlook was now very
different from what it had been a few days before. Yet fate was against
them; or, to speak more accurately, they had lost the spirit which
should animate pioneers, and when a touch of bad luck was added to
their indisposition, they incontinently beat a retreat. A storm arose,
which wrecked the ship that Drake had given them, and thus deprived
them of the means of escape in case other disasters should arrive. They
besought Drake to take them home with him; and he, with inexhaustible
good humor, agreed to do so. His fleet, with the slack-souled colonists
on board, had scarcely lost sight of the low shores of Roanoke, when
the supply ship that had been so long awaited arrived with all the
requisites for subduing the wilderness on board. She found the place
deserted, and, putting about, sailed for home again. A fortnight later
came Sir Richard Grenville with three ships more; and he, being of a
persistent nature, would not consent to lose altogether the fruit of
the efforts which had been made; he left fifteen of his men on the
island, to carry on until fresh colonists could be brought from
England. But before this could be done the men were dead, whether by
the act of God or of the savages; and the first English experience in
colonizing America was at an end.
The story of the second colony, immediately sent out by Raleigh, ends
with a mystery that probably hid a tragedy. Seventeen women and two
children accompanied the eighty-nine men of the party. Having
established the fact that the land was habitable and cultivatable,
Raleigh perceived that in order to render it attractive also it was
necessary that the colonists should have their helpmeets with them. For
the first time in history, therefore, the feet of English women pressed
our soil, and the voices of children made music in the woodland
solitudes. It had been designed that the more commodious bay of the
Chesapeake should be the scene of this settlement; but the naval
officer who should have superintended the removal was hungering for a
West Indian trading venture, and declined to act. They perforce
established themselves in the old spot, therefore, where the buildings
were yet standing on the northern end of the little island, which,
though deserted now, is for us historic ground. The routine of life
began; and before the ship sailed on her return trip to England, the
daughter of the governor and artist, John White, who was married to one
of his subordinates named Dare, had given birth to a daughter, and
called her Virginia. She was the first child of English blood who could
be claimed as American; she came into the world, from which she was so
soon to vanish, on the 18th of August, 1587. White returned to England
with the ship a week or two later. He was to return again speedily with
more colonists, and further supplies. But he never saw his daughter and
her infant after their farewell in the landlocked bay. He reached
England to find Raleigh and all the other strong men of England
occupied with plans to repel the invasion that threatened from Spain,
and which, in the shape of the Invincible Armada, was to be met and
destroyed in the English Channel, almost on the first anniversary of
the birth of Virginia Dare. Nothing could be done, at the moment, to
relieve the people at Roanoke; but in April of 1588, Raleigh found
time, with the defense of a kingdom on his hands, to equip two ships
and send them in White's charge to Virginia. All might have been well
had White been content to attend with a single eye to the business in
hand; but the seas were full of vessels which could be seized and
stripped of their precious cargoes, and White thought it would be
profitable to imitate the exploits of Drake and Grenville, and take a
few prizes to Roanoke with him. But he was the ass in the lion's hide.
One of his ships was itself attacked and gutted, and with the other he
fled in terror back to London. Raleigh could not help him now; his own
fortune was exhausted; and it was not until the Armada had come and
gone, and the country had in a measure recovered itself from the shocks
of war, that succor could be attempted. The charter which had been
granted to Raleigh enabled him to give liberal terms to a company of
merchants and others, who on their part could raise the funds for the
voyage. But though Raleigh executed this patent in the spring of 1589,
it was not until more than a year afterward that the expedition was
ready to sail. White went with them, and we may imagine with what
straining eyes he scanned the spot where he had last beheld his
daughter and grandchild, as the ship glided up the inlet.
But no one came forth between the trees to wave a greeting to his
long-deferred return; there were no figures on the shore, no smoke of
family fires rose heavenward; families and hearths alike were gone. The
place was a desert. Little Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke
had already passed out of history, leaving no clew to their fate except
the single word "CROATAN" inscribed on the bark of a tree. It was the
name of an island further down the coast; and had White gone thither,
he might even yet have found the lost. But he was a man unfitted in all
respects to live in that age and take part in its enterprise. He was a
soft, feeble, cowardly and unfaithful creature, yet vain and ambitious,
and eager to share the fame of men immeasurably larger and worthier
than he. He could draw pictures, but he could not do deeds; and now,
after having deserted those to whom he had been in honor bound to
cleave, he pleaded the excuse of bad weather and the lateness of the
season for abandoning them once more; and, re-embarking on his ship, he
went back with all his company to England. It was the dastardly ending
of the first effort, nobly conceived, and supported through five years,
to engraft the English race in the soil of America.
Tradition hazards the conjecture that the Roanoke colony, or some of
them, were cared for by the friendly Indians of Hatteras. There was a
rumor that seven of them were still living twenty years after White's
departure. But no certain news was ever had of them, though several
later attempts to trace them were made. Between the time when their
faint-hearted governor had deserted them, and his return, three years
had passed; and if they were not early destroyed by the hostile tribes,
they must have endured a more lingering pain in hoping against hope for
the white sails that never rose above the horizon. Most of them, if not
all, were doubtless massacred by the Indians, if not at once, then when
it became evident that no succor was to be expected for them. Some,
possibly, were carried into captivity; and it may be that Virginia Dare
herself grew up to become the white squaw of an Indian brave, and that
her blood still flows in the veins of some unsuspected red man. But it
is more likely that she died with the others, one of the earliest and
most innocent of the victims sacrificed on the altar of a great idea.
White disappears from history at this point; but Raleigh never forgot
his colony, and five times, at his own expense, and in the midst of
events that might have monopolized the energies of a score of ordinary
men, he dispatched expeditions to gain tidings of them. In 1595 he
himself sailed for Trinidad, on the northern coast of South America,
and explored the river Orinoco, nine degrees above the equator, It was
his hope to offset the power of Spain in Mexico and Peru by
establishing an English colony in Guiana. Wars claimed his attention
during the next few years, and then came his long imprisonment; but in
1616, two years before his execution, he headed a last expedition to
the southern coast of the land he had labored so faithfully to unite to
England. It failed of its object, and Raleigh lost his head.
But the purpose which he had steadfastly entertained did not die with
him; and we Americans claim him to-day as the first friend and father
of the conception of a great white people beyond the sea.
As we enter the Seventeenth Century, the figure which looms largest in
the foreground is that of Captain John Smith, governor of the colony at
Jamestown in 1607. But the way was prepared for him by a man as
honorable, though less distinguished, Bartholomew Gosnold by name, who
voyaged to the New England coast in 1602, and was the first to set foot
on its shores. The first land he sighted was what is now called Maine;
thence he steered southward, and disembarked on Cape Cod, on which he
bestowed that name. Proceeding yet further south, between the islands
off the coast, he finally entered the inclosed sound of Buzzard's Bay,
and landed on the island of Cuttyhunk. Gosnold was a prudent as well as
an adventurous man, and he was resolved to take all possible
precautions against being surprised by the Indians. On Cuttyhunk there
was a large pond, and in the pond there was an islet; and Gosnold, with
his score of followers, fixed upon this speck of rocky earth as the
most suitable spot in the western hemisphere wherein to plant the roots
of English civilization. They built a hut and made a boat, and gathered
together their stores of furs and sassafras; but these same stores
proved their undoing. They could not agree upon an equable division of
their wealth; and recognizing that disunion in a strange land was
weakness and peril, they all got into their ship and sailed back to
England, carrying their undivided furs and sassafras with them. By this
mishap, New England missed becoming the scene of the first permanent
English colony. For when, five years afterward, Gosnold returned to
America with a hundred men and adequate supplies, it was not to
Buzzard's Bay, but to the mouth of the James River, that he steered,
and on its banks the colony was founded. Gosnold himself seems to have
been a man of the type that afterward made the New England whalers
famous in all seas; the mariners of New Bedford, New London, Sag Harbor
and Nantucket. But the companions of his second voyage were by no means
of this stamp: the bulk of them were "gentlemen," who had no
familiarity with hard fare and hard work, and expected nature to
provide for them in the wilderness as bountifully as the London
caterers had done at home. To the accident which brought Gosnold to a
southerly instead of a northerly port on this occasion may be due the
fact that Virginia instead of Massachusetts became the home of the
emigrant cavaliers. Had they, as well as the Puritans, chosen New
England for their abiding place, an amalgamation might have taken place
which would have vitally modified later American history. But destiny
kept them apart in place as well as in sentiment and training; and it
is only in our own day that Reconstruction, and the development of
means of intercommunication, bid fair to make a homogeneous people out
of the diverse elements which for so many generations recognized at
most only an outward political bond.
Captain John Smith, fortunately, was neither a cavalier nor a simple
mariner, but a man in a class by himself, and just at that juncture the
most useful that could possibly have been attached to this adventure.
His career even before the present period had been so romantic that,
partly for that reason, and partly because he himself was his own chief
chronicler, historians have been prone to discredit or modify many of
its episodes. But what we know of Smith from other than a Smith source
tallies so well with the stories which rest upon his sole authority
that there seems to be no sound cause for rejecting the latter. After
making all deductions, he remains a remarkable personage, and his
influence upon the promotion of the English colonial scheme was wholly
beneficial. He was brave, ingenious, indefatigable, prudent and
accomplished; he knew what should be done, and was ever foremost in
doing it He took hold of the helpless and slow-witted colonists as a
master carpenter handles blocks of wood, and transformed them into an
efficient and harmonious structure, strong enough to withstand the
first onsets of misfortune, and to endure until the arrival of recruits
from home placed them beyond all danger of calamity.
Smith was born in England in 1579, and was therefore only twenty-eight
years of age when he embarked with Gosnold. Yet he had already fought
in the Netherlands, starved in France, and been made a galley-slave by
the Moslem. He had been shipwrecked at one time, thrown overboard at
another, and robbed at a third. Thrice had he met and slain Turkish
champions in the lists; and he had traversed the steppes of Russia with
only a handful of grain for food. He was not a man of university
education: the only schooling he had had was in the free schools of
Alford and Louth, before his fifteenth year; his father was a tenant
farmer in Lincolnshire, and though John was apprenticed to a trade, he
ran away while a mere stripling, and shifted for himself ever after. An
adventurer, therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, he was; and
doubtless he had the appreciation of his own achievements which
self-made men are apt to have. But there was sterling pith in him, a
dauntless and humane soul, and inexhaustible ability and resource. Such
a man could not fail to possess imagination, and imagination and
self-esteem combined conduce to highly-colored narrative; but that
Smith was a liar is an unwarranted assumption, which will not be
countenanced here.