FIRST ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND.
IT was now the turn of the English, who had thus far been slow to
realize the great value of the newly-discovered districts, to send out
expeditions with a view to the planting of settlements in North-east
America. In the early part of the 16th century, several voyages to
the North-west were made under British leadership, and some slight
knowledge of the limits, though scarcely of the geography, of the
western coasts of North America was gained by the brilliant pirate
Drake, who sailed as far north as the present state of Oregon; but it
was reserved to the half-brothers, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter
Raleigh, to give the first real impulse to the intelligent exploration
of the western seaboard of North America.
The brothers appear to have been first roused to take an interest in
the New World from the reports given at the court of Elizabeth by some
of the unhappy Frenchmen, who, as we have seen, were rescued from a
fearful fate by an English vessel after their escape from the colony
on the River of May. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, after a long negotiation,
obtained a charter from Elizabeth in 1578, granting him full power
for six years to discover “remote, heathen and barbarous lands not
actually possessed by any Christian prince or people,” and to take
possession of them for his own benefit; and Sir Walter was among
the earliest to come to his aid with money and advice, though he was
forbidden by the maiden monarch to take any personal share in the
enterprise.
Gilbert’s first attempt to start for the West failed at the very
outset, through the loss of one of his vessels and the desertion
of many of his followers. The second expedition, which started in
1583, reached St. John’s, Newfoundland, in safety, and, landing, Sir
Humphrey read aloud his commission to the motley crowd of fishermen
of all nations there assembled. A pillar bearing the arms of England
was then set up, in token that the land henceforth belonged to the
English monarch, and the voyage was resumed; but before the fleet had
proceeded far down the coast of the United States, the largest vessel
was wrecked, and the remainder beat a hasty retreat for England.
Gilbert, who had embarked on the smallest of the ships in order to
superintend the coast surveys, refused to leave it for the homeward
voyage, replying, when urged to do so, “I will not forsake my little
company ... with whom I have passed so many storms and perils.” For
this noble resolution the unfortunate commander paid with his life,
for his little bark, the _Squirrel_, went down, with all on board, in
mid-Atlantic.
Illustration: THE LAST MOMENTS OF SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT.
On receiving the news of the sad fate of his half-brother, and of the
total failure of his expedition, so far as any practical results were
concerned, Sir Walter Raleigh lost not a moment in obtaining a new
patent from the Queen; and though forbidden at the last moment by Her
Majesty to sail himself, he succeeded in dispatching two vessels,
under the command of Captain Philip Amadas and Captain Barlow, as
early as the 27th of April, 1583.
The coast of Florida was sighted on the 2d of July of the same year,
and, sailing for some hundred and twenty miles without finding any
harbor, the adventurers came in due course to what they took to be
an island, but which, so far as can be made out from the confused
and contradictory accounts given of the voyage by old chroniclers,
is generally supposed to have been Cape Hatteras (N. lat. 35° 14′, W.
long. 75° 32′). Here they disembarked, and were kindly received by the
king of the country, a native of “mean stature, of color yellow, and
with black hair, worn long on one side only,” the latter peculiarity
being, as it turned out, a distinctive mark of the male sex of this
district, the women alone enjoying the privilege of wearing the hair
long on both sides.
Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
The name of the newly-discovered territory was Wingandacoa, and
that of its king Wingina; but, with the usual cool disregard of the
feelings of the natives shown by all or nearly all early explorers,
the visitors took possession of it, and “of all adjacent countries,”
in the name of their queen, who, on hearing of its discovery, called
it Virginia, after her own most excellent virgin Majesty.
After exchanging presents with Wingina and his brother, Granganamco,
of the neighboring “island” of Roanoake, the name of which is
still retained by a river of Virginia, the adventurers returned to
England, and in the ensuing year, 1585, a second and more important
expedition was sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, under Sir Richard
Grenville, with instructions to found a colony in Virginia, from which
further explorations inland and along the coasts were to be made as
opportunity offered.
Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.
The colony was duly founded, with Roanoake as its headquarters,
and leaving 108 men and women to inhabit the country, under the
governorship of Ralph Lane, Sir Richard returned to England, confident
that he had sown the seed of an important offshoot of the mother
country. In a short excursion he had made up the coast, however, the
governor had planted a thorn in the side of the infant community by
the summary vengeance he had taken on a whole village, one member
of which had stolen a silver cup. The natives, who had at first
been prepared to allow the new-comers to plant and build without
molestation, were now eager to get rid of them by fair means or foul,
and no course seemed open to Lane but the fatal one of intimidation,
which had already led to so many terrible scenes on the fair western
coasts of America.
After a trip up the coast resulting in the discovery of Chesapeake Bay,
which had, however, long been known to the Spanish, Lane, misled by
legends, in which he thought he read signs of the existence, not very
far westward, of abundance of pearls, of copper-mines, and, best of
all, of the white breakers of the Pacific Ocean, went for some little
distance up the Roanoake river, returning disheartened and disgusted,
to find his people at daggers drawn with the Indians, who were in
their turn embroiled with a neighboring chief. With the prospect
of massacre if their enemies triumphed, and death by famine through
the failure of native supplies if they were defeated, the unlucky
colonists were in despair, when Sir Francis Drake, red-handed from his
destruction of St. Augustine, arrived off the coast with a fleet of
twenty-six vessels.
Illustration: DRAKE’S SHIP.
Although Drake would have left with Lane men and provisions enough to
save them from either of the evils they so much dreaded, the colonists,
who had completely lost heart, clamored to be taken home, and one
and all embarked for England, taking with them as sole trophy of
their brief occupation of Virginia a supply of tobacco, the use of
which they had learned from the Indians, who had from time immemorial
connected the smoking of it with all their religious or civil
ceremonies of any importance, and who would probably have looked upon
its everyday consumption as little short of sacrilege and mockery of
the “Great Spirit.”
Illustration: ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE.
The fleet of Sir Francis Drake had scarcely left the coast, before a
vessel, under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, arrived sent out
by Raleigh, with supplies for the colonists. Finding the settlement
deserted, the leader of the relief party left fifteen men at Roanoake
to retain possession of it for England, and returned home. Determined
not to allow his brother’s work to remain unfinished, Sir Walter,
in spite of these repeated failures, lost no time in fitting out
yet another expedition consisting of 150 men, and commanded by John
White as governor, and Simon Ferdinando as admiral. The two leaders
quarreled before Virginia was reached, and, as a result their trip
was as unsatisfactory as any which had preceded it. No trace could be
found of Grenville’s fifteen men, and the only incidents of this visit
to Virginia worthy of record were the murder by Indians of a Mr. Howe,
with the terrible vengeance exacted on some natives _who had had
nothing whatever to do with the outrage_, and the birth, on the 18th
August, 1587, of Virginia Dare, grand-daughter of White, and the first
child of English parents born on North American soil.
Finding himself unable to cope with the difficulties of his position,
White soon made excuse for returning to England, and leaving a small
detachment of his forces, his daughter, and her infant alluded to
above, in the “City of Raleigh,” as the new settlement was called, he
set sail at the end of August, 1587, promising to return speedily with
reinforcements.
Three years elapsed before this promise was fulfilled, and of the
history of the deserted colony during that period no details have
ever been gathered. Arrived at Roanoake in the spring of 1590, the
indefatigable Sir Walter Raleigh again bearing the expense of the
expedition, White found no trace of the city of his benefactor. The
light of a distant fire was the sole sign of life which met his eyes
when he reached the spot where he had expected to find his former
comrades, his daughter, and his now three-year old grandchild.
Eagerly pressing on in the direction of the fire, some of White’s
men discovered the letters “C R O” carved on the trunk of a tree on a
little hill. The sight of these letters reminded the leader that the
colonists had agreed, should they have to leave the City of Raleigh,
to carve the name of the place to which they went on some tree or
trunk, and, further, to add beneath the name a cross, in the event of
any misfortune having befallen them.
What, then, could the three letters mean? Nothing worse, surely,
than that the emigrants had removed to some place the name of which
began with them. “Cro――Cro――” repeated one after another, until at
length the remainder of the word flashed across the minds of all. The
friendly village of Croatoan, already known to White, must be now the
home of the lost emigrants. There was no cross beneath the initial
letters to damp the delight at this discovery, and the march was
resumed. A little further on the full word “Croatoan” was found carved
upon a tree, still without the cross; but, in spite of this reassuring
token, all further efforts to find the colony were unavailing. The
fire had been lighted by Indians, who could give no information;
and when after many days of disheartening search, a number of empty
chests, frameless pictures, and other relics were found in a trench,
White――who seems, to say the least of it, to have been strangely
ready to accept the loss of his daughter and grandchild――threw up the
search and returned home, without, so far as we can make out, actually
visiting the village of Croatoan after all.
This silent disappearance of a colony of white men, including at
least one woman and an infant girl, has given rise to many a legend
of the presence, among the dusky warriors of the West, of princesses
of alien race ruling the simple savages by virtue of their superior
intelligence; but though Raleigh sent out expedition after expedition
to scour Virginia and the surrounding districts for traces of his lost
people, not one trustworthy word was ever obtained as to their fate,
though the name of many another Englishman was added to the already
long roll of martyrs to the cause of colonization in the West.
With the death by drowning, off Chesapeake Bay, of his nephew,
Bartholomew Gilbert, early in 1602, ended Raleigh’s direct connection
with North America. In 1603, when the loss of his beloved mistress
had converted him from a court favorite into a “spider of hell” and a
“viperous traitor”――to quote the forcible language of his prosecutor,
Coke――the patent, which he had reserved in his own name on the death
of his brother, Sir Humphrey, expired by his attainder for high
treason; but to his influence was due, first, the sending out, in 1602,
of the little ship _Concord_, under Bartholomew Gosnold; and, secondly,
the great expedition of 1606, inseparably connected with the names of
Captain John Smith and the fair Pocahontas.
To Bartholomew Gosnold we owe the first practical corroboration of the
ancient sagas, on which is founded our account of the visits to the
western coast of America by the Northmen.
Arriving in his little bark off the modern Cape Ann, in N. lat. 42°
37′, our hero sailed southward across Massachusetts Bay, landed on
Cape Cod, N. lat. 42° 5′, and thence visited some of the adjoining
islands, one of which he found so full of vines that he named it
Martha’s Vineyard, thereby unconsciously following the example of the
old sea-kings, who had called it, or some not very distant locality,
Vinland.
Unable, with the very limited means at his disposal, himself to found
a colony, though he made an unsuccessful attempt to do so in the
westernmost of the islands viewed, and which he named Elizabeth,
Gosnold took home such proofs of the wealth of the newly-discovered
districts that the interest of many influential noblemen and
merchants was aroused. An association――including the great Richard
Hakluyt――whose name still lives in the valuable society to which
we owe so much of our knowledge of the progress of geographical
research――was quickly formed, and as early as 1606, when Raleigh
was expiating his imaginary crimes in the Tower, letters patent were
issued in the name of James I. to Sir George Summers, Edward Maria
Wingfield, and others, granting them all lands on the American coast,
with the adjacent islands, between 34° and 45° N. lat.
Among the conditions annexed to these letters patent was the important
one that two companies should be formed――one to be called the Southern,
the other the Northern Colony.
While the preliminary steps in the organization of these two companies
were being taken, two short though important visits were paid to
North America――one by Martin Pring in the _Speedwell_, resulting
in the discovery of several of the harbors of Maine, and of the
Saco, Kennebec, and York Rivers; the other by George Weymouth, who
supplemented his predecessors’ work by a thorough survey of the coast
of Maine, and the discovery of the Penobscot River.
Illustration: VIEW ON THE COAST OF MAINE.
On the 19th December, 1606, after an unsuccessful attempt by the
Plymouth Company to settle a colony in the lands assigned to it, the
London Company sent forth the expedition destined to obtain the first
permanent foothold in the present United States. Three vessels, the
_Sarah Constant_, the _God-speed_, and the _Discovery_, bore to the
site of their new home one hundred and five men, of whom the most
noteworthy were the commander, Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, Gabriel
Archer, Edward Maria Wingfield, the Rev. Robert Hunt, George Percy,
brother to the Earl of Northumberland, and the great John Smith.
The voyage out was rendered harassing by perpetual disputes; and
when, on the 26th April, 1607, the colonists sailed up Chesapeake Bay,
the seeds were already sown of future troubles. Naming the southern
extremity of the bay Cape Henry, and the northern Cape Charles, after
the sons of James I., the explorers landed on the peninsula, about
fifty miles from the mouth of the bay. The sealed instructions which
had been brought out by the commander were now opened, when it was
ascertained that the government was to be vested in a council, to
consist of Gosnold, Smith, Newport, Ratcliffe, Martin, and Kendall,
under the presidency of Wingfield, and that, among other minor tasks,
the emigrants were to discover the water communication still supposed
to exist between Virginia and the Pacific.
Having fixed, on the 13th May, 1607, on the site of the first
settlement, which they named Jamestown, in honor of their monarch, the
emigrants divided their forces, some setting to work to fell trees and
so forth, others joining Captain Newport in fitting out a shallop in
which to make the first discovery so eagerly hoped for by all.
Entering the river Powhatan, which they christened James, the
exploring party sailed up as far as the now well-known Falls, by which
further progress was barred, and after paying a visit to the native
chieftain, Pawatah――who received his strange guests with ill-disguised
fear――returned disappointed and disgusted to Jamestown within a week
of setting out. A little later, Newport set sail for England, and his
departure seems to have been the signal for the breaking out of the
fire of discontent and jealousy which had long been smoldering.
From the first, Smith had been, according to one account, the
ring-leader of the malcontents, and according to his own, the most
oppressed among the ill-used colonists. In any case, his name crops up
as a bone of contention in all the documents still extant relating to
the much-vexed early days of Jamestown. Famine, disease, and quarrels
among themselves greatly reduced the original number of the emigrants
before the first summer was over, and, but for the kindness of the
Indians, all would probably have perished.
Refraining from entering into details of the disputes between
Wingfield and Smith, and, when the former had been deposed, between
his successors, Ratcliffe and Martin, and the same noted member of the
council, we must content ourselves with adding that the supreme power
finally passed into the hands of John Smith, and that, whatever may
have been his faults as a private individual, he proved himself more
than equal to the emergency as the leader of what had now become
little more than a forlorn hope.
By his energetic measures, even before he was formally elected
president of the council, Smith succeeded in restoring first peace
and then prosperity to the almost despairing band of survivors, and
the winter of 1607 found him in a position to pursue the geographical
explorations so suddenly interrupted, and with which alone we have,
strictly speaking, now to do. On the 10th December he started in a
small boat with two Englishmen and two Indian guides, up the little
river Chickahominy, which flowed into the James river a few miles
above the infant settlement.
Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.
Illustration: CAPTAIN SMITH TAKEN PRISONER BY THE INDIANS.
(From Smith’s “Virginia.”)
Unable to proceed far by water, Smith soon left his boat under charge
of his fellow-countrymen, and set off alone through the woods with
the natives. His English comrades were almost immediately surprised
and killed by savages, and he himself was taken prisoner by a chief
named Opechancanough and his warriors, who would have slain him had he
not suddenly produced his pocket compass, the strange proceedings of
which so astonished his captors that they resolved to retain its owner
among them, as one likely to bring honor to their tribe. From place to
place the unfortunate white man was marched, to be shown to crowds of
admiring Indians, paying thus the first visit ever made by a European
to the Potomac River, and finally arriving at the encampment of
Powhatan――probably the father of the Pawatah mentioned above――then
staying on the bank of what is now called York River.
Here occurred, or rather is said to have occurred――for some
authorities make no allusion to it――that romantic incident which has
formed the theme of so many legends and romances. According to Smith’s
own account, preserved in his _General History_, he was first received
with great respect and ostentation by the Emperor Powhatan, and
afterwards a consultation was held between his host and his chief
men, resulting in the decision that the white man should be slain.
Two large stones were then dragged into the presence; Smith was led
to them, and made to lay his head upon them. Three executioners now
hastened forward, and were about to beat the victim’s brains out with
clubs, when Pocahontas, the king’s dearest daughter, a lovely girl
of about twelve years old, rushed forward, seized Smith’s head in her
arms, and laid her own down upon it.
Illustration: POCAHONTAS AND CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.
The hands of the executioners were stayed, and Pocahontas, turning
to her father, pleaded so eloquently for the life of Smith, that
her prayer was granted. He was restored to liberty, and sent back to
Jamestown under an escort of twelve savages, arriving there after an
absence of about four weeks, to find the colony again in a state of
destitution and anarchy. The immediate wants of the unlucky emigrants
were, however, supplied by Pocahontas, who seems to have determined
not to lose sight of the hero she had saved, and to have come
constantly to Jamestown with supplies of corn for him and his people.
A little later, her kindly aid was supplemented by the return to
Jamestown of Newport, with one hundred and twenty men, provisions,
implements, and seeds.
The brief revival of prosperity was, however, to a great extent
neutralized by an unfortunate discovery near Jamestown of a quantity
of yellow mica, which was mistaken for gold. Newport and his men threw
up for its sake the tilling of the ground and trading for furs with
the Indians――which would really have produced a golden harvest――and
finally set sail for Europe, with a cargo, to quote Smith’s own
expression, of the useless dirt.
With Newport departed Smith’s rivals, Wingfield, Archer, and Martin,
leaving him the chief person in the colony; and so soon as his
movements were unhampered, he set to work exploring the neighborhood,
quickly gaining a very thorough knowledge of Chesapeake Bay and its
tributaries, which he embodied in a map still extant. On one trip
he penetrated far into the present state of Ohio, and heard from
the natives something of the doings of the French, who were by this
time rapidly gaining ground in Canada. On his return to Jamestown in
September, 1608, Smith was formally elected, what he had long been
in reality, president of the colonial council; and a little later,
Newport again appeared on the scene with fresh emigrants, including
two women, Mistress Forrest and Ann Burras, her maid, and supplies
of provisions. Newport was also the bearer of instructions from
the London Council “to bring home a lump of gold,” instead of the
worthless stuff sent last time, “to discover the passage to the South
Sea, to find the survivors of the Roanoake colony, and to crown the
Emperor Powhatan.”
Instead of the lump of gold, Smith sent back a cargo of timber,
and specimens of tar, pitch, and potash; instead of the discovery
of the passage to the South Sea, he reported the existence of a
richly-watered land, which would repay tillage a hundredfold; and of
the message relating to the survivors of Roanoake he took no notice
whatever. The only part of the strange orders received literally
carried out was that relating to the crowning of Powhatan, who,
convinced of his own importance by the fuss made about him, declared
he was not coming to Jamestown, but must be waited on at home.
In this the dusky warrior, whose friendship Newport considered of
great importance to the colony, was humored, and the banks of the
Potomac witnessed a quaint ceremony, the significance of which the
chief actor must have been totally unable to understand.
On Newport’s arrival in London, early in 1609, with Smith’s
unsatisfactory replies to the communications of his employers, it
was resolved entirely to alter the character of the administration of
the colony. A new charter was asked for and obtained from the king;
a governor, Lord De La Warre, whose power was to be absolute, was
appointed, with a number of officials with high-sounding titles under
him. Five hundred emigrants joined his standard, and early in May the
whole party, with the exception of the governor himself, who was to
follow shortly afterward, set sail from England in an imposing fleet
of nine vessels. But a violent storm off the Bermudas wrought terrible
havoc among the ships――two were totally wrecked, and seven only
reached Virginia. These seven contained but the more reckless of the
emigrants, “gentlemen” who had dissipated their fortunes at home; and
while they added greatly to the difficulties of Smith, all those of
the original expedition, who were worthy of the great task before them,
were struggling for dear life on the shores of the uninhabited but
fruitful island on which they had been cast.
For a year, Smith struggled on; for a year, those who would have
brought fresh life to Virginia sustained each other’s courage by
working hard with heads and hands, until they succeeded in building,
out of the wreck of their own, two new vessels, in which they again
embarked for their western home. Could Smith but have held out until
this wonderful feat was accomplished, he might yet have seen the
end attained for which he had so long and patiently labored; but he
was disabled in an explosion of gunpowder, and obliged to return to
England to obtain proper surgical treatment, shortly before Sir Thomas
Gates, who was to act as Lord De la Warre’s deputy till his arrival,
set sail from the Bermudas.
With Smith’s departure from Virginia, all the evils he had suppressed
with a strong hand cropped up anew. The Indians were roused to fury
by raids and oppression; the ground was left untilled, and soon a
“starving time” began, which reduced the emigrants from one hundred
and ninety to sixty. These sixty――a gaunt and crime-stained crew,
huddled together in ruined huts, a prey to disease and misery――came
forth to meet Sir Thomas Gates and his hardy followers, entreating
with tears and cries to be taken away from the land where they had
endured such horrors.
Fearing that his own people might share the fate of the wretches
before him, Gates at once resolved to take all the Europeans to
Newfoundland, and there await, among the fishermen with whom it was
now populated, the arrival of reinforcements from England. On the
7th June, 1609, the two vessels constructed on the Bermudas, and four
crazy pinnaces which had belonged to the colonists, weighed anchor,
and were dropping slowly from the country of which they had hoped such
great things, when a boat was seen advancing to meet them from the sea.
Eagerly did all now crowd to the sides of the vessels to ascertain
the meaning of this unexpected phenomenon; and the rejoicing may be
imagined when the little bark turned out to be the boat of Lord De la
Warre himself, sent to announce his approach with three vessels laden
with new emigrants and provisions! No need now to flee to Newfoundland;
and, with fresh hope in their hearts, the colonists, old and new,
returned to Jamestown, there to await the coming of their governor.
Two days later, the three eagerly expected vessels anchored at the
mouth of the James River, and Lord De la Warre came on shore. Falling
on his knees as he stepped from his boat, the new leader returned
thanks to God for all his mercies――Sir Thomas Gates and the colonists,
who were drawn up to receive him, joining earnestly, with bent
heads, in this act of worship. The prayer over, eager greetings were
exchanged between the new-comers and those whom they had rescued; Lord
De la Warre read his commission, and Sir Thomas Gates resigned his
power into the hands of his superior officer.
A new era now began for Virginia: peace was made with the Indians,
and cemented by the marriage of the far-famed Pocahontas with an
Englishman named John Rolfe, who in 1616 visited England with his
bride. The story goes that Pocahontas, whose heart had long ago been
given to John Smith, was only induced to marry Rolfe after being
carried off from her home by force by a Captain Argall; and that, on
her presentation at the court of King James, she caught sight of her
old hero among the crowd, covered her face with her hands, and burst
into tears. However that may be, it seems certain that Pocahontas was
converted to Christianity, and baptized under the name of Rebecca,
before she left Virginia. She remained in England for a year, and
died――after giving birth to a son, from whom some of the best families
in Virginia claim descent――just as she was about to embark on her
return to her native country.
After the arrival of Lord De la Warre in Virginia, in 1610, the colony
enjoyed a long period of prosperity. The mouth of the river, named
after its first governor, was discovered by the Captain Argall already
mentioned, in one of many exploring expeditions up the coast; while
inland, the huts of the colonists gradually replaced the wigwams of
the natives on the Potomac, the Ohio, the Shenandoah, the Rappahannock,
etc. In 1619 took place two events, pregnant in results, not only
to Virginia, but to the whole of the future Republic of America――the
first cargo of slaves was landed at Jamestown, and the first
Legislative Assembly met in the same town. In 1622, the growth of
the colony was suddenly checked by a terrible disaster, in the shape
of a general massacre of the whites at the instigation of the chief
Opechancanough, who had then succeeded his brother Powhatan as the
leader of the dusky tribes whose homes had been appropriated by the
English intruders.
No suspicion of the awful fate awaiting them appears to have dawned
upon the unlucky colonists, who, scattered up and down in their farms,
were engaged in their usual peaceful avocations, when, on the morning
of the 22d March, 1622, the house of every white man was visited by
a few armed savages, who, having put to death with horrible tortures
all its inmates, sparing neither age nor sex, passed on to aid their
brethren in the same terrible work elsewhere. One alone of the many
Indians who had been apparently converted to Christianity was true
to his adopted creed, and, instead of murdering, warned his master
in time for him to make his own escape, and carry the tidings of the
approach of the red men to Jamestown.
In a little open boat the two sped down the river, arriving at the
capital of the colony in time to avert much bloodshed. Messages were
sent to the outlying settlements; and the Indians, finding themselves
outwitted, would have retired to their woods, had not the whites
cut off their retreat, and in their turn slain without mercy all who
fell into their hands. Throughout the length and breadth of the land
desolation now replaced the former plenty, and it soon became evident
to the natives that in their wild rising they had sounded their own
death-knell. Taught by experience not to trust in the promises of the
Indians, the Virginians now gathered more closely together, building
large towns, in which the first owners of the soil were only admitted
as servants, until at last the fact that they had ever been any thing
else passed from the memory of their oppressors.
In 1629, Jamestown was visited, from his little colony of Ferryland,
in Newfoundland, by Lord Baltimore, a distinguished Catholic nobleman,
who was so charmed with the scenery round Chesapeake Bay, that he
asked for and obtained an extensive grant of land on its shores from
King Charles I. of England. He died before he could himself take
possession of his new territories, but his patent was renewed in
1632 to his son Cecilius, who endeavored to established himself on
the south of James River. So bitter, however, was the opposition he
met with from the English already in possession of Virginia, that he
persuaded King Charles to give him the land on the north instead of
the south of the original colony. Here, in that “irregular triangle”
formed by the fortieth degree of latitude, the Potomac River and
Chesapeake Bay, the second Lord Baltimore planted a little colony of
English Roman Catholics, naming their new home Maryland, in honor of
Queen Henrietta Maria.
The new emigrants, numbering some three hundred in all, landed on
one of the islands at the mouth of the Potomac, now reduced to a
mere strip of sand, on the 25th March, 1634, and, after celebrating
mass on the beach, planted a cross on the loftiest point within
reach, round which a second solemn service was held. From the island,
excursions were then made up the river by Leonard Calvert――brother
to Lord Baltimore, and first governor of the colony――and a few picked
men, with a view to selecting the best spot for a first settlement,
resulting in the selection of an Indian village which Calvert
succeeded in purchasing from the Indians, with whom also he made an
offensive and defensive treaty. To the village thus chosen the name
of St. Mary’s was given, and to the neck of land in which it was
situated that of St. Mary’s Point. With truly marvelous rapidity a
town of comfortable houses gathered about the native wigwams, and
the colony seemed likely shortly to rival in prosperity that of its
older neighbor, Virginia, when that neighbor, which had from the first
viewed its very existence with jealousy, picked a quarrel with its
governor, which finally developed into a bitter war, extending over
many years.
As will readily be imagined, this unhappy state of things was terribly
detrimental to the progress of an infant community; but in 1635,
peace was so far restored that we find Lord Baltimore making extensive
grants of land to new settlers, and in 1637 reference is made in
historical documents to the “hundreds” into which the country of St.
Mary’s had been divided. The loss of the MS. records of Maryland, to
which early writers of the colony refer the reader for full details of
its growth, renders it impossible to trace the gradual exploration of
the country contained within its present boundaries; but enough has,
we trust, been said to account for the presence of the Roman Catholic
element in the Southern States of America, and to fit the story of
Maryland into that mere outline of the early history of the colonies
which is all that the nature of our subject requires. For many
touching anecdotes of the ways of the Indians we are indebted to the
Jesuit Father White, who, after long ministering to the spiritual
necessities of his fellow-countrymen in St. Mary’s, wandered about in
the wild and beautiful districts on the northern banks of the Potomac,
striving to instruct the savages in the mysteries of the Roman
Catholic religion. But whatever the discoveries made by him in the
various phases of human nature with which he came in contact, he added
nothing to our geographical knowledge, and we must, leaving his work
and that of many another noble missionary to be recorded elsewhere,
turn from the two youngest of the Southern States to tell the romantic
story of the planting of sister communities along the rocky shores so
long known under the general name of New England.