NEW SWEDEN, OR THE SWEDES ON THE DELAWARE. _Gregory B. Keen_ 443
ILLUSTRATIONS: Visscher’s Map (1651), 467; Trinity Fort, 473;
Siege of Christina Fort, 480; Lindström’s Map (1654-55), 481;
Map of Atlantic Colonies (_Campanius_), 485.
AUTOGRAPHS: Willem Usselinx, 443; Gustavus Adolphus, 444; Axel
Oxenstjerna, 444; S. Blommaert, 445; Peter Spiring, 445; Peter
Minuit, 446; Clas Fleming, 447; Queen Christina, 448; Hendrick
Huygen, 448; J. Beier, 449; Peter Hollender, Ridder, 449; Johan
Printz, 452; Sven Schute, 454; Gregorious Van Dyck, 454; Peter
Brahe, 458; Johan Papegåja, 458; A. Hudde, 461; Laurentz, 464;
Hans Amundson, 465; Hans Kramer, 469; Gustaf Printz, 470; Erik
Oxenstjerna, 471; Johan Rising, 471; Christer Bonde, 471;
Thijssen Anckerhelm, 472; Peter Lindström, 472; Sven Höök, 475;
Henrich von Elswich, 475; King Carl Gastaff, 477; Jöran Fleming,
477.
CRITICAL ESSAY 488
ILLUSTRATIONS: Title of _Manifest und Vertragbrieff_ (1624),
489; Title of Campanius (1702), 492.
INDEX 503
INTRODUCTION.
PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NORTH AMERICA.
BY NATHANIEL S. SHALER,
_Professor of Palæontology in Harvard University._
Part I.
PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NORTH AMERICA.
THE continents of the earth have two distinct types of form,—the
one regular, symmetrical, triangular in outline; the other without
these regularities of shape. To the first of these groups belong the
continents of Africa and Australia of the Old World, and the two
Americas of the New; to the second, the massive continent of Europe
and Asia. Some have sought to reduce the continent of Asia to the same
type as that of the other continents; but a glance at a map of the
hemispheres will show how different is this Indo-European continent
from the other land-masses.
These general features of the continents are not only of scientific
interest; they are of the utmost importance to the history of man’s
development upon these several lands. It is not without meaning,
that, while man has existed for a great length of time upon all the
continents, the only original civilizations that have been developed
have been on the lands of the Indo-European continent. Working on
several different lines of advance, several diverse races—Aryan,
Semitic, Chinese, and perhaps others—have risen from the common plane
of barbarism, and have created complicated social systems, languages,
literatures, and arts; while on the four other continents, despite
their great area, greater fertility, and wider range of physical
conditions, no race has ever had a native development to be compared
with that undergone by the several successful races of Asia and
Europe.[1]
In this great Old-World continent there are many highly individualized
areas, each separated from the rest of the continent by strong
geographical barriers; it has a dozen or so of great peninsulas upon
its seaboard, many great islands off its shores, and the interior of
the land is divided into many separated regions by mountain ridges
or by deserts. It is a land where man necessarily fell into variety,
because of the isolation that the geography gave. If we look at the
other continents,—namely, the Americas, Africa, and Australia,—we
find that they want this varied and detailed structure. They each
consist of a great triangular mass, with scanty subordinate divisions.
In all of them put together there are not so many great peninsulas as
there are in Europe. If we exclude those that are within the Arctic
Circle, there are but few on the four regular continents, none of which
compare in size or usefulness to man with the greater peninsulas of
the Old World. The only one of value is that of Nova Scotia, in North
America.
These regular continents are all in the form of triangles, with their
apices pointing towards the southern pole. Near either long shore lie
the principal mountain systems that give definition to the coast line.
The middle portion of each continent is generally a region of plain,
somewhat diversified by lesser mountain systems. Along either shore
is a narrow fringe of plain land to the east and west of the main
mountain chains. Near the northern part of the continent, and aiding to
define the base of the triangle, there is another system of mountains
having a general east and west course. With the exception of North
America, none of these regular continents have seas inclosed within
their areas,—such bodies of water as form so striking a feature in the
Asiatic continent, which is indeed a land of mediterranean seas.
In a word, these continents are characteristically as simple as the
Asiatic continent is varied. Their mass is undivided, and their organic
or human histories are necessarily less diversified than in such a
land-mass as Asia.
The continent of North America is, of all the triangular continents,
the most nearly akin in its structure to the great Old-World land.
In the first place, it is the only one of these continents that has
the same general conditions of climate; then it has a far greater
diversity of form than the similar masses of South America, Africa, and
Australia. North America has several considerable seas inclosed within
its limits or bordering upon its shores; its mountain systems are more
varied in their disposition than in the other regular continents. So
that in a way this continent in its structure lies intermediate between
the Asiatic type and what is considered the normal form of continents.
Although this varied structure of the continent of North America makes
it more fit for the uses of man than the continents of Africa, South
America, and Australia, there are certain considerable disadvantages
in its physical conditions. To show the relation of these evil and
fortunate features, it will be necessary for us to consider the general
geography of the continent somewhat in detail.
The point of first importance concerns the distribution of heat and
moisture over the surface of the land; for on these features depends
the fitness of the land for all forms of life. The influences which
principally determine the climate of a continent come to it from the
neighboring seas. The moisture arises there, and finds its way thence
to the land; and the heat or coolness which modifies the land climate
comes with it.
North America faces three oceans. On the north is the extremely cold
Arctic Sea, mostly covered by enduring ice: it is the extreme coldness
of this sea, and its ice-clad character near the continent of America,
that in good part causes the great severity of its winters. Where the
Arctic Sea lies against Europe and Asia it is partly warmed by the Gulf
Stream, and so is not completely ice-bound even in winter; but that
part of it which lies near the northern coast of America is ice-bound
the whole year, and the winds that come from it are many degrees below
those that come over open water.
Both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans send streams of warm water against
the American coast. But the Gulf Stream has actually very little direct
effect upon our climate; it only touches the coast about the Gulf of
Mexico, where the temperature is naturally so high that its warming
power is not felt. It then leaves our coast, to give its warmth to the
shores of Europe and to the European part of the Arctic Ocean. The
Pacific current corresponding to the Gulf Stream is feebler than the
Atlantic current, and sends its tide of waters against the northwest
shore of America. Its effects on that coast are very noticeable; but
they are limited, by the geography of that shore, within narrow bounds.
In the first place, the passage of Behring’s Strait is too small to
permit its waters to have access to the Arctic Sea; then the high
ranges of the Cordilleras fence off the interior of the continent, so
that the warm winds that blow from the sea cannot penetrate far to
the east. Confined to the shore, the heat of the Pacific Gulf Stream
generates a large amount of fog; this fog shuts off the sun’s rays, and
so lowers the temperature almost as much as the current itself serves
to raise it.
The distribution of moisture over the surface of the continent is
effected in much the same way as is the distribution of heat. The Gulf
Stream gives an abundant rainfall to the States about the Gulf of
Mexico lying to the north of that basin; its effects on the rainfall
are seen even as far north as the New England States, but they have
little effect to the west of the Mississippi River. The high mountains
of the Cordilleras cut off the Pacific winds from the centre of the
continent, so that very little of the water which flows down to the
Gulf of Mexico or to the Atlantic is derived from the Pacific. From the
general conditions thus rudely outlined the following arrangement of
climates arises. The northern half of the continent is more completely
under the dominion of the Arctic Sea than any part of Europe or Asia;
the only parts of it fit for the use of civilized man are the northern
watershed of the St. Lawrence, the valley of Lake Winnipeg and the
Saskatchewan, and the west-coast region as far north as Alaska. The
rest of the northern part of the continent is practically barred out
from the life of the race by the intensity of the winter cold, and by
the brevity of the summer season.
South of this domain of northern cold, North America divides itself,
by its climate, soil, and topographical reliefs, into the following
fairly distinct regions: (1) The eastern lowlands lying between the
shore and the Appalachian range; these shade southwardly into (2) the
lowlands of the Gulf States, which is the only part of North America
in the immediate control of the Gulf Stream. These Gulf lowlands
pass northwardly into (3) the great plain of the Mississippi Valley.
Between these lowlands of the centre of the continent and the Atlantic
sea-coast lie (4) the table-lands and mountains of the Appalachian
system. West of the Mississippi Valley lie (5) the region of the
Cordilleras of North America; and finally on the western shore we find
(6) a narrow region of low mountains, forming a slender fringe of
shorelands.
The mountains of the Appalachian system are composed of two parallel
series of elevations, an old eastern range of peaks which are worn
down to mere shreds; so that in place of being as high as the Alps, as
they once were, they have no peaks that rise seven thousand feet above
the sea. This outer range is traceable from Newfoundland to Alabama;
but it only rises above six thousand feet in the White Mountains of
New Hampshire and the Black Mountains of North Carolina. In form these
mountains are steep and rugged. Their steep sides hold the little
untillable land that exists east of the Mississippi; their actual area
is small, for the chain is very narrow, not exceeding a score or so of
miles in width, except in the Carolinas and in the White Mountains,
where it is somewhat wider. The total untillable area in this chain
does not exceed twelve thousand square miles. West of this, the old
Appalachian mountain system, separated from it by a broad, elevated,
somewhat mountainous valley, lies the newer Alleghany range. This
valley intermediate is one of the most fertile and admirably situated
in the world; it extends from New Jersey to Georgia, with an average
width of about forty miles and a length of about six hundred, having an
area of over twenty thousand square miles. The Alleghany Mountains on
the west are composed principally of round, symmetrical ridges, often
like gigantic works of art, so uniform are their arches; none of them
rise to more than five thousand feet above the sea, and their surfaces
are so little broken that they generally afford tillable though as yet
generally untilled land. Practically no part of this great range, which
extends from near Albany to Alabama, is completely unfit for the uses
of man, and it includes some of the most fertile valleys of America.
The most important feature connected with this double mountain system
of the Appalachians is the great area of table-lands which it upholds;
these bordering uplands are found all around the mountain system.
The greater part of the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
West Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio
owe the considerable elevation of their surfaces to the table-land
elevations bordering the Appalachian mountain system. Taken altogether,
this mountain system is perhaps the finest region for the uses of man
that the world affords; its great length, of more than fifteen hundred
miles from north to south, gives it a range of climate such as would be
had in Europe by a mountain chain extending from Copenhagen to Rome.
The total area of this Appalachian district, mountains as well as
table-lands, is about three hundred thousand square miles. This is an
area equal to near thrice the surface of Great Britain.
The Appalachian table-lands fade gradually into the Mississippi Valley.
Their distinct character continues to near the borders of that stream
where it unites with the Ohio. As we come upon the table-land system of
the Cordilleras, soon after we pass west of the Mississippi, this great
valley may be considered as made up of the table-lands of two great
mountain systems, with only a relatively small area of alluvial matter
between the mouth of the Ohio and the Gulf. Unlike the Ganges, the
Amazon, and most other great rivers of the first class, the Mississippi
River has a small delta section: not over twenty to thirty thousand
square miles has this character. By far the greater part of the basin
is really table-land, and is thus free from the evil of low countries
to a degree equalled by no other very great river basin. Its valley
is characteristically a table-land valley, with a general surface of
rolling plain, varying from three hundred to five thousand feet above
the level of the sea. Outside of the Cordilleras and the Appalachians,
this valley has few mountain folds within its ample space. The absence
of included mountain systems is almost as noteworthy a feature as the
small amount of delta. There are only two or three patches of mountains
that lie far beyond the limits of the great mountain systems of the
east and west; and only one of these, the Ozark Mountains of Missouri
and Arkansas, is at any distance from the main ranges. This is an
insignificant group of low hills having considerable geological but no
geographical importance.
On the western border of the Mississippi Valley rise the vast ridges
of the Cordilleras. This great mountain region is, next after the
mountainous area of Central Asia, the most extensive region of great
altitude in the world. From Mexico northward this system of mountains
widens, until, in the parallel of forty degrees, it has a width of
about one thousand miles. This system is made up of many ridges lying
upon an elevated table-land. The valleys of the lesser streams are
generally over seven thousand feet above the sea; the main peaks, to
the number of many hundred, rise over twelve thousand feet above the
sea level; many of them attain to about fourteen thousand feet of
altitude. Its table-land extends east to near the Mississippi River.
The great height and width of this mountain system produce a very
marked effect upon the climate of the vast area that it incloses, and
upon the country which lies within a thousand miles to the east of
its mountain walls. The winds from the Pacific are to a great extent
drained of their moisture in the western or Sierra Nevada section of
these mountains, and have little moisture to give to the central and
eastern chains; and when these winds emerge on to the western plains,
they are as dry as those that blow over the Sahara.
Although these Cordilleras of North America afford access by their
dislocations to a great supply of mineral substances, they are on the
whole a curse to the continent. By the cold and dryness which their
height entails, they reduce one third of the continent to sterility.
Though here and there in their valleys we find oases of fertile
land, and many regions of limited area may be made fertile by the
use of irrigation, at least nineteen-twentieths of their lands are
irretrievably barren. When their resources of precious metals are
exhausted, as is likely to be the case within a hundred years, they
will probably be to a great extent abandoned by man. Only the extreme
northern section and a part of the central and border lands afford any
other attractions to settlers than is found in their mineral wealth.
West of the Cordilleras of North America we have a narrow and
mountainous coast region that is abundantly watered by the moisture
from the Pacific, which penetrates some distance into the land over the
lower ridges that border on them. Although this belt of fertile country
cannot be compared in populationsustaining power with the Atlantic
coast region, it is of great fertility, and has a climate of surpassing
excellence.
On the borders of Mexico, within the limits of the United States,
the mountains sink down to much less extreme heights, and the
climate becomes less strenuous. This region is better fitted for the
permanent occupation of man; but only a small part of the land is
arable,—probably not one-tenth of its surface is or ever will be fit
for the plough.
In Mexico proper we have a country that retains the character of
the Cordilleras so far as its general elevation is concerned, but
loses the lofty ridges which we find farther to the north. The loss
of these barriers, combined with the narrowing of the space between
the Atlantic and the Pacific waters, and its more southern position,
increases the temperature and the rainfall; so that the fertility of
the country augments in a rapid way as we go southwards, until finally
in the isthmic part of the continent we have a tropical luxuriance of
life. The lowland borders of the country gain upon the width of the
table-land, until south of the Tehuantepec Isthmus the whole region is
essentially unfit for the uses of our race.
The climate of North America south of the divide which separates the
streams flowing toward the Arctic Circle from those entering the
Atlantic south of Labrador may be said to resemble that of Europe in
all important respects. The winters are far colder; but the summer
seasons, which determine the usefulness of the soil to man, are as
warm and quickening to plants as are those of the Old World. The more
considerable cold of winter is a disadvantage, inasmuch as it limits
the work of agriculture to a smaller part of the year, and requires a
greater expense in the keeping of livestock. This is a considerable
evil, especially in the regions north of the parallel of forty degrees;
but the cold is not greater than in Northern Germany or in Scotland.
There can be no doubt that the body and the mind receive certain
advantages from the tonic quality of the winters which compensate for
this loss.
Nearly the whole of North America that is within the limits of the
United States receives some share of frost. This secures it against the
permanent occupation of contagious fevers, which from time to time find
their way to it from the tropics.
North America, east of the 100th meridian (west of Greenwich) and north
of thirty-five degrees, has a soil which is on the whole superior to
that of Europe. Practically the whole of this vast area is tillable,
and the variety of crops is very great, considerably greater than
that of Europe. West of the 100th meridian the rainfall diminishes
rapidly, being especially limited in the summer season. The winters
become longer and more extreme throughout all the region within or
under the climatic influence of the Cordilleras; the soil is thinner,
and over vast regions almost wanting. In certain exceptional tracts as
far westward as the Saskatchewan, and at points along the line between
the United States and Canada to the south of that valley, there are
considerable areas of good soil; but, considered in a general way, we
may exclude all the region between the 100th meridian and the Sierra
Nevada range from the hope of any great agricultural future. Even
should the rainfall be increased by tree-planting in those regions
where trees may grow, the quality of the soil in this district, even
where soil exists, is often too poor for any use. Yet in some parts it
is very good, and if tree-planting should increase the rainfall, some
limited areas will be tillable.
Next to the quality of the soil, the forest covering of a country does
the most to determine its uses to man. Although the Western prairies
have the temporary advantage that they are more readily brought under
cultivation than wooded regions, the forests of a land contribute so
largely to man’s well-being, that without them he can hardly maintain
the structure of his civilization. The distribution of American forests
is peculiar. All the Appalachian mountain system and the shore region
between that system and the sea, as well as the Gulf border as far
west as the Mississippi, were originally covered by the finest forest
that has existed in the historical period, outside of the tropics.
In the highlands south of Pennsylvania and in the western table-land
north to the Great Lakes, this forest was generally of hard-wood or
deciduous trees; on the shore-land and north of Pennsylvania in the
highlands, the pines and other conifers held a larger share of the
surface. The parts of the land bordering the Mississippi on the west,
as far as the central regions of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri,
are forest clad. Michigan and portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota have
broad areas of forests, but the cis-Mississippian States of Indiana
and Illinois, and the trans-Mississippian country west to the Sierra
Nevada, is only wooded, and that generally scantily, along the borders
of the streams. Data for precise statements are yet wanting, but there
is no doubt that this area is untimbered over about seven eighths of
its surface, and the wood which exists has a relatively small value for
constructive purposes. North of the regions described, except along
the Pacific coast, where fine soft-wood forests extend from near San
Francisco to Alaska, the forest growth rapidly diminishes in size,
and therefore in value, the trees becoming short and gnarled, and the
kinds of wood inferior. So that the region north of the St. Lawrence
and of the Great Lakes is not to be regarded as having any very great
value from the forest resources it affords. In estimating the value
of North America to man, the limitation of good forests to the region
east of the Mississippi must be regarded as a disadvantage which is
likely to become more serious with the advance of time. Undoubtedly the
timberless character of the prairie country for at least two hundred
miles west of the Mississippi is in the main due to the constant
burning over of the surface by the aborigines. It seems possible that
these regions may yet be made to bear extensive woods. The elevated
plains that lie farther to the west seem to have too little rainfall
for the support of forests.
The rivers of a country are a result and a measure of its climate.
The generally large rainfall of the eastern half of North America is
shown by the number and size of its streams, which, area for area,
are longer and more frequent than those of the Old World, except on
the eastern coast of Asia. The heaviest rainfall and the greatest
average of streams is found about the Gulf of Mexico and the southern
part of the Appalachian district. Hence, northerly, westerly, and
northwesterly, the rainfall decreases in amount. The average of the
region east of the Mississippi and south of the Laurentian Mountains
is probably about fifty inches per annum, somewhere near one-third
more than that of Europe. North America, despite the very dry district
of the Cordilleras, has an average rainfall about as great as that of
Europe, and probably rather greater than Asia; indeed its water-supply
is rather greater than the average for lands situated so far from the
equator.
The rivers of America have been of very great importance in the
settlement of the land. They afford more navigable waters than all the
streams of Asia put together. Without the system of the Mississippi,
which has more navigable waters than any river except the Amazons, it
would not have been possible for America to have been brought under the
control of colonies with such speed.
The elevation of the surface of North America, at least of its more
habitable portions, is very favorable to man. A large part of its
fertile soils lie from five hundred to fifteen hundred feet above the
sea. It has a larger part of its surface within the limits of height
that are best suited to the uses of man than Asia, but less than Europe
has.
In considering the fitness of this continent for the use of European
races, it will not do to overlook the mineral resources of the country.
It may be stated in general terms that North America is richer in the
mineral substances which have most contributed to the development
of man than any other continent. The precious metals may be briefly
dismissed. They occur constantly in two areas: the Cordilleran,—which,
from Mexico, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, has
doubtless furnished more gold and silver than any other one mountain
district,—and the Appalachian region, which has given about sixty
million dollars to the world’s store of gold. The precious mineral
resources of the Cordilleran region are probably greater than those of
any other continent. They have already exercised a very great influence
on the commercial and political history of the continent, and are
likely to become of more importance as time goes on, for at least half
a century to come.
In the so-called baser, yet really more precious, metals this continent
is even more fortunate. The supplies in the most important metal,
iron, are very great,—certainly greater than in Europe. This metal is
distributed with much uniformity over the country, there being scarcely
a State except Florida that cannot claim some share of this metal.
Especially rich in deposits of this metal are the States which share
the Appalachian district, and the States of Missouri and Michigan. The
Rocky Mountains also abound in iron ores, which there often contain a
certain proportion of the precious metals; so that it is possible that
the exploitation of the two metals may in time be carried on there
together. There is probably no other continent that contains as large a
share of iron,—the most important metal for the uses of man.
The other less used, but still commercially important, metals,—zinc,
lead, and copper,—are found in considerable abundance in the
Appalachian, the Laurentian, and the Cordilleran regions, especially in
the last-named district. The only metal that is rarely found in North
America, never yet in quantities of economic importance, is tin. Some
specimens of bronze implements have been found in Mexico and Peru. They
seem to afford the only evidence that the aboriginal peoples knew how
to smelt any metals. Though the natives in the more northern districts
used copper, they never discovered the art of smelting it.
Considering the useful metals as a whole, North America is
proportionally richer than any other country that is well known to us.
The most considerable of the resources that the rocks of America offer,
are found in the deposits of coal which they contain. These deposits
are of vast extent, and are excellently fitted for the various uses of
this fuel. While the other mineral resources of the country are most
abundant in the region of the Cordilleras, the best of these deposits
of coal are accumulated in and about the Appalachian district. At least
nine tenths of the coal of America lies to the east of the Mississippi
River. New England, New York, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi,
and Louisiana are the only States that are practically without coal;
and even in New England, Rhode Island and the neighboring parts of
Massachusetts have promising but essentially undeveloped fields. In
the Cordilleran district coal deposits of small area occur; but the
material is generally of poor quality, and is not likely to have a
great utility.
As a whole, the resources in the way of subterranean fuel are far
richer on this continent than in Europe. The area of coal-bearing rocks
is at least eight times as great, and the deposits are much better
disposed for working. No other continent save Asia is likely to develop
anything like these coal resources; in China the coal area seems much
larger than that of North America, but the richness of the field has
not yet been fully proven: it is, however, undoubtedly great.
As the latent power of any modern society depends in an intimate way
upon the buried stores of solar energy in coal-beds, the large area and
good quality of the American coal-fields are very important advantages,
and are full of promise for the economic future of its people.
Among the less important resources of the rocks in North America are
the various classes of coal-oils which were first brought into commerce
from its fields. Although these oils are not peculiar to North America,
the small amount of disruption which its rocks have undergone have
caused them to be retained in the subterranean store-houses; while in
other countries, where the rocks have been more disturbed, these oils
have been allowed to escape to the streams or the air. The areas where
these oils occur on the continent are widely scattered. They are,
however, principally confined to the Upper Ohio Valley; they are known
to exist also in the Valley of the Cumberland River, in California,
and in Western Canada north of Lake Erie. Besides these flowing oils
there are immense areas of black shales, which yield large quantities
of oil to distillation. These are not now of value, on account of
the abundance of these flowing oils; but as in the immediate future
these flowing wells are likely to cease their production, we may look
to these shales for an almost indefinite supply of oil. In the Ohio
Valley, extending eastward in Virginia into the valleys of the Atlantic
streams, there is an area of over one hundred thousand square miles
of this shale, which is on the average over one hundred and fifty
feet thick, and yields about ten per cent of oil. In other words, it
is equal to a lake of oil as large as New York and Pennsylvania, and
fifteen feet deep,—a practically unlimited source of this material.
It is important to note that the sources of supply of phosphate and
alkaline marls are very large. As these substances are subject to
a constant waste in agriculture, and are the most important of all
materials to the growth of the standard crops, the soil of America
promises on the whole to be as enduring as is that of Europe, though,
owing to the larger rainfall, it tends to waste away more rapidly.
The building stones of a country are of importance, inasmuch as they
affect the constructions of a people; in such materials, suited for
the purposes of simple strength and durability, the country is very
well supplied, being quite as well off as Europe. On the other hand,
the stones that lend themselves to the more decorative uses, the pure
white or variegated marbles, are not nearly as rich as the countries
about the Mediterranean, which is of all known regions the richest in
decorative stones.
It is not possible within the limits of this chapter to support by
sufficient details the foregoing statements concerning the physical
conditions of America. The necessary brevity of the work has made it
difficult to find place for all the points that should be presented; it
may be fairly said, however, that the statements as made are to a very
great extent matters of general information, which lie beyond the scope
of debate, being well known to all students of American physiography.
Accepting the foregoing statements as true, it may be fairly owned
that the general physical conditions of the American continent closely
resemble those of Europe, and that in all the more important matters
our race gained rather than lost by its transfer from the Old World to
the New.
Part II.
EFFECT OF THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NORTH AMERICA ON MEN OF EUROPEAN ORIGIN.
In their organic life the continents of America have always stood
somewhat apart from those of the Old World. This isolation is marked in
every stage of their geological history. In each geological period they
have many forms that never found their way to the other lands, and we
fail to find there many species that are abundant in the continents of
the Old World.
The same causes that kept the animal and vegetable life of the Americas
distinct from Europe and Asia have served to keep those continents
apart from the human history of the Old World. Something more than
the relations that are patent on a map are necessary to a proper
understanding of the long continued isolation of these continents.
In the first place, we may notice the fact that from the Old World
the most approachable side of these continents lies on the west. Not
only are the lands of the New and Old World there brought into close
relations to each other, but the ocean streams of the North Pacific
flow toward America. Moreover the North Pacific is a sea of a calmer
temper than the North Atlantic, and the chance farers over its surface
would be more likely to survive its perils. In the North Atlantic,
over which alone the Aryan peoples could well have found their way to
America, we have a wide sea, which is not only the stormiest in the
world, but its currents set strongly against western-going ships, and
the prevailing winds blow from the west.[2] If it had been intended
that America should long remain unknown to the seafaring peoples of
Semitic or Aryan race, it would not have been easy, within the compass
of earthly conditions, to accomplish it in a more effective manner than
it has been done by the present geography.
The result is that man, who doubtless originated in the Old World,
early found his way to America by the Pacific; and all the so-called
indigenous races known to us in the Americas seem to have closer
relations to the peoples living in northern Asia than to those of any
other country. It is pretty clear that none of the aboriginal American
peoples have found their way to these continents by way of the Atlantic.
Although the access to the continent of North America is much more
easily had upon its western side, and though all the early settlements
were probably made that way, the configuration of the land is such
that it is not possible to get easy access to the heart of the
continent from the Pacific shore. So that although the Atlantic Ocean
was most forbidding and difficult as a way to America, once passed,
it gave the freest and best access to the body of the continent. In
the west, the Cordilleras are a formidable bar to those who seek to
enter the continent from the Pacific. None but a modern civilization
would ever have forced its barriers of mountains and of deserts. An
ancient civilization, if it had penetrated America from the west,
would have recoiled from the labor of traversing this mountain
system, that combines the difficulties of the Alps and the Sahara. If
European emigration had found such a mountain system on the eastern
face of the continent, the history of America would have been very
different. Scarcely any other continent offers such easy ingress as
does this continent to those who come to it from the Atlantic side.
The valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Mississippi, in a
fashion also of the Susquehanna and the James, break through or pass
around the low-coast mountains, and afford free ways into the whole of
the interior that is attractive to European peoples. No part of the
Alleghanian system presents any insuperable obstacles to those who seek
to penetrate the inner lands. The whole of its surface is fit for human
uses; there are neither deserts of sand nor of snow. The axe alone
would open ways readily passable to men and horses. So that when the
early settlers had passed the sea, all their formidable geographical
difficulties were at an end,—with but little further toil the wide
land lay open to them. I propose in the subsequent pages to give a
sketch of the physical conditions of this continent, with reference
to the transplanted civilization that has developed upon its soil. It
will be impossible, within the limits of this essay, to do more than
indicate these conditions in a very general way, for the details of the
subject would constitute a work in itself. It will be most profitable
for us first to glance at the general relations of climate and soil
that are found in North America, so far as these features bear upon the
history of the immigration it has received from Europe.
The climate of North America south of the Laurentian Mountains and
east of the Rocky Mountains is much more like that of Europe than of
any we find in the other continents. Although there are many points
of difference, these variations lie well within the climatic range
of Europe itself. On the south, Mexico may well be compared to Italy
and Spain; in the southern parts of the Mississippi Valley we have
conditions in general comparable to those of Lombardy and Central
France; and in the northern portions of that area and along the
sea-border we can find fair parallels for the conditions of Great
Britain, Germany, or Scandinavia. As is well known, the range of
temperature during the year varies much more in America than in Europe,
but these variations in themselves are of small importance. Man in
a direct way is not much affected by temperature; his elastic body,
helped by his arts, may within certain limits neglect this element of
climate. The real question is how far these temperatures affect the
products of the soil upon which his civilization depends. In the case
of most plants and domestic animals, their development depends more
upon the summer temperature, or that of the spring season, than upon
the winter climate. Now the summer climates of America are more like
those of Europe than are those of the winter. So the new-won continent
offered to man a chance to rear all the plants and animals which he had
brought to domesticity in the Old World.
The general character of the soil of North America is closely
comparable with that of Europe, yet it has certain noteworthy
peculiarities. In the first place, there is a larger part of America
which has been subjected to glacial action than what we find in Europe.
In Europe, only the northern half of Great Britain, the Scandinavian
peninsulas, a part of Northern Germany, and the region of Switzerland
were under the surface of the glaciers during the last glacial period.
In America, practically all the country north of the Susquehanna,
and more than half of the States north of the Ohio, had their soils
influenced by this ice period. The effects of glaciation on the soils
of the region where it has acted are important. In the first place,
the soils thus produced are generally clayey and of a rather stubborn
nature, demanding much care and labor to bring them into a shape for
the plough. The surface is usually thickly covered with stones, which
have to be removed before the plough can be driven. I have estimated
that not less than an average of thirty days’ labor has been given to
each acre of New England soil to put it into arable condition after
the forest has been removed; nearly as much labor has to be given to
removing the forest and undergrowth: so that each cultivated acre in
this glacial region requires about two months’ labor before it is
in shape for effective tillage.[3] When so prepared, the soils of
glaciated districts are of a very even fertility. They hold the same
character over wide areas, and their constitution is the same to great
depths. Though never of the highest order of fertility, they remain
for centuries constant in their power. I have never seen a worn-out
field of this sort. Another peculiarity of the American soils is the
relatively large area of limestone lands which the country affords.
America abounds in deposits of this nature, which produce soils of
the first quality, extremely well fitted to the production of grass
and grains. Although statistical information is not to be obtained on
such a matter, I have no doubt, after a pretty close scrutiny of both
America and Europe, that the original fertility of America was greater
than that of Europe; but that, on the whole, the regions first settled
by Europeans were much more difficult to subdue than the best lands of
Central and Southern Europe had been.[4]
The foregoing statement needs the following qualification: Owing to the
relative dryness and heat of the American summer, the forests are not
so swampy as they are in Northern Europe, and morasses are generally
absent. It required many centuries of continued labor to bring the
surface of Northern Germany, Northern France, and of Britain into
conditions fit for tillage.
Next to deserts and snowy mountains, swamps are the greatest barriers
to the movements of man. If the reader will follow the interesting
account of the Saxon Conquest given in Mr. Green’s volume on _The
Making of England_, he will see how the tracts of marsh and marshy
forest served for many centuries to limit the work of subjugation.
In America there are no extensive bogs or wet forests in the upland
district, south of the St. Lawrence, except in Maine and in the British
Provinces. In all other districts fire or the axe can easily bring the
surface into a shape fit for cultivation. In taking an account of the
physical conditions which formed the subjugation of North America by
European colonies, we must give a large place to this absence of upland
swamps and the dryness of the forests, which prevented the growth of
peaty matter within their bounds.
The success of the first settlements in America was also greatly aided
by the fact that the continent afforded them a new and cheaper source
of bread, in the maize or Indian corn which was everywhere used by the
aborigines of America. It is difficult to convey an adequate impression
of the importance of this grain in the early history of America. In
the first place, it yields not less than twice the amount of food per
acre of tilled land, with much less labor than is required for an acre
of small grains; it is far less dependent on the changes of seasons;
the yield is much more uniform than that of the old European grains;
the harvest need not be made at such a particular season; the crops
may with little loss be allowed to remain ungathered for weeks after
the grain is ripe; the stalks of the grain need not be touched in the
harvesting, the ears alone being gathered; these stalks are of greater
value for forage than is the straw of wheat and other similar grains.
Probably the greatest advantage of all that this beneficent plant
afforded to the early settlers was the way in which it could be planted
without ploughing, amid the standing forest trees which had only been
deadened by having their bark stripped away by the axe. This rough
method of tillage was unknown among the peoples of the Old World. None
of their cultivated plants were suited to it; but the maize admitted
of such rude tillage. The aborigines, with no other implements than
stone axes and a sort of spade armed also with stone, would kill the
forest trees by girdling or cutting away a strip around the bark. This
admitted the light to the soil. Then breaking up patches of earth, they
planted the grains of maize among the standing trees; its strong roots
readily penetrated deep into the soil, and the strong tops fought their
way to the light with a vigor which few plants possess. The grain was
ready for domestic use within three months from the time of planting,
and in four months it was ready for the harvest.
The beginnings in civilization which the aborigines of this country
had made, rested on this crop and on the pumpkin, which seems to
have been cultivated with it by the savages, as it still is by
those who inherited their lands and their methods of tillage. The
European colonists almost everywhere and at once adopted this crop
and the method of tillage which the Indians used. Maize-fields, with
pumpkin-vines in the interspaces of the plants, became for many years
the prevailing, indeed almost the only, crop throughout the northern
part of America. It is hardly too much to say, that, but for these
American plants and the American method of tilling them, it would have
been decidedly more difficult to have fixed the early colonies on this
shore.
Another American plant has had an important influence on the history
of American commerce, though it did not aid in the settlement of the
country,—tobacco. That singular gift of the New World to the Old
quickly gave the basis of a great export to the colonies of Maryland,
Virginia, and North Carolina; it alone enabled the agriculture of the
Southern colonies to outgrow in wealth those which were planted in
more northern soil. To this crop, which demands much manual labor of
an unskilled kind, and rewards it well, we owe the rapid development
of African slavery. It is doubtful if this system of slavery would
ever have flourished if America had been limited in its crops to those
plants which the settlers brought from the Old World. Although African
slavery existed for a time in the States north of the tobacco region,
it died away in them even before the humanitarian sentiments of modern
times could have aided in its destruction; it was the profitable nature
of tobacco crops which fixed this institution on our soil, as it was
the great extension of cotton culture which made this system take on
its overpowering growth during the first decades of the nineteenth
century.
Another interesting effect of the conditions of tillage which met the
early settlers upon this soil depends upon the peculiar distribution of
forests in North America. All those regions which were first occupied
by European peoples were covered by very dense forests. To clear these
woods away required not less than thirty days’ labor to each acre of
land. In the glaciated districts, as before remarked, this labor of
preparation was nearly doubled. The result was that the area of tillage
only slowly expanded as the population grew denser, and the surplusage
of grain for export was small during the first two centuries. When
in the nineteenth century the progress westward suddenly brought the
people upon the open lands of the prairies, the extension of tillage
went on with far greater celerity. We are now in the midst of the great
revolution that these easily won and very fertile lands are making
in the affairs of the world. For the first time in human history, a
highly skilled people have suddenly come into possession of a vast and
fertile area which stands ready for tillage without the labor that is
necessary to prepare forest lands for the plough. They are thus able
to flood the grain-markets of the world with food derived from lands
which represent no other labor beyond tillage except that involved
in constructing railways for the exportation of their products. This
enables the people of the Western plains to compete with countries
where the land represents a great expenditure of labor in overcoming
the natural barriers to the cultivation of the soil.
There are many lesser peculiarities connected with the soils of North
America that have had considerable influence upon the history of
the people; the most essential fact is, however, that the climatic
conditions of this continent are such that all the important European
products, except the olive, will flourish over a wide part of its
surface. So that the peoples who come to it from any part of Europe
find a climate not essentially different from their own, where the
plants and animals on which their civilization rested would flourish as
well as in their own home.[5]
We may note also that the climate of North America brought Europeans
in contact with no new diseases. North of the Gulf of Mexico the
maladies of man were not increased by the transportation from Europe.
It is difficult to arrive at a satisfactory determination concerning
the effect of American conditions upon the peoples who have come from
Europe to live a life of many generations upon its soil. Much has been
said in a desultory way upon this subject, but little that has any
very clear scientific value. The problem is a very complicated one. In
the first place it is very difficult, if not impossible, to separate
the effects of climate from those brought about by a diversity of the
social conditions, such as habits of labor, of food, etc. Moreover,
the problem is further complicated by the fact that there has been a
constant influx of folk into America from various parts of Europe, so
that in most parts of the country there has been a constant admixture
of the old blood and the new.
After reviewing the sources of information, I am convinced that the
following facts may be regarded as established: The American people are
no smaller in size than are the peoples in Europe from which they are
derived; they are at least as long-lived; their capacity to withstand
fatigue, wounds, etc. is at least as great as that of any European
people; the average of physical beauty is probably quite as good as it
is among an equal population in the Old World; the fecundity of the
people is not diminished. The compass of this essay will not permit
me to enter into the details necessary to defend these propositions
as they might be defended. I will, however, show certain facts which
seem to support them. First, as regards the physical proportions
of the American people. By far the largest collections of accurate
measurements that have ever been made of men were made by the officers
of the United States Sanitary Commission during the late Civil War.
These statistics have been carefully tabulated by Dr. B. A. Gould, the
distinguished astronomer. From the results reached by him, it is plain
that the average dimensions of these troops were as good as those of
any European army; while the men from those States where the population
had been longest separated from the mother country were on the whole
the best formed of all.[6]
The statistics of the life-insurance companies make it clear that the
death-rate is not higher in America among the classes that insure than
in England. I am credibly informed that American companies expect a
longer life among their clients than the English tables of mortality
assume.
The endurance of fatigue and wounds in armies has been proved by our
Civil War to be as good as that of the best English or Continental
troops. Such forced marches as that of Buell to the relief of the
overwhelmed troops at Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh,—where the men
marched thirty-five miles without rest, and at once entered upon
a contest which checked a victorious army,—is proof enough of
the physical and moral endurance of the people. The extraordinary
percentage of seriously wounded men that recovered during this
war,—a proportion without parallel in European armies,—can only be
attributed to the innate vigor of the men, and not to any superiority
in the treatment they received. The distinguished physiologist, Dr.
Brown-Séquard, assures me that the American body, be it that of man or
beast, is more enduring of wounds than the European; that to make a
given impression upon the body of a creature in America it is necessary
to inflict severer wounds than it would be to produce the same effect
on a creature of the same species in Europe. His opportunities for
forming an opinion on this subject have been singularly great, so
that the assertion seems to me very important. That the fecundity of
the population is not on the whole diminishing, is sufficiently shown
by the statistics of the country. In the matter of physical beauty,
the condition of the American people cannot, of course, be made a
matter of statistics. The testimony of all intelligent travellers is
to the effect that the forms of the people have lost nothing of their
distinguished inheritance of beauty from their ancestors. The face is
certainly no less intellectual in its type than that of the Teutonic
peoples of the Old World, while the body is, though perhaps of a less
massive mould, without evident marks of less symmetry.
Perhaps the best assurance we obtain concerning the fitness of North
America for the long-continued residence of Teutonic people may be
derived from the consideration of the history of the two American
settlements that have remained for about two hundred years without
considerable admixture of new European blood. These are the English
settlement in Virginia and the French in the region of the St.
Lawrence; both these populations have been upon the soil for about two
hundred years, with but little addition from their mother countries.
In Virginia, essentially the whole of the white blood is English; the
only mixture of any moment is from the Pennsylvania Germans, a people
of kindred race, and equally long upon the soil. I believe that not
less than ninety-five per cent of the white blood,—if I may be allowed
this form of expression,—is derived from British soil. We have no
statistics concerning the bodily condition of the Virginian people
which will enable us to compare them with those of other States. The
few recruits in the Federal army who were measured by the Sanitary
Commission were mainly from the poorer classes, the oppressed “poor
whites,” and are not a fair index of the physical condition of the
people of this State. We have only the fact that the Confederate army
of northern Virginia, composed in the main of the small farmers of the
commonwealth, fought, under Lee and Jackson, a long, stubborn, losing
fight, as well as any other men of the race have done. No other test
of vigor is so perfect as that which such a struggle gives. Where a
people make such men as Jackson, and such men as made Jackson’s career
possible, we may be sure that they are not in their decadence.
In Kentucky and Tennessee we have little else than Virginia blood and
that of northwestern Carolina, which was derived from Virginia, with
the exception of the very localized German settlements along the Ohio
River: practically the whole of the white agricultural population of
these States is of British blood that has been on this soil for about
two hundred years. I do not believe there is any other body of folk of
as purely English stock as this white population of Virginia, Kentucky,
and Tennessee: it amounts to almost three millions of people, and
there is scarcely any admixture of other blood. In Virginia, as before
remarked, there are no statistics to show just what the physical
conditions of the population are; but in Kentucky and Tennessee a large
number of men who were born upon the soil were measured by the Sanitary
Commission. The results were as follows: the troops from Kentucky and
Tennessee were larger than those from any other State; in height,
girth of chest, and size of head, they were of remarkable proportions.
The men of no European army exceed them in size, though some picked
bodies of troops are equally large. We must remember also that these
men were not selected from the body of the people, as European armies
are, but that they represent the State in arms, very few being rejected
for disability. We must also remember that the men from the most
fertile parts of these States, those parts which have the reputation
of breeding the largest men, went into the Confederate army; while the
Union troops were principally recruited from the poorer districts,
where the people suffer somewhat from the want of sufficient variety
in their food. The fighting quality of these men is well shown by the
history of a Kentucky brigade in the Confederate army in the campaign
near Atlanta in 1864, in which the brigade, during four months of very
active service, received more wounds than it had men, and not over ten
men were unaccounted for at the end of the campaign.[7] The goodness of
this service is probably not exceptional; it has for us, however, the
especial interest that these men were the product of six generations of
American life,—showing as well as possible that the physical and moral
conditions of life upon this continent are not calculated to depreciate
the important inheritances of the race.
Although it is only a part of the problem, it is well to notice that
the death-rate in these States of old American blood is singularly
low, and the number of very aged people who retain their faculties to
an advanced age very great. The census of 1870 gave the death-rate of
Kentucky at about eleven in a thousand,—a number small almost beyond
belief. It should also be noticed that the emigration from Kentucky
has for fifty years or more been very large, relatively almost as
heavy as that from Massachusetts. It is a well-known fact, which is
made most evident by the statistics of the Sanitary Commission above
referred to, that the larger and stronger citizens of a State are more
apt to emigrate than those of weaker frame, the result being that the
population left behind is deprived of its most vigorous blood.
The Canadian-French population presents us with another instance
in which a European people long upon the soil, and without recent
additions of blood from the native country, have maintained themselves
unharmed amid conditions of considerable difficulty. This French
population has been upon the soil for about as long as that of
Virginia; that is to say, for two centuries and more. I have been
unable to find any statistics concerning the numbers brought as
colonists to America. I have questioned various students on this
matter, and have come to the conclusion that the original number did
not exceed twenty-five thousand souls. This people has not perceptibly
intermingled with those of other blood, so that its separate career
can be traced with less difficulty than that of any other people.
Race-hatreds, differences of language, of religion, and of customs
have kept them apart from their neighbors in a fashion that is more
European than American. This has been a great disadvantage to the race,
for they have remained in a state of subordination as great as that in
which the Africans of the Southern States now are. No other folk of
European origin within the British Empire have remained so burdened
by disabilities of all kinds as this remarkable people. The soil with
which they have to deal is much more difficult than the average of
America; most of it lies beyond the limits where Indian corn will
grow, and much of it will scarcely nourish the hardier small grains.
Despite the material difficulties of their position, their general
illiteracy and intensified provincialism, this people have shown some
very vigorous qualities; they have more than doubled in numbers in each
generation; they are vigorous, exceedingly industrious, and have much
mechanical tact. In New England they hold their own in the struggle
with the native, so that it seems likely that the States of that
district may soon be in good part peopled by the folk of this race. As
near as I can ascertain, these Canadian-French of pure blood in Canada
and the United States amount to about two and a half millions; if this
be the case, the population has more than doubled each thirty years
since their arrival upon American soil,—which is about as rapid a rate
of increase as can be found among any people in the world, perhaps only
surpassed by the population of Virginia; which commonwealth, starting
with an original English emigration which could not have exceeded
one hundred thousand, counts at the present day not less than six
million descendants, or about twice as many as there would be if each
generation only doubled the numbers of the preceding.
There is yet another separate people on the American soil which has
been here for about six generations without any addition from abroad:
these are the so-called Pennsylvanian Germans. I shall not take time to
do more than mention them, for they, without recent European admixture,
show the same evidences of continued vigor that is presented by the
Virginian British and the Canadian French blood. Their progeny are to
be counted by millions; and though they, like the Canadian French, have
shown as yet little evidence of intellectual capacity, this may be
explained by the extreme isolation that their language and customs have
forced upon them.
Imperfectly as I have been able to present this important series of
facts, it is enough to make it clear that they are mistaken who think
that the recent emigrations from Europe have helped to maintain the
vigor of the American people. It seems more likely that, so far from
adding to the strength of the older stocks, the newer comers, mostly of
a lower kind of folk than the original settlers, have served rather to
hinder than to help the progress of the population which came with the
original colonies.
These considerations may be extended, by those who care to do so,
by a study of several other isolated peoples in this country,—the
German colonies of Texas, the Swiss of Tennessee, and several others;
all of which have prospered, and all of which have gone to prove that
the climate of North America is singularly well fitted for the use
of Northern Europeans. No sufficiently large colonies of Italians,
Spanish, or Portuguese have ever been planted within the limits of the
present United States to determine the fitness of its conditions for
the peoples of those States. There is no reason, however, to believe
that they would not have succeeded on this soil if fortune had brought
them here.
It is worth while to notice the fact that the European domesticated
animals have without exception prospered on American soil. The seven
really domesticated mammals and the half-dozen birds of our barnyards
have remained essentially unchanged in their proportions, longevity,
and fitness for the uses of man. As there can be no moral influences
bearing upon these creatures, they afford a strong proof of the
essential identity of the physical conditions of the two continents.
Evidence of the same sort, though less complete, is afforded by
the history of European domesticated plants on our soil. Speaking
generally, we may say that with trifling exceptions they all do as well
or better here than on their own ground. With the same care, wheat,
rye, oats, barley, etc., give the same returns as in their native
countries.
Imperfect as this _résumé_ is, it will make it clear that we are
justified in believing that the climate and other physical conditions
of central North America is as favorable to the development of men and
animals of European races as their own country. Those who would see how
important this point is to the history of our race should consider the
fact that the empire of India has proved utterly unfit for the uses of
Europeans, though other branches of the Aryan race have attained a high
degree of development within its limits.
* * * * *
I next propose to consider the especial physical features of the
continent with reference to several settlements that were made upon it,
the extent to which the geography and the local conditions of soil,
climate, etc. have affected the fate of the several colonies planted on
the eastern shore of North America north of Mexico.
Chance rather than choice determined the position of the several
colonies that were planted on the American soil. So little was known
of the natural conditions of the continent, or even of its shore
geography, and the little that had been discovered was so unknown
to navigators in general, that it was not possible to exercise much
discretion in the placing of the first settlers in the New World.
It happened that in this lottery the central parts of the American
continent fell to the English people; while the French, by one chance
and another, came into possession of two parts of the coast separated
by over two thousand miles of shore. It will be plain from the map that
these two positions were essentially the keys to the continent. The
access to the interior of the continent by natural water-ways is by two
lines,—on the north by the St. Lawrence system of lakes and rivers;
on the south by the Mississippi system of rivers, which practically
connects with the St. Lawrence system. Fortune, in giving France the
control of these two great avenues, offered her the mastery of the
whole of its vast domain. We have only to consider the part that the
pathway of the Rhine played in the history of mediæval trade in Europe,
to understand how valuable these lines would have been until railways
and canals had come to compete with water-ways-.
The only long-continued and systematic effort that France made to
perpetuate her power in North America was made through the Valley of
the St. Lawrence. Let us, therefore, consider the physical conditions
of this valley, and their influence upon the colonies that were
planted there. The St. Lawrence River system and the valley it drains
is most peculiar. It is, indeed, without its like in all the world.
At the mouth of the main river we have a set of rugged islands and
peninsulas enclosing an estuarine sea, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which
gradually narrows in the course of three hundred miles to the channel
of the great river. Ascending this river, the early explorers found a
wonderful set of rapids; then a lake larger than any sheet of fresh
water that had been seen by Europeans; then the swift channel of the
Niagara River with its great Falls; then, above, a series of four great
lakes, giving a real Mediterranean of fresh water. On the north was a
rude and unpromising country, rising upward into low but sterile and
rugged mountains; but on the south the natural boundaries of the valley
about the Great Lakes hardly exist: indeed, it was possible in the time
of rains for small boats to pass directly from Lake Michigan to the
waters of the Mississippi without a portage. It is this absence of the
southern bounding wall which constitutes the most peculiar feature in
this region of geographical surprises.
Viewed on the map, this system of waters seems to afford the natural
avenue to the heart of the continent; and when its geography became
known, we may well imagine that the French believed that they had
here the way to secure their dominion over it. Not only did it afford
a convenient water-way to the heart of the continent, but also, by
way of Lake Champlain, an easy access to the rear of the New-England
settlements and to the Hudson. Thus it not only flanked and turned the
English settlements of the whole continent, but it made the New-England
position appear almost untenable.
Experience, however, showed that there were certain grave disadvantages
attending the navigation of these waters. The river itself is not
readily accessible to large vessels beyond the tidal belt. Its rapids
and the Falls of Niagara are very great obstacles to its use,—barriers
which were never overcome during the French occupation of the country.
The Great Lakes are stormy seas, with scarcely a natural harbor,
requiring for their navigation even more seamanship than do the open
waters of the Atlantic. Moreover, these channels are frozen for five
months in the year, so that all movements made by them are limited to
about half the year.
Despite these disadvantages, the St. Lawrence system doubtless gave
the French a vast advantage in the race for empire on this continent.
When we consider that for a long time they had the control of the
Mississippi as well, it seems surprising that their power was ever
broken. The facilities which this water system gave to military
movements that took the whole of the English colonies in the rear was
not the sole advantage it afforded its first European possessors;
though, on the other hand, it must be remembered that the strategic
movements of the English were on interior lines, if largely indeed
without water-ways. It was the key to the best of the fur-trade
country, and to the best fisheries in America. For the first hundred
years after the settlement of this country, furs and fish were the
only exports of value from the region north of Maryland. The French
settlements gave them control of the best fishery grounds, as also the
trade with the Indians, who occupied the best country for peltries
in the world. As soon as the English came to possess it, this trade
was greatly developed. Along with these advantages, the country had
many evils that made the beginnings of colonies a matter of great
labor and difficulty. The soil is made up of drift, and requires a
great amount of labor to fit it for tillage. The greater part of it
is north of the maize belt, so that this cheap and highly nutritious
food was denied to the people. I have already said something concerning
the singular advantages that this grain had for the pioneer in the
American forests. I am inclined to believe that the want of this plant
in the French colonies was one cause of their slow development. Another
hindrance lay in the very long and severe winters. This limited the
time which could be given to the tillage of land, and made the keeping
of domesticated animals a matter of great difficulty. Something, too,
must be attributed to the character of the colonists and to the nature
of the land-tenure in this region. Their system of immigration gave a
smaller proportion of natural leaders to the people, so that the colony
always remained in a closer dependence on the mother country. There was
always an absence of the initiative power which so marked the English
colonies. The seigniorial systems of Europe have never prospered in
America, and the early experiments in founding colonies by the mere
exportation of men to this soil were failures even when the men were
of English blood. The efforts to colonize the seaboard region of North
Carolina without giving the fee of the land to the people, and without
care in the selection of the colonists, resulted in a failure even
more complete than that of the Canadian colonies. The Pamlico-Sound
settlements showed so little military power that they were incapable
of protecting themselves against the savages of the country, and
without the help of Virginia they would have been annihilated. The
French-Canadian colonists have always showed this incapacity to act
for themselves, which cannot be attributed to physical conditions. As
compared with the New-England colonists, with whom they came most in
contact, they represented a colonizing scheme based on trading-posts;
while their neighbors established and fought for homes in the English
sense. The struggle for existence was in the English settler met with
a vigor which grew out of political and religious convictions; in the
Frenchman it was endured for lucrative trade. Anything higher was left
to the missionary, who, while he led the pioneer life, failed in turn
to develop it.
We may sum up what is to be said of the St. Lawrence Valley, that it
is the best inlet to the continent north of the Mississippi River,
affording an easy way to the heart of the continent for six months of
the year. The valley is peculiar in the fact that it has no distinct
southern boundary, and that a large part of its area is occupied by a
system of fresh-water lakes. These sheets of water and this absence of
a strong ridge separating this basin from the water-sheds which lie
to the south of it would, if the French had been strong in a military
sense, have given them an advantage in the struggle for the continent;
but as long as this valley was held by a less powerful people than
their neighbors on the south, these geographical features would no
longer be advantageous to its occupiers.
The soil and climate of the St. Lawrence Valley are both rather against
the rapid development of agriculture, requiring far more labor to
make them arable, and giving a more limited return than do the more
southern soils; so that, despite the very great advantage which came
from the peculiarly open nature of this path into the interior of the
continent, the French did not succeed in maintaining themselves there
until its great military advantages could be turned to profit.
At the present time the existence of railways has greatly lessened
the value of geography as a factor in military movements, and the St.
Lawrence, closed as it is for nearly half a year by ice, has no longer
any military importance. As it is, we may be surprised that it has not
played a more important part in the military history of the continent
than it has done. We cannot avoid the conclusion that if the conditions
had been reversed, and the English settlements had occupied the Valley
of the St. Lawrence, and the French colonies the country to the
southward, the English colonists would have made use of its advantages
in a more effective way.
The settlements at the mouth of the Mississippi did not come into
the hands of the French until a late day; but the use they made of
this, the easiest navigated of all the great American rivers, was
considerable. These settlements were pushed up the valley of the main
stream and its greater tributaries, until they practically controlled
the larger part of the shores of the main waters. The swift current of
the Mississippi and its tributaries made ascending navigation difficult
and costly. It was, in fact, only with small cargoes in little boats
propelled by poles, or with the aid of sails when the winds favored,
that the stream could be mounted. The effective navigation was downward
towards the mouth. By way of the Mississippi the French power worked
into the centre of the continent far more rapidly than by the St.
Lawrence route; indeed, the advance was so rapid that if these Gallic
settlements had not been overwhelmed by the stronger tide of the
English people getting across the Alleghanies, a few years would have
given them a chance to fix their institutions and population in this
valley.
Throughout their efforts in North America, the French showed a capacity
for understanding the large questions of political geography, a genius
for exploration, and a talent for making use of its results, or guiding
their way to dominion, that is in singular contrast with the blundering
processes of their English rivals. They seem to have understood the
possibilities of the Mississippi Valley a century and a half before
the English began to understand them. They planted a system of posts
and laid out lines for commerce through this region; they strove to
organize the natives into civilized communities; they did all that
the conditions permitted to achieve success. Their failure must be
attributed to the want of colonists, to the essential irreclaimableness
of the American savage, and to the want of a basis for extended
commerce in this country. There were no precious metals to tempt men
into this wilderness, and none of the fancy for life or for lands among
the home people, that wandering instinct which has been the basis
of all the imperial power of the English race. Thus a most cleverly
devised scheme of continental occupation, which was admirably well
adapted to the physical conditions of the country, never came near to
success. It fell beneath the clumsy power of another race that had the
capacity for fixing itself firmly in new lands, and that grew without
distinct plan until it came to possess it altogether.
The British settlements on the American coast were not very well placed
for other than the immediate needs that led to their planting. They
did not hold any one of the three water-ways which led from the coast
into the interior of the continent, as we have seen the French obtained
control of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and as is well known
the Dutch possession of the Hudson, which constituted the third and
least complete of the water-ways into the interior of the continent.
As regards their physical conditions, the original English colonies
are divisible into three groups,—those of New England; those of the
Chesapeake and Delaware district, including Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Maryland, New Jersey, and the central part of North Carolina; and
those on the coast region of the Carolinas. Each of these regions has
its proper physical characters, which have had special effects upon
their early history. In New England we have a shore-line that affords
an excellent system of harbors for craft of all sizes, and a sea that
abounds in fish. The land has a rugged surface made up of old mountain
folds, which have been worn down to their roots by the sea and by the
glaciers of many ice periods. There are no extended plains, and where
small patches of level land occur, as along the sea, there they are
mostly of a rather barren and sandy character. The remainder of the
surface is very irregular, and nearly one half of it is either too
steep for tillage or consists of exposed rocks. The soil is generally
of clay, and was originally covered almost everywhere with closely
sown boulders that had to be removed before the plough could do its
work. The rivers are mostly small, and from their numerous rapids
not navigable to any great distance from the sea, and none of their
valleys afford natural ways to the interior of the continent. In
general structure this region is an isolated mass separated from the
body of the continent by the high ridges of the Green Mountains and the
Berkshire Hills, as well as by the deep valley in which lie the Hudson
and Lake Champlain. The climate is rigorous, only less so than that of
Canada. There are not more than seven months for agricultural labor.
The New-England district, including therein what we may term the
Acadian Peninsula of North America, or all east of Lake Champlain and
the Hudson and south of the St. Lawrence, is more like Northern Europe
than any other part of America.
Nature does not give with free hands in this region, yet it offered
some advantages to the early settlers. The general stubbornness of
the soil made the coast Indians few in number, while its isolation
secured it from the more powerful tribes of the West. The swift rivers
afforded abundant water-power, that was early turned to use, and in
time became the most valuable possession that the land afforded. The
climate, though strenuous, was not unwholesome, and its severity gave
protection against the malarial fevers which have so hindered the
growth of settlements in more southern regions. Maize and pumpkins
could be raised over a large part of its surface, and afforded cheap
and wholesome food with little labor. The rate of gain upon the
primeval forest was at first very slow; none of the products of the
soil, except in a few instances its timber, had at first any value
for exportation. The only surplusage was found in the products of the
sea. In time the demand for food from the West Indian Islands made
it somewhat profitable to export grain. Practically, however, these
colonies grew without important help from any foreign commerce awakened
by the products of their soil. Their considerable foreign trade grew
finally upon exchanges, or on the products of the sea-fisheries and
whaling. Even the trade in furs, which was so important a feature in
the French possessions, never amounted to an important commerce in New
England. The aborigines were not so generally engaged in hunting, nor
were the rivers of New England ever very rich in valuable fur-bearing
species. The most we can say of New England is, that it offered a
chance for a vigorous race to found in safety colonies that should get
their power out of their own toil, with little help from fortune. It
was very badly placed for the occupancy of a people who were to use it
as a vantage-ground whence to secure control over the inner parts of
the continent. But for the modern improvement in commercial ways, the
isolation of this section from the other parts of the continent would
have kept it from ever attaining the importance in American life which
now belongs to it.
The settlements that were made along the Hudson were, as regards their
position, much better placed than were those in New England. The
valley of this stream is, as is well known to geologists, a part of
the great mountain trough separating from the newer Alleghanian system
on the west the old mountain system of the Appalachians, which, known
by the separate names of the Green Mountains, Berkshire Hills, South
Mountains, Blue Ridge, and Black Mountains, stretches from the St.
Lawrence to the northern part of Georgia. In the Hudson district the
Appalachian or eastern wall of the valley is known as the Berkshire
Hills and the Green Mountains, while the western or Alleghanian wall
is formed by the Catskill Mountains and their northern continuation in
the Hilderberg Hills. On the south the Appalachian wall falls away,
allowing the stream a wide passage to the sea; on the northwestern side
the Catskills decline, opening the wide passage through which flows
the Mohawk out of the broad fertile upland valley which it drains. It
appears likely that the Mohawk Valley for a while in recent geological
times afforded a passage of the waters of Lake Ontario to the channel
of the Hudson. This will serve to show how easy the passage is between
the Hudson Valley and the heart of the continent. Save that it is not
a water-way, this valley affords, through the plain of the Mohawk, the
most perfect passage through the long mountain line of the Alleghanies.
Before this passage could have any importance to its first European
owners, it fell into the hands of the English settlers. The fertility
of this valley of the Hudson and Mohawk is far greater than that of New
England. A larger portion of the land is arable, and it is generally
more fertile than that of the region to the east. The underlying rock
of the country is generally charged with lime, which assures a better
soil for grain crops than those derived from the more argillaceous
formations of New England. The Mohawk is for its size perhaps the most
fertile valley in America. The climate of this district is on the whole
more severe than that of New England, but the summer temperature admits
the cultivation of all the crops of the Northern States.
Though from Holland, the original settlers of the Hudson Valley were by
race and motives so closely akin to the English settlers to the north
and south of them that a perfect fusion has taken place. The Dutch
language is dead save in the mouths of a few aged people, and of their
institutions nothing has remained.[8]
The most striking contrast between the physical conditions of the New
York colony and those of New England is its relative isolation from the
sea. Staten Island and Long Island are strictly maritime; the rest is
almost continental in its relations.
South of New York the conditions of the colonists as regards
agriculture were very different from what they were north of that
point. To the north the soil is altogether the work of the glacial
period. It is on this account stony and hard to bring into cultivation,
as before described; but when once rendered arable, it is very
enduring, changing little with centuries of cropping. South of this
point the soil is derived from the rocks which lie below it, save just
along the sea and the streams. The decayed rock that happens to lie
just beneath the surface produces a fertile or an infertile earth,
varied in quality according as the rocks. On the whole it is less
enduring than are the soils of New England, though it is much easier to
bring it into an arable state. It also differs from glacial soil in the
fact that there is an absolute dependence of the qualities it possesses
upon the subjacent rock. When that changes, the soil at once undergoes
a corresponding alteration. In certain regions it may be more fertile
than any glacial soil ever is; again, its infertility may be extreme,
as, for instance, when the underlying rocks are sandstones containing
little organic matter.
In this southern belt the region near the shore is rather malarial.
The soil there is sandy, and of a little enduring nature, and the
drainage is generally bad. Next within this line we have the fringe
of higher country which lies to the east of the Blue Ridge. This
consists of a series of rolling plains, generally elevated four or five
hundred feet above the sea. Near the Blue Ridge it is changed into a
rather hilly district, with several ranges of detached mountains upon
its surface; to the east it gradually declines into the plain which
borders the sea. Within the Blue Ridge it has the steep walls of the
old granite mountains, which, inconspicuous in New Jersey, increase in
Pennsylvania to important hills, become low mountains of picturesque
form in Virginia, and finally in North and South Carolina attain the
highest elevation of any land in eastern North America. This mountain
range widens as it increases in height, and the plains that border it
on the east grow also in height and width as we go to the southward in
Virginia. All this section is composed of granite and other ancient
rocks, which by their decay afford a very good soil. Beyond the Blue
Ridge, and below its summits, are the Alleghanies. Between them is a
broad mountain valley, known to geologists as the great Appalachian
valley. This is an elevated irregular table-land, generally a thousand
feet or more above the sea, and mostly underlaid by limestone, which
by its decay affords a very fertile soil. This singular valley is
traceable all the way from Lake Champlain to Georgia. The whole
course of the Hudson lies within it. As all the mountains rise to the
southward, this valley has its floor constantly farther and farther
above the sea, until in Southern Virginia much of its surface is
about two thousand feet above that level. This southward increase of
elevation secures it a somewhat similar climate throughout its whole
length. This, the noblest valley in America, is a garden in fertility,
and of exceeding beauty. Yet west of this valley the Alleghanies proper
extend, a wide belt of mountains, far to the westward. Their surface is
generally rugged, but not infertile; they, as well as the Blue Ridge,
are clad with thick forests to their very summits.
The shore of this, the distinctly southern part of the North American
coast, is deeply indented by estuaries, which have been cut out
principally by the tides. These deep sounds and bays,—the Delaware,
Chesapeake, Pamlico, Albemarle, and others,—with their very many
ramifications, constitute a distinctive feature in North America.
Although these indentations are probably not of glacial origin, except
perhaps the Delaware, they much resemble the great fjords which the
glaciers have produced along the shores of regions farther to the
northward. By means of these deep and ramified bays all the country of
Virginia and Maryland lying to the east of the Appalachians is easily
accessible to ships of large size. This was a very advantageous feature
in the development of the export trade of this country, as it enabled
the planters to load their crops directly into the ships which conveyed
them to Europe, and this spared the making of roads,—a difficult task
in a new country. The principal advantage of this set of colonies lay
in the fact that they were fitted to the cultivation of tobacco. The
demand for this product laid the foundations of American commerce, and
was full of good and evil consequences to this country. It undoubtedly
gave the means whereby Virginia became strong enough to be, on the part
of the South, the mainstay of the resistance of the colonies to the
mother country. On the other hand, it made African slavery profitable,
and so brought that formidable problem of a foreign and totally alien
race to be for all time a trouble to this country. Although the
cultivation of cotton gave the greatest extension to slavery, it is
not responsible for its firm establishment on our soil. That was the
peculiar work of tobacco.
The climate of this region is perhaps the best of the United States.
The winters want the severity that characterizes them in the more
northern States, and the considerable height of the most of the
district relieves it of danger from fevers. I have elsewhere spoken of
the evidences that this district has maintained the original energy of
the race that founded its colonies.
The Carolinian colonies are somewhat differently conditioned from those
of Virginia, and their history has been profoundly influenced by their
physical circumstances. South of the James River the belt of low-lying
ground near the sea-shore widens rapidly, until the nearest mountain
ranges are one hundred and fifty miles or more from the shore. This
shore belt is also much lower than it is north of the James; a large
part of its surface is below the level where the drainage is effective,
and so is unfit for tillage. Much of it is swamp. The rivers do not
terminate in as deep and long bays, with steep clay banks for borders,
as they do north of the James. They are generally swamp-bordered in
their lower courses, and not very well suited for settlements.
The soil of these regions is generally rather infertile; it is
especially unfitted for the cultivation of grains except near the
shore, where the swamps can often be converted into good rice-fields.
Maize can be tilled, but it, as well as wheat, barley, etc., gives not
more than half the return that may be had from them in Virginia. Were
it not for the cotton crop, the lowland South would have fared badly.
All the shore belt of country is unwholesome, being affected with
pernicious fevers, which often cannot be endured by the whites, even
after the longest acclimatization. The interior region, even when not
much elevated above the sea, or away from the swamps, is a healthy
country, and the district within sight of the Blue Ridge and the Black
Mountains is a very salubrious district. This region was, however,
not at once accessible to the colonists of the Carolinian shore, and
was not extensively settled for some time after the country was first
inhabited, and then was largely occupied by the descendants of the
Virginian colonists.
The history of this country has served to show that much of the
lowlands near the shore is not well fitted for the use of European
peoples; they are likely to fall into the possession of the African
folk, who do not suffer, but rather seem to prosper in the feverish
lowlands. The interior districts beyond the swamp country are well
suited to Europeans, and where the surface rises more than one thousand
feet above the sea, as it does in western North and South Carolina, the
climate is admirably well suited to the European race. It is probable
that the English race has never been in a more favorable climate than
these uplands afford.
This Carolinian section was originally settled by a far more
diversified population than that which formed the colonies to the
northward. This was especially the case in North Carolina. This colony
was originally possessed by a land company, which proposed to find its
profit in a peculiar fashion. This company paid contractors so much
a head for human beings put ashore in the colony. One distinguished
trader in population, a certain Baron de Graffenreid, settled several
thousand folk at and about New Berne, on the swampy shores of the
Eastern sounds. They were from a great variety of places,—a part
from England, others from the banks of the Rhine, others again from
Switzerland. There was a great mass of human driftwood in Europe at
the close of the seventeenth century, the wreck of long-continued
wars; so it was easy to bring immigrants by the shipload if they were
paid for. But the material was unfit to be the foundation of a State.
From this settlement of eastern North Carolina is descended the most
unsatisfactory population in this country. The central and western
parts of North Carolina had an admirable population, that principally
came to the State through Virginia; but this population about Pamlico
and Albemarle Sounds, though its descendants are numerous, perhaps
not numerically much inferior to that which came from the Virginia
settlements, is vastly inferior to it in all the essential qualities of
the citizen. From the Virginia people have come a great number of men
of national and some of world-wide reputation. It is not likely that
any other population, averaging in numbers about five hundred thousand
souls, has in a century furnished as many able men. On the other hand,
this eastern North Carolina people has given no men of great fame to
the history of the country, while a large part of the so-called “poor
white” population of the South appears to be descended from the mongrel
folk who were turned ashore on the eastern border of North Carolina.
South Carolina was much more fortunate in its early settlers on its
seaboard than the colony to the north. Its population was drawn from
rather more varied sources than that of Virginia, New York, or New
England, but it would be hard to say that its quality was inferior;
despite the considerable admixture of Irish and French blood, it was
essentially an English colony.
On the whole, although the quality of the climate would lead some to
expect a lowering of the quality of the English race in these southern
colonies, it is not possible to trace any such effect in the people.
Although the laboring classes of whites along the seaboard appear to
occupy a physical level rather below that of the same class in Virginia
and the more northern regions, they have great endurance,—as was
sufficiently proven by the fact that they made good soldiers during the
recent Civil War. In the upland districts of these States, in western
North and South Carolina, and especially in northern Georgia, the
physical constitution of the people is, I believe, the best in this
country. In the district north of Pennsylvania, the elevation of the
mountains, or the table-lands which lie about them, is not profitable
to the dwellers in these districts; each added height scarcely gives
any additional healthfulness, and the additional cold is hurtful to
most crops. In this southern region, however, the greater height and
width of the Appalachian mountain system, including its elevated
valleys, is a very great advantage to this region in all that concerns
its fitness for the use of man. The climate of one half of the country
south of the James and Ohio Rivers and east of the Mississippi is
purified and refreshed by the elevations of this noble mountain system.
It is the opinion of all who have examined this country, that it is
extremely well fitted for all the uses of the race: an admirable
climate, much resembling that of the Apennines of Tuscany, a fertile
soil admitting a wide diversity of products, and a great abundance of
water-power characterize all this upland district of the South.
A few words will suffice for all that concerns the mineral resources
of the original colonies. At the outset of the colonization of America
we hear a good deal about the search for gold; fortunately there was a
very uniform failure in the first efforts to find this metal, so that
it ceased to play a part in the history of these colonies. Very little
effort to develop the mineral resources of this region was made during
the colonial period. A little iron was worked in Rhode Island, New
York, and Virginia, some search of a rather fruitless sort was made for
copper ore in Connecticut, but of mining industry, properly so called,
there was nothing until the Revolutionary War stimulated the search for
iron and lead ores. The discovery of the gold deposits in the Carolinas
did not come about until after the close of the colonial period. These
deposits were not sufficiently rich to excite an immigration of any
moment to the fields where they occur.
Practically the mineral resources of what we may term the Appalachian
settlements of North America never formed any part of the inducements
which led immigrants to them. In this respect they differ widely from
the other colonies which were planted in the Americas. The greater
part of the Spanish and Portuguese settlements in America were made by
gold-hunters. The state of morals which led to these settlements was
not favorable to the formation of communities characterized by high
motives. There were doubtless other influences at work to lower the
moral quality of the settlements in Mexico and South America, but the
nature of the motives which brought the first settlers upon the ground
and gave the tone to society is certainly not the least important
of the influences which have affected the history of the American
settlements.
To close this brief account of the physical conditions of the first
European settlements in North America, we may say, that the English
colonies were peculiarly fortunate in those physical conditions upon
which they fell. There is no area in either of the Americas, or for
that matter in the world outside of Europe, where it would have been
possible to plant English colonies that would have been found so
suitable for the purpose: climate, soil, contact with the sea, and a
chance of dominion over the whole continent were given them by fortune.
They had but the second choice in the division of the New World; yet
to the English fell the control of those regions which experience has
shown to hold its real treasures. Fortune has repeatedly blessed this
race; but never has she bestowed richer gifts than in the chance that
gave it the Appalachian district of America.
[Illustration]
NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL
HISTORY OF AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
CORTEREAL, VERRAZANO, GOMEZ, THEVET.
BY GEORGE DEXTER.
JOHN CABOT discovered the continent of North America June 24, 1497; and
his son Sebastian the next year coasted its shores for a considerable
distance,—perhaps even, as some accounts say, from Hudson’s Bay to
North Carolina.[9] The reports of their voyages doubtless reached the
Continental courts of Europe without delay. Spain was occupied with
the attempts of Columbus to attain the Indies by a southern route
promising success; while Portugal, always among the foremost maritime
nations, had now an energetic ruler in her young King Emanuel, who had
succeeded to the throne in 1495. He had already sent out Vasco da Gama
and Cabral, who followed the route to the Indies by the way of the
Cape of Good Hope;[10] and he was well disposed also for an attempt to
pursue the indications given by the Cabots, that a short way to the
Land of Spices might lie through a northwest passage among the islands,
of which the New World was still supposed to consist. Such is at least
generally thought to have been the reason for the expeditions of the
Cortereals, although we have no official reports of their voyages or
their aims.
The family of Cortereal was not without position in the Portuguese
kingdom. Ioâo Vaz Cortereal had been appointed, some years before this
time, hereditary governor of the Island of Terceira; and his sons had
perhaps learned there the secrets of navigation. It has been even
asserted by some Portuguese writers that this Ioâo Vaz had himself
discovered some part of America nearly thirty years before the first
voyage of Columbus, and had received his governorship as the reward of
the discovery; but there is no evidence for this claim.
It is known, however, that in the year 1500 a son of Ioâo Vaz, Gaspar
Cortereal, having obtained from the King a grant or license to discover
new islands, fitted out one, or perhaps two, vessels, with the help
of his brother Miguel, and sailed from Lisbon early in the summer for
a voyage to the northwest. The accounts say that he touched at the
family island of Terceira, and in due time returned to Portugal with
a report of having landed in a country situated in a high degree of
latitude, now supposed to have been Greenland, which name, indeed (or
rather its equivalent, _Terra Verde_), he is said to have given to the
country. The details of the voyage are scanty, and have been confused
with those of the second expedition; but it was so far successful
that the enterprise was renewed the next year. Miguel Cortereal again
contributed to the expenses of this second voyage. It appears, indeed,
from a letter of his dated August 6, and preserved in the State
archives at Lisbon, that he had prepared a vessel with the expectation
of sharing personally in the expedition, but was delayed by a royal
order to increase the number of his crew, and afterward by contrary
winds, until it was too late in the season to follow Gaspar with any
hope of success. Gaspar had sailed with three ships, May 15, 1501, and
had directed his course west-northwest. After sailing in this direction
two thousand miles from Lisbon, he discovered a country quite unknown
up to that time. This he coasted six or seven hundred miles without
finding any end to the land; so he concluded that it must be connected
with the country discovered to the north the year before, which country
could not now be reached on account of the great quantity of ice and
snow. The number of large rivers encountered, encouraged the navigators
in their belief that the country was no island. They found it very
populous, and brought away a number of the natives; and those savages
who safely arrived in Portugal were described as “admirably calculated
for labor, and the best slaves I have ever seen.” A piece of a broken
sword, and two silver earrings, evidently of Italian manufacture, found
in the possession of the natives, were probably relics of the visit of
Cabot to the country three years earlier. One of the vessels reached
Lisbon on its return, October 8, and brought seven of the kidnapped
natives. It reported that another ship had fifty more of these. This
vessel arrived three days later with its expected cargo; but the third,
with Gaspar Cortereal, was never heard from. Her fate remained a
mystery, although several efforts were made to ascertain it.
The next year, 1502, Miguel Cortereal started with three ships (one
account says two) well equipped and found, having agreed with the King
to make a search for the missing Gaspar. The expedition sailed May 10.
Arriving on the American coast, they found so many entrances of rivers
and havens, that it was agreed to divide the fleet, the better to
search for the missing vessel. A rendezvous was arranged for the 20th
of August. Two ships met at the appointed time and place; but Miguel
Cortereal’s did not appear, and the others, after waiting some time,
returned to Portugal.
[Illustration: EARLY FISHING STAGES.
[This cut is a fac-simile of one in the corner of _A New and Correct
Map of America_, 1738, which belongs to Sir William Keith’s _History
of the British Plantations in America_: Part I., Virginia, London,
1738. It presumably represents the fashion of these appliances of the
fishermen which had prevailed perhaps for centuries.
It was suggested by Forster, _Northern Voyages_, book iii. chaps. iii.
and iv., that Breton fishermen may have been on the Newfoundland coast
before Columbus. Scholars are coming more and more to believe the
possibility and even probability of it. Every third day in the calendar
was then a fast-day, and the incentive to seeking fish on distant seas
was great. That Cabot should find the natives of this region calling
the cod _baccalaos_, a name applied by the seamen of the Bay of Biscay
to that fish, has also been suggestive; but this story, deducible
apparently from no earlier writer than Peter Martyr in 1516, is not
altogether trustworthy, since there is doubt if the folk who called
the fish by that name were the natives, as Martyr seems to think,
or simply the common people, as would seem to be implied in other
forms of the statement (see Vol. III. p. 45). Greenland, as we know
from the pre-Columbian maps (Ptolemy of 1482, etc.), was considered
a part of Europe. Its adjacent shores were in the common mind but
further outposts of the same continent; so that the returned sailors’
reports of the distant parts—islands they thought them—might cause
no awakening of the idea of a new world. Cf. Navarrete, _Viages_, iii.
41, 46, 176; Eusebius, _Chronicon_ (1512), p. 172; Wytfliet, _Histoire
des Indes_, p. 131; Lescarbot, _Nouvelle France_ (1618), p. 228; Biard,
_Relation_ (1616), chap. i.; Champlain (1632), p. 9; Charlevoix,
_Nouvelle France_, i. 4, 14, or Shea’s edition, i. 106; Estancelin,
_Navigateurs Normands_; Kunstmann, _Entdeckung Amerikas_, pp. 69, 125;
Peschel, _Geschichte des Zeitalters_, etc., p. 332; Vitet, _Histoire
de la Dieppe_, p. 51; Harrisse, _Cabots_, p. 271; Kohl, _Discovery of
Maine_, pp. 188, 201, 203, 205, 280; Parkman, _Pioneers_, p. 171; _Mag.
of Amer. Hist._, 1882, April; _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, 1880, p.
229, etc.—ED.]]
Miguel also was never heard of again. Another expedition, sent out at
the expense of the King, a year later, returned without having found a
trace of either brother. And yet once more, the oldest of the family,
Vasqueanes Cortereal, then governor of Terceira, proposed to undertake
the quest in person; but Emanuel refused the necessary permission,
declining to risk the lives of more of his subjects.
The Cortereals had no successors among their countrymen in the attempt
to reach the Indies by the Northwest Passage; but their voyages opened
for Portugal a source of much trade. Individuals, and perhaps companies
or associations, soon followed in their track in the pursuit of fish,
until the Portuguese enterprises of this sort on the American coasts
grew to large proportions, and produced considerable revenue for the
State.
* * * * *
The consolidation of France into one great kingdom may be said to date
from 1524, when the death of Claude, the wife of Francis I., vested the
hereditary right to the succession of Brittany in the crown of France.
The marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne, Claude’s mother, in 1491, had
brought the last of the feudal fiefs into subjection; but it required
many years to make the inhabitants of these provinces Frenchmen, and
the rulers at Paris exercised little authority over the towns and
principalities of the interior. The coasts of Normandy and Brittany
were peopled by a race of adventurous mariners, some of them exercising
considerable power; as, for instance, the Angos of Dieppe, one of whom
(Jean) was ennobled, and created viscount and captain of that town.
Such places as Dieppe, Honfleur, St. Malo, and others had already
furnished men and leaders for voyages of exploration and discovery.
These had made expeditions to the Canaries and the African coast, and
the fishing population of the French provinces were not unused to
voyages of considerable length. They were not slow, then, in seeking
a share in the advantages offered by the new countries discovered by
Cabot and Cortereal, and they speedily became skilful and powerful in
the American fisheries. The fishermen of the ports of Brittany are
known to have reached the Newfoundland shores as early as 1504. They
have left there an enduring trace in the name of Cape Breton, which,
in one form or another, is found upon very early maps. Two years
afterward Jean Denys, who was from Honfleur, is said to have visited
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to have made a chart of it; but what now
passes for such a chart is clearly of later origin. Another two years
elapse, and we read of the voyage, in 1508, of a Dieppe mariner, Thomas
Aubert by name, who is said to have brought home the first specimens
of the American natives. A contemporary chronicle relates the visit of
seven of those savages to Rouen in 1509. The frequency of the voyages
of these fishermen and their skill in navigation are proved by the
provision in Juan de Agramonte’s commission from the Spanish Crown, in
1511, that he might employ as pilots of his proposed expedition two
mariners from Brittany.[11] In 1518, or (as M. d’Avezac thinks) perhaps
a few years later, the Baron de Léry attempted a French settlement in
the new country. But storms and unfavorable circumstances brought about
the failure of this expedition.[12]
* * * * *
We have few particulars of the early life of Giovanni da Verrazano, who
commanded the first French expedition sent out under royal auspices.
The date of his birth is uncertain; but he is supposed to have been
born shortly after 1480, in Florence,—where members of the family
had attained high office at various times,—and to have been the son
of Piero Andrea da Verrazano and Fiametta Capella. He is said to
have travelled extensively, to have passed some years in Egypt and
Syria, and to have visited the East Indies. It has also been stated,
but on doubtful authority, that he commanded one of Aubert’s ships
in that mariner’s expedition to America in 1508. With the year 1521
Verrazano begins to appear in Spanish history as a French corsair; in
which character, and under the name of Juan Florin or Florentin, he
preyed upon the commerce between Spain and her new-found possessions.
It was, perhaps, while engaged in this occupation that he gained the
notice and favor of Francis I. Indeed, his voyage of discovery was
immediately preceded by, or even connected with, one of these predatory
cruises. The Portuguese ambassador in France, Joâo da Silveira, wrote
home, April 25, 1523: “Joâo Verezano, who is going on the discovery
of Cathay, has not left up to this date, for want of opportunity, and
because of differences, I understand, between himself and men.” And
Verrazano himself says, in the cosmographical appendix to his letter,
that the object of his expedition was to reach Cathay by a westward
voyage, and that he expected to be able to penetrate any intervening
land. But we know from Spanish sources that in May or June of this
same year, 1523, Juan Florin captured the treasure sent home by Cortes
to the Emperor, and brought it into La Rochelle; and Verrazano speaks
in the beginning of his letter to the King of his success against the
Spaniards.[13]
Later in the year, perhaps (but it seems impossible now to separate
the voyage of discovery distinctly from the cruise against Spanish
commerce), Verrazano started with four ships. Disabled by storms, he
was forced to put back into some port of Brittany with two vessels, the
“Normandy” and the “Dauphine.” After repairing these, he made a fresh
start, but decided finally to proceed on the voyage to Cathay with the
“Dauphine” alone.
In this vessel he sailed, Jan. 17, 1524, from the Desiertas Rocks,
near the Island of Madeira, having fifty men and provisions for eight
months. For twenty-five days he proceeded, with a pleasant breeze,
toward the west, without any incident. Then on February 14 (20,
according to another version of his letter) he encountered a very
violent tempest. Escaping from this, he continued the voyage, changing
the course of the vessel more to the north, and in another twenty-five
days came within sight of land. This appeared low when first seen; and
on a nearer approach it gave evidence, from the fires burning on the
shore, that there were inhabitants. This landfall Verrazano places in
34° N., which would be not far from the latitude of Cape Fear, upon
the coast of North Carolina; and most commentators upon his letter
accept that as the probable point. He began his search for a harbor by
coasting south about fifty leagues; but finding none, and observing
that the land continued to extend in that direction, he turned and
sailed along the shore to the north. Still finding no opportunity to
land with the vessel, he decided to send a boat ashore. This was met
on its approach to the land by a crowd of the natives, who at first
turned to fly, but were recalled by friendly signs, and at last showed
the strangers the best place for making a landing, and offered them
food. These people were nearly black in color, of moderate stature
and good proportions. They went naked except for their breech-cloths,
and were, from the description, simple and of kind disposition. The
coast is described as covered with small sand-hills, and as pierced by
occasional inlets, behind which appeared a higher country, with fields
and great forests giving out pleasant odors. There were noticed, also,
lakes and ponds, with abundance of birds and beasts. The anchorage
Verrazano thought a safe one; for though there was no harbor, he says
that the water continued deep very close to the shore, and there was
excellent holding-ground for the anchor.
Thence he proceeded along a shore trending east, seeing great fires,
which gave him the impression that the country had many inhabitants.
While at anchor (perhaps near Raleigh Bay), the boat was sent to the
shore for water. There was no possibility of landing, on account of
the high surf; so a young sailor undertook to swim to the land, and
to give the natives some bells or other trinkets which the French
had brought for the purposes of traffic, or for presents. He was
overpowered by the waves, and, after a struggle, thrown upon the beach,
where he lay almost stunned. The Indians ran down, picked him up, and
carried him screaming with fright up the shore. They reassured him
by signs, stripped off his wet clothes, and dried him by one of their
fires,—much to the horror, says the narrative, of his comrades in the
boat, who supposed that the savages intended to roast and eat him. When
he was refreshed and recovered from his fright, he made them understand
that he wished to rejoin his friends, whereupon the natives accompanied
him back to the water, and watched his safe return to the boat.
Following the shore, which here turned somewhat to the north, in fifty
leagues more they reached a pleasant place, much wooded, near which
they anchored. Here they landed twenty men to examine the country,
and made a cruel return for the kindness which the natives had shown
the French sailor a short time before. On landing, the men found that
the Indians had taken refuge in the woods, with the exception of two
women and some small children who had attempted to hide in the long
grass. The Frenchmen offered food; but the younger woman refused it,
and in great fright called for help to the natives who had fled into
the forest. The French took the oldest of the children, a boy of eight,
and carried him to their vessel, to take back with them to France. They
attempted to kidnap also the young woman, who was handsome and tall,
about eighteen years of age; but she succeeded in escaping. The people
of this place are described as fairer than those first seen, and the
country as fertile and beautiful, but colder than the other.
The vessel remained at anchor three days, and then it was decided to
continue the voyage, but to sail only in the daytime, and to anchor
each night. After coursing a hundred leagues to the northeast, they
arrived at a beautiful spot where, between small steep hills, a great
stream poured its waters into the sea. This river was of great depth at
its mouth, and with the help of the tide a heavily loaded vessel could
easily enter. As Verrazano had good anchorage for his ship, he sent
his boat in. This, after going a half league, found that the entrance
widened into a magnificent lake of three leagues circuit, upon which at
least thirty of the natives’ boats were passing from shore to shore.
These people received the strangers kindly, and showed them the best
place to bring their boat to the land. A sudden squall from the sea
frightened the French, and they returned in haste to the ship without
exploring further this pleasant harbor,—which seems to have been that
of New York.
Thence they sailed to the east about eighty leagues (fifty, by one
account), keeping the land always in sight. They discovered an island
of triangular shape, of about the size of that of Rhodes, and about
ten leagues from the mainland, to which they gave the name of Louisa,
the mother of Francis I.,—the only name mentioned in the narrative.
This was covered with woods, and well peopled, as the number of fires
showed. From this island, which has been generally identified with
Block Island,[14] Verrazano, without landing, as the weather was bad,
steered for the coast again; and in fifteen leagues (perhaps retracing
his course) came to a most beautiful harbor. Here the ship was met by
many boats of the natives, who crowded close around it with cries of
astonishment and pleasure. They were easily persuaded to come on board,
and soon became very friendly. This harbor, which Verrazano places in
the parallel of Rome, 41° 40´ N., and which has been identified as that
of Newport, is described as opening toward the south, with an entrance
a half league in breadth, and widening into a great bay twenty leagues
in circuit. It contained five islands, among which any fleet might
find refuge from storms or other dangers. The entrance could be easily
guarded by a fort built upon a rock which seemed naturally placed in
its centre for defence. The natives are described as fine-looking, the
handsomest people seen in the voyage, of taller stature than Europeans,
of light color, sharp faces, with long black hair and black eyes, but
with a mild expression. The visits of their kings to the strange vessel
are described, and the eagerness of these rulers to know the use of
everything they saw is mentioned. The women are spoken of as modest
in their behavior, and as jealously guarded by their husbands. The
interior country was explored for a short distance, and found pleasant
and adapted to cultivation, with many large open plains entirely free
from trees, and with forests not so dense but that they could easily be
penetrated.
In this agreeable harbor, where everything that he saw filled him with
delight, and where the kindness of the inhabitants left him nothing to
desire, Verrazano tarried fifteen days. Then having supplied himself
with all necessaries, he departed on the 6th of May (Ramusio says the
5th), and sailed a hundred and fifty leagues without losing sight
of the land, which showed small hills, and was a little higher than
before, while the coast, after about fifty leagues, turned to the
north. No stop was made, for the wind was favorable, and the nature
of the country appeared much the same. The next landing was made in a
colder country, full of thick woods, where the natives were rude, and
showed no desire to communicate with the strangers. They were clothed
in skins, and their land seemed barren. They would accept nothing in
barter but knives, fish-hooks, and sharpened steel. When the French
landed and attempted to explore the country, they were attacked. This
landing has been placed somewhere north of Boston, possibly not far
from Portsmouth, in New Hampshire.
The voyage was continued in a northeasterly direction. The coast
appeared pleasanter, open, and free from woods, with a sight of high
mountains far inland. Within a distance of fifty leagues thirty-two
islands were discovered, all near the shore, which reminded the
navigator of those in the Adriatic. He did not stop to explore the
country, or to open communication with the natives, but continued
another hundred and fifty leagues in the same general direction, when
he arrived at about the latitude of 50° N. Here, having reached the
country already discovered by the Bretons, and finding his provisions
and naval stores nearly exhausted, he took in a fresh supply of wood
and water, and decided to return to France, having, he says, discovered
more than seven hundred leagues of unknown territory. He arrived at
Dieppe on his return early in July, for his letter to the King is dated
from that port on the 8th of the month.
We lose trace of Verrazano after his return from this voyage. Francis
I. was in no condition to profit from the opportunity offered him to
colonize a new world. He had engaged in a struggle with the Emperor;
was soon after the date of this letter busily occupied in fighting
battles; and at that of Pavia, Feb. 24, 1525, was taken prisoner, and
spent the next year in captivity in Spain. It has been suggested that
Verrazano went to England, and there offered his services to Henry
VIII., and there are contemporary allusions supporting the suggestion.
Mr. Biddle, in his _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, advances the opinion
that Verrazano was the Piedmontese pilot who was killed and eaten
by the savages in Rut’s expedition of 1527, which would harmonize
Ramusio’s statement that he made a second voyage to America and lost
his life there. But this is extremely doubtful.[15] We know from French
sources that in 1526 Verrazano joined with Admiral Chabot, Jean Ango,
and others, in an agreement for a voyage to the Indies for spices,
with a proviso inserted for the equitable division of any booty taken
“from the Moors or others, enemies of the faith and the King our lord.”
Spanish documents of official character show that Juan Florin, with
other French pirates, was captured at sea in 1527, and hung at the
small village of Colmenar, between Salamanca and Toledo, in November of
that year. But it has been also lately stated that a letter has been
found, dated at Paris, Nov. 14, 1527, which speaks of Verrazano as
_then_ preparing an expedition of five ships for America, expecting to
sail the following spring. If this statement is accurate, and the date
of the letter has been correctly read, grave doubts are thrown upon the
Spanish story of his execution. Either Florin was not Verrazano, or he
was not hanged at the time stated. I cannot undertake to reconcile all
these statements, but must leave them as I find them.
* * * * *
The voyage of Estévan (Stephen) Gomez, although not made under the
flag of France, should, perhaps, be studied in connection with that
of Verrazano. Spain did not fail to take notice of the discoveries of
the Cabots when the news of the return of Sebastian from the second
voyage reached London in 1498. Her ambassador at that Court, Don Pedro
de Ayala, in his despatch dated July 25 of that year, says that he has
given notice to the English king that the countries discovered by Cabot
belonged to his master. There are traces of voyages in a northwestern
direction under Spanish auspices in subsequent years. Navarrete thinks
that such was the object of the Spanish king in sending for Juan
Dornelos, or Dorvelos, in the spring of 1500. It is stated also that
Hojeda had orders about the same time to follow the English tracks. The
commission to Agramonte in 1511 (he having proposed a similar project
previously) was for the purpose of planting a settlement in the _tierra
nueva_ at the northwest. Magellan’s discovery of the long-sought strait
through the New World leading to the Land of Spices, although it
brought no immediate advantages, as the voyage was long and perilous,
revived and increased the interest in seeking for a shorter and more
northern passage. The agreement made with De Ayllon, June 12, 1523,
provided, among other things, for the search for another way through
the continent to the Moluccas, to be found north of Florida. Hernando
Cortes wrote home to the Emperor, Oct. 15, 1524, a letter on the
probability of there being such a passage easier than the one already
discovered, and proposed to seek for it. Gomez was of the same opinion,
for his voyage was undertaken to find this northern strait.
Estévan Gomez was a Portuguese and an experienced navigator. He had
entered the service of Spain a few years before this time, having
received the appointment of pilot in 1518 at the same time that
Sebastian Cabot was created “pilot major.” He had sailed with Magellan
on his great voyage as pilot of the “San Antonio,” but had joined
the crew of that vessel in their mutiny against her captain, Alvaro
de Mesquita, at the strait. He thus deserted Magellan, and brought
the ship home. In 1521 he was ordered to serve with the fleet which
was then preparing to sail against the French corsairs. He obtained
a concession from the Emperor, dated March 27, 1523, by which he was
to have a small vessel for an expedition to the northwest, armed and
provisioned for one year. Although this grant, like that made soon
afterward to De Ayllon, contained a proviso that the expedition should
carefully avoid trespassing upon the King of Portugal’s possessions
in the New World, that Power seems to have raised objections to the
voyage. The following year a council was convened at the small town of
Badajos for the settlement of the rival claims of Spain and Portugal,
and Gomez was sent with Cabot, Juan Vespucius, and others to this
council,—not as members, but in the capacity of _specialists_ or
_experts_, to give opinions on questions of navigation and cosmography.
The congress accomplished nothing in the way of an agreement between
the rival Powers, and after its adjournment the Council for the Indies
decided to allow the voyage proposed by Gomez.
Gomez sailed from Corunna, a port in the north of Spain, to which
the “Casa de Contratacion,” or India House, had been removed from
Seville, some time in February of the following year (1525), and was
absent about ten months. We have unfortunately no detailed account of
his voyage, and it does not now seem possible to say with certainty
even in which direction he explored the American coast. The accounts
given by the Spanish historians are very meagre. They seem to have
paid little attention to the voyage, except to record its failure to
discover the desired northern strait. The Spanish maps, however, show
plain traces of the voyage, in the _Tierra de Estévan Gomez_, the name
applied by Ribero and others to the large tract of country between Cape
Breton and Florida. Gomara, one of the earliest and best authorities
on American matters, heads the chapter which he devotes to Gomez, “Rio
de San Antonio,” which name is supposed to be the one given in Spanish
maps to the Hudson River. Gomez is said to have visited the country
at latitudes 40° and 41° north, and to have coasted a great extent of
land never before explored by the Spaniards. It is related also that he
visited the Island of Cuba, and refitted his vessel there. This would
be presumably on the homeward voyage. Failing to obtain the rich cargo
of spices which he had expected to bring home, he loaded his vessel
with kidnapped savages of both sexes, and with this freight reached
Corunna again in November, 1525.
All historians of the voyage made by Gomez have told the story about
the mistake of a zealous newsmonger in reference to the nature of the
cargo thus brought home. Peter Martyr is the first to tell it, in the
final chapter of his last decade, inscribed to Pope Clement VII.,
written in 1526. In answer to a question as to what he had brought,
Gomez was understood to reply “cloves” (_clavos_), when he really said
“slaves” (_esclavos_). The eager friend hastened to Court with the
news that the shorter strait had been discovered, thinking to obtain
some reward for his intelligence. The favorers of Gomez’ project (in
regard to which there appears to have been some difference of opinion)
greeted the news with applause, but were covered with ridicule when the
true story of the results of the voyage was published. Martyr quaintly
says: “If they hadd learned that the influence of the heauens could bee
noe where infused into terrestriall matters prepared to receiue that
aromaticall spirit, saue from the _Æquinoctiall_ sunne, or next vnto
it, they woulde haue knowne that in the space of tenn moneths (wherein
hee performed his voyage) aromaticall Cloues could not bee founde.”[16]
* * * * *
It does not fall within the limits of this chapter to relate the story
of the early attempts of the French Huguenots to plant colonies in this
country.[17] But I may refer very briefly to the first of these,—the
expedition sent by Admiral Coligny to Brazil under the command
of Villegagnon, in 1555; as a Franciscan monk, André Thevet, who
accompanied it, claims to have coasted the continent of North America
on his return voyage to France the next year.
Thevet says of himself that he had spent the early years of his life
in travel, and that he had already made a voyage to the East, of
which voyage, and of his skill in navigation, his friend Villegagnon
was well aware when he asked him to join the proposed expedition to
South America,—an offer which he (Thevet) was very ready to accept.
The start, he says, was made from Havre, May 6, 1555, and the voyage
across the ocean was long and tedious. It was not until the last day
of October that, about nine o’clock in the morning, their vessel
came within sight of the high mountains of Croistmourou. These were
within the limits of a country whose inhabitants were friends of the
Portuguese, and the French therefore decided to avoid landing there.
They continued the voyage, and seventeen days later cast anchor at the
River Ganabara (Rio Janeiro), where they were received in a friendly
manner by the natives, and decided to make their settlement.
Thevet remained with the colony only about ten weeks, leaving on his
homeward voyage, Jan. 31, 1556. He says that the commander of the
vessel decided to return by a more northern passage than that by which
he had crossed from France; and goes on to describe at some length
their voyage along the coast, and to give many particulars of the
countries and natives, most of which he must have obtained from other
travellers’ books and histories after his return. The progress was
slow. At the Cape of St. Augustine the vessel was delayed, he says,
two months in the attempt to round that promontory. The equinoctial
line was not crossed until about the middle of April; and after leaving
Espagnola a contrary wind blew them in toward the coast.
Thevet claims to have coasted the entire shore of the United States,
and gives occasional accounts of what he saw, and of intercourse with
the natives. But his details are always uncertain, and the places
he professes to have visited cannot be identified. No satisfactory
information can be obtained from his story; and indeed his reputation
for truth-telling is so poor that many historians are inclined to
reject altogether his recital of the voyage along our coast. It may
well be that Thevet invented the whole of it as a thread upon which
to hang the particulars about Florida, Norumbega, and other countries
which he gathered from books. After his return to France he was made
_aumonier_ to Catherine de Medicis, and also royal historiographer and
cosmographer.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
THE earliest mention in print of the Cortereal voyages is found in
a small collection of travels (one of the very earliest collections
made), entitled _Paesi novamente retrovati_. This was published at
Vicenza, in Italy, as the colophon states, Nov. 3, 1507, and is
supposed to have been compiled by Fracanzio da Montalboddo, or by
Alessandro Zorzi.[18] The account of Gaspar Cortereal is contained
(book vi. chap. cxxv) in a letter written from Lisbon, Oct. 19, 1501
(eleven days only after the return of the first vessel which succeeded
in getting home from the second voyage), by the Venetian ambassador
in Portugal, Pietro Pasqualigo, to his brothers. This is, of course,
an authority of great value. The writer gives a brief account of the
voyage, speaks of the customs of the inhabitants of the new country,
and describes the captives which the ship had brought. He says that the
other vessel is expected immediately. Pasqualigo mentions, however,
only one voyage, and has apparently confused it with the earlier
one; for he says that the expedition sailed “lāno passato” (that
is 1500), and writes of the failure to reach a country discovered
“lanno passato.” Perhaps he received some account of both voyages
from the mariners, and in preparing his letter failed to preserve
the distinction between them. French versions of the letter appeared
in Paris in 1517 and 1522. An English translation of the interesting
portions of this letter is given in Biddle’s _Cabot_, at pp. 239, 240.
Another contemporary account of this voyage of Gaspar Cortereal has
lately been discovered. M. Harrisse has obtained from the archives
of Modena a despatch sent to Hercules d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, by
Alberto Cantino, his representative at Lisbon, in which the arrival
of the second vessel (expected immediately in Pasqualigo’s letter) is
reported. This despatch is dated Oct. 17, 1501. The vessel arrived on
the 11th,—three days after the first one,—and brought the expected
cargo of slaves. Cantino says that he saw, touched, and surveyed (li
quali io ho visti, tochi et contemplati) these natives. He gives some
account of the savages, and tells the story of the voyage as he heard
the captain of the vessel relate it to the King, being present at their
interview. The caravel had been a month on her return, and the distance
was two thousand eight hundred miles,—“Questo naviglio è venuto di la
a qua in un mese, et dicono esservi 2,800 milia de distantia.” Cantino
makes no mention of the return of the first vessel, but speaks of a
third, commanded by Cortereal in person, as having decided to remain
in the new country, and to sail along its coast far enough to discover
whether it were an island or _terra firma_,—“Laltro compagno ha
deliberato andar tanto per quella costa, che vole intendere se quella è
insula, o pur terra ferma.”
Harrisse prints this interesting letter of Cantino in his _Jean et
Sébastian Cabot_ (pp. 262-264). Cantino appears to have also sent
his master a map showing the new discoveries. This map Harrisse has
since reproduced with a commentary, in his work on the Cortereals, as
explained in the second volume of the present history.
It should be noted that Harrisse counts three voyages of Gaspar
Cortereal,—the first, without result, before May, 1500; the second,
between May and December of that year; and a third, sailing in January,
1501,—the return of two of whose vessels in the following October is
related by Pasqualigo and Cantino.[19]
The confusion of the voyages continued. The Spanish historians and
those of Italy, knowing, perhaps, of only one, or getting their
information from the _Paesi_ and the maps, speak of but one expedition.
Gomara, whose work was published at Saragossa in 1552-1553,[20] says
that Cortereal was seeking a northwest passage, but failed to find it;
that he gave his name to the islands at the mouth of the St. Lawrence
in 50° N.; and that, dismayed at the snow and ice, he returned home
with about sixty of the natives whom he had captured.[21] Herrera,
who published his History early in the next century,[22] gets his
information from Gomara. Peter Martyr does not mention the Cortereals.
Turning to Italy, we find in Ramusio an account of Cortereal in the
third volume of his great collection of voyages,[23] published in 1556,
at fol. 417. Here, in an introductory discourse, written by Ramusio
himself, “sopra la terra ferme dell’ Indie Occidentali,” it is stated
that Gaspar Cortereal was the first captain who went to that part of
the New World which “runs to the north,” in 1500, with two ships, in
search of a shorter passage to the Spice Islands; that he penetrated
so far north as to get into a region of great cold, discovering at 60°
a river filled with snow, which was called the “Rio Nevado;” that he
found inhabited islands to which he gave names, etc.
Even down to modern times the distinction between the voyages has
not been recognized. Biddle, Humboldt, and others speak of only one
expedition. The Portuguese authorities, however, are explicit in the
matter. In 1563 there was published at Lisbon a volume of navigations
and discoveries written by Antonio Galvano, who had died a few years
before.[24] Galvano was born at Lisbon in 1503. He went, a young man,
to India, and distinguished himself there, having command of the
expedition which reduced the Moluccas to Portuguese rule, and becoming
the governor of Ternate,—the largest of these islands. He was recalled
home, and coldly received by the King. Becoming indigent, he was
forced to take refuge in a hospital, where he finally died in 1557.
His papers were bequeathed to a friend, Don Francisco y Sousa Tavares,
who prepared the volume for the press. Galvano gives a good account
of the expedition of Gaspar Cortereal, clearly dividing it into two
voyages; and he tells also of Miguel Cortereal’s attempt to discover
his brother’s fate. The original Portuguese text is very rare. Hakluyt
published a translation of it in 1601,[25] and states in his Dedication
of that book to Sir Robert Cecil that he could not succeed in finding
a copy of the original. The translation was made, he says, “by some
honest and well-affected marchant of our nation, whose name by no
meanes I could attaine unto, and that, as it seemeth, many yeeres ago.
For it hath lien by me above these twelve yeeres.” In 1862 the Hakluyt
Society of London reprinted this translation under the editorial
supervision of Vice-Admiral Bethune. In this edition corrections of the
English version are noted, and the whole Portuguese text is given, page
for page, from a copy of the original in the Carter-Brown Library. The
passage relating to the Cortereals is found at pages 96, 97, of this
Hakluyt Society’s volume.[26]
The Chronicle of King Emanuel, by Damiano de Goes, appeared at Lisbon
in 1565-1567.[27] Goes was born in 1501, and died about 1573. He was
employed in the diplomatic service of Portugal in Flanders, Denmark,
and other countries, and travelled extensively. Galvano considered
him, as a traveller, worthy of mention in his work, and says that he
visited England, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Muscovy, and Norway.
“He did see, speake, and was conuersant with all the kings, princes,
nobles, and chiefe cities of all Christendome in the space of 22
yeeres (occupied in the work); so that by reason of the greatnes of
his trauell I thought him a man woorthie to be here remembred.”[28]
He became afterward historiographer of Portugal, and was placed
in charge of the public archives. But he fell under the ban of the
Inquisition, and died in obscurity. His account of the Cortereals,
which is clear and of great value, from the learning of the writer and
from his excellent opportunities to inform himself, is given in the
sixty-seventh chapter of the first part of the Chronicle, at pp. 87,
88.[29]
Hieronymus Osorius (as his name is Latinized), the Bishop of
Silves,—known sometimes as the Portuguese Cicero, from the elegance
of his style,—published his _De rebus Emmanuelis_ in 1571.[30] He was
born in 1506, and lived until 1580. His writings include treatises on
philosophy and theology, as well as works of history. In the Chronicle,
under date of 1503, he gives a full account of the Cortereal voyages,
including the search expedition sent out by the King that year, and the
proposition of the eldest brother to equip a new exploration. The story
may be found at p. 63 of the edition of 1586.
Oscar Peschel and Friedrich Kunstmann, in Germany, used these
Portuguese authorities freely in their accounts of the Cortereals.
Peschel’s book, an excellent one, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der
Entdeckungen_, was published at Stuttgart in 1858, and went to a second
edition in 1877. The discoveries of the Portuguese are treated in
the ninth chapter of the second book.[31] Kunstmann’s work, of great
learning and research, _Die Entdeckung Amerikas_, was published at
Munich in 1859 by the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, as part of
the centennial commemoration (March 28, 1859) of its foundation. In
addition to the printed authorities, Kunstmann instituted searches
among the manuscript archives at Lisbon. He had the pretended early
voyage of Joâo Vaz Cortereal examined, and ascertained that there was
no foundation for it.[32] He found the letter of Miguel Cortereal,
written Aug. 6, 1501, to Christovâo Lopez, which has been used in the
preceding narrative; and that brother’s agreement with the King, Jan.
15, 1502, by which the grant previously made to Gaspar was continued to
Miguel.[33]
An excellent account of the Cortereal voyages, based largely upon
Kunstmann’s researches, is given by Dr. Kohl in the fifth chapter of
his _Discovery of Maine_.[34] At the first session of the International
Congress of “Américanistes,” held at Nancy in July, 1875, M. Luciano
Cordeiro, professor in the Institut at Coïmbre, presented, through
M. Lucien Adam, an elaborate essay on the share of the Portuguese in
the discovery of America. M. Cordeiro’s paper shows great industry
and research, but it should be read with caution, as his patriotism
sometimes exceeds his discretion. He looks at everything with the
distorted vision of an enthusiastic lover of his native land.[35]
With Kunstmann’s _Entdeckung_, the Bavarian Academy published, under
the care of that gentleman, Karl von Spruner, and Georg M. Thomas,
an elegant atlas of thirteen maps in beautifully executed colored
fac-similes. Portions of three of these maps relating to the Cortereals
are given in a greatly reduced form, without the brilliant colors, by
Dr. Kohl, in the Appendage to his chapter on these navigators. The
first of these is a Portuguese chart, made about 1504 by an unknown
hand. The southern part of Greenland is laid down upon it without a
name; and farther to the west appears a considerable extent of country,
answering, perhaps, to parts of our Labrador and Newfoundland, which
bears the name “Terra de cortte Reall.”[36] The second chart, made by
Pedro Reinel at about the same period, shows only Portuguese names
and gives the Portuguese flag on that part of America visited by the
Cortereals. Reinel was a Portuguese pilot of eminence, who afterward
entered the Spanish service. The third map, also of Portuguese origin,
of about the year 1520, although its exact date and its author’s
name are unknown, contains at Labrador these words: “terram istam
portugalenses viderunt atamen non intraverunt” (“The Portuguese saw
this country, but did not enter it”); and again at a place farther west
occurs the legend: “Terram istam gaspar corte Regalis portugalensis
primo invenit, et secum tulit hōīes silvestres et ursos albos. In ea
est maxiā multitudo animalium et avium necnon et pescium. qui anno
sequenti naufragium perpessus nunquam rediit: sic et fratri ejus
micaeli anno sequenti contigit” (“This country was first discovered
by Gaspar Cortereal, a Portuguese, and he brought from there wild and
barbarous men and white bears. There are to be found in it plenty of
animals, birds, and fish. In the following year he was shipwrecked, and
did not return: the same happened to his brother Michael in the next
year”).[37]
* * * * *
The original authorities for the early French expeditions have,
unhappily, not been preserved, or they still lie hidden in some dusky
receptacle, baffling all search for them. The Breton fishermen perhaps
wrote no accounts of their voyages across the Atlantic; but we might
hope for some authentic reports of the voyages of Denys, Aubert, and
others, made under the auspices of the rich and powerful Angos. The
archives of Dieppe, however, were destroyed at the bombardment of that
town in 1694, and those of La Rochelle met a similar fate.