Pioneers of the Old South: a chronicle of English colonial beginnings Part 1

Pioneers of the Old South.

by Mary Johnston.

CHAPTER I. THE THREE SHIPS SAIL

Elizabeth of England died in 1603. There came to the English throne James Stuart, King of Scotland, King now of England and Scotland. In 1604 a treaty of peace ended the long war with Spain. Gone was the sixteenth century; here, though in childhood, was the seventeenth century.

Now that the wars were over, old colonization schemes were revived in the English mind. Of the motives, which in the first instance had prompted these schemes, some with the pa.s.sing of time had become weaker, some remained quite as strong as before. Most Englishmen and women knew now that Spain had clay feet; and that Rome, though she might threaten, could not always perform what she threatened. To abase the pride of Spain, to make harbors of refuge for the angel of the Reformation-these wishes, though they had not vanished, though no man could know how long the peace with Spain would last, were less fervid than they had been in the days of Drake. But the old desire for trade remained as strong as ever. It would be a great boon to have English markets in the New World, as well as in the Old, to which merchants might send their wares, and from which might be drawn in bulk, the raw stuffs that were needed at home. The idea of a surplus population persisted; England of five million souls still thought that she was crowded and that it would be well to have a land of younger sons, a land of promise for all not abundantly provided for at home. It were surely well, for mere pride's sake, to have due lot and part in the great New World! And wealth like that which Spain had found was a dazzle and a lure. "Why, man, all their dripping-pans are pure gold, and all the chains with which they chain up their streets are ma.s.sy gold; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds they go forth on holidays and gather 'em by the seash.o.r.e!" So the comedy of "Eastward Ho!" seen on the London stage in 1605-"Eastward Ho!" because yet they thought of America as on the road around to China.

In this year Captain George Weymouth sailed across the sea and spent a summer month in North Virginia-later, New England. Weymouth had powerful backers, and with him sailed old adventurers who had been with Raleigh. Coming home to England with five Indians in his company, Weymouth and his voyage gave to public interest the needed fillip towards action. Here was the peace with Spain, and here was the new interest in Virginia. "Go to!" said Mother England. "It is time to place our children in the world!"

The old adventurers of the day of Sir Humphrey Gilbert had acted as individuals. Soon was to come in the idea of cooperative action-the idea of the joint-stock company, acting under the open permission of the Crown, attended by the interest and favor of numbers of the people, and giving to private initiative and personal ambition, a public tone. Some men of foresight would have had Crown and Country themselves the adventurers, superseding any smaller bodies. But for the moment the fortunes of Virginia were furthered by a group within the great group, by a joint-stock company, a corporation.

In 1600 had come into being the East India Company, prototype of many companies to follow. Now, six years later, there arose under one royal charter two companies, generally known as the London and the Plymouth. The first colony planted by the latter was short-lived. Its letters patent were for North Virginia. Two ships, the Mary and John and the Gift of G.o.d, sailed with over a hundred settlers. These men, reaching the coast of what is now Maine, built a fort and a church on the banks of the Kennebec. Then followed the usual miseries typical of colonial venture-sickness, starvation, and a freezing winter. With the return of summer the enterprise was abandoned. The foundation of New England was delayed awhile, her Pilgrims yet in England, though meditating that first remove to Holland, her Mayflower only a ship of London port, staunch, but with no fame above another.

The London Company, soon to become the Virginia Company, therefore engages our attention. The charter recites that Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, Knights, Richard Hakluyt, clerk, Prebendary of Westminster, Edward-Maria Wingfield, and other knights, gentlemen, merchants, and adventurers, wish "to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia." It covenants with them and gives them for a heritage all America between the thirty-fourth and the forty-first parallels of lat.i.tude.

The thirty-fourth parallel pa.s.ses through the middle of what is now South Carolina; the forty-first grazes New York, crosses the northern tip of New Jersey, divides Pennsylvania, and so westward across to that Pacific or South Sea that the age thought so near to the Atlantic. All England might have been placed many times over in what was given to those knights, gentlemen, merchants, and others.

The King's charter created a great Council of Virginia, sitting in London, governing from overhead. In the new land itself there should exist a second and lesser council. The two councils had authority within the range of Virginian matters, but the Crown retained the power of veto. The Council in Virginia might coin money for trade with the Indians, expel invaders, import settlers, punish ill-doers, levy and collect taxes-should have, in short, dignity and power enough for any colony. Likewise, acting for the whole, it might give and take orders "to dig, mine and search for all manner of mines of gold, silver and copper... to have and enjoy... yielding to us, our heirs and successors, the fifth part only of all the same gold and silver, and the fifteenth part of all the same copper."

Now are we ready-it being Christmas-tide of the year 1606-to go to Virginia. Riding on the Thames, before Blackwall, are three ships, small enough in all conscience' sake, the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. The Admiral of this fleet is Christopher Newport, an old seaman of Raleigh's. Bartholomew Gosnold captains the Goodspeed, and John Ratcliffe the Discovery. The three ships have aboard their crews and one hundred and twenty colonists, all men. The Council in Virginia is on board, but it does not yet know itself as such, for the names of its members have been deposited by the superior home council in a sealed box, to be opened only on Virginia soil.

The colonists have their paper of instructions. They shall find out a safe port in the entrance of a navigable river. They shall be prepared against surprise and attack. They shall observe "whether the river on which you plant doth spring out of mountains or out of lakes. If it be out of any lake the pa.s.sage to the other sea will be the more easy, and like enough... you shall find some spring which runs the contrary way toward the East India sea." They must avoid giving offense to the "naturals"-must choose a healthful place for their houses-must guard their shipping. They are to set down in black and white for the information of the Council at home all such matters as directions and distances, the nature of soils and forests and the various commodities that they may find. And no man is to return from Virginia without leave from the Council, and none is to write home any discouraging letter. The instructions end, "Lastly and chiefly, the way to prosper and to achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear G.o.d, the Giver of all Goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out."

Nor did they lack verses to go by, as their enterprise itself did not lack poetry. Michael Drayton wrote for them:- Britons, you stay too long, Quickly aboard bestow you, And with a merry gale, Swell your stretched sail, With vows as strong As the winds that blow you.

Your course securely steer, West and by South forth keep; Rocks, lee sh.o.r.es nor shoals, Where Eolus scowls, You need not fear,

So absolute the deep.

And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice, To get the pearl and gold, And ours to hold VIRGINIA, Earth's only paradise!...

And in regions far Such heroes bring ye forth As those from whom we came; And plant our name Under that star Not known unto our north.

See the parting upon Thames's side, Englishmen going, English kindred, friends, and neighbors calling farewell, waving hat and scarf, standing bare-headed in the gray winter weather! To Virginia-they are going to Virginia! The sails are made upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. The last wherry carries aboard the last adventurer. The anchors are weighed. Down the river the wind bears the ships toward the sea. Weather turning against them, they taste long delay in the Downs, but at last are forth upon the Atlantic. Hourly the distance grows between London town and the outgoing folk, between English sh.o.r.es and where the surf breaks on the pale Virginian beaches. Far away-far away and long ago-yet the unseen, actual cables hold, and yesterday and today stand embraced, the lips of the Thames meet the lips of the James, and the breath of England mingles with the breath of America.

CHAPTER II. THE ADVENTURERS

What was this Virginia to which they were bound? In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the name stood for a huge stretch of littoral, running southward from lands of long winters and fur-bearing animals to lands of the canebrake, the fig, the magnolia, the chameleon, and the mockingbird. The world had been circ.u.mnavigated; Drake had pa.s.sed up the western coast-and yet cartographers, the learned, and those who took the word from the learned, strangely visualized the North American mainland as narrow indeed. Apparently, they conceived it as a kind of extended Central America. The huge rivers puzzled them. There existed a notion that these might be estuaries, curling and curving through the land from sea to sea. India-Cathay-spices and wonders and Orient wealth-lay beyond the South Sea, and the South Sea was but a few days' march from Hatteras or Chesapeake. The Virginia familiar to the mind of the time lay extended, and she was very slender. Her right hand touched the eastern ocean, and her left hand touched the western.

Contact and experience soon modified this general notion. Wider knowledge, political and economic considerations, practical reasons of all kinds, drew a different physical form for old Virginia. Before the seventeenth century had pa.s.sed away, they had given to her northern end a baptism of other names. To the south she was lopped to make the Carolinas. Only to the west, for a long time, she seemed to grow, while like a mirage the South Sea and Cathay receded into the distance.

This narrative, moving with the three ships from England, and through a time span of less than a hundred and fifty years, deals with a region of the western hemisphere a thousand miles in length, several hundred in breadth, stretching from the Florida line to the northern edge of Chesapeake Bay, and from the Atlantic to the Appalachians. Out of this Virginia there grow in succession the ancient colonies and the modern States of Virginia, Maryland, South and North Carolina, and Georgia.

But for many a year Virginia itself was the only settlement and the only name. This Virginia was a country favored by nature. Neither too hot nor too cold, it was rich-soiled and capable of every temperate growth in its sunniest aspect. Great rivers drained it, flowing into a great bay, almost a sea, many-armed as Briareus, affording safe and sheltered harbors. Slowly, with beauty, the land mounted to the west. The sun set behind wooded mountains, long wave-lines raised far back in geologic time. The valleys were many and beautiful, watered by sliding streams. Back to the east again, below the rolling land, were found the shimmering levels, the jewel-green marshes, the wide, slow waters, and at last upon the Atlantic sh.o.r.e the thunder of the rainbow-tinted surf. Various and pleasing was the country. Springs and autumns were long and balmy, the sun shone bright, there was much blue sky, a rich flora and fauna. There were mineral wealth and water power, and breadth and depth for agriculture. Such was the Virginia between the Potomac and the Dan, the Chesapeake and the Alleghanies.

This, and not the gold-bedight slim neighbor of Cathay, was now the lure of the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. But those aboard, obsessed by Spanish America, imperfectly knowing the features and distances of the orb, yet clung to their first vision. But they knew there would be forest and Indians. Tales enough had been told of both!

What has to be imaged is a forest the size of Virginia. Here and there, chiefly upon river banks, show small Indian clearings. Here and there are natural meadows, and toward the salt water great marshes, the home of waterfowl. But all these are little or naught in the whole, faint adornments sewed upon a s.h.a.ggy garment, green in summer, flame-hued in autumn, brown in winter, green and flower-colored in the spring. Nor was the forest to any appreciable extent like much Virginian forest of today, second growth, invaded, hewed down, and renewed, to hear again the sound of the axe, set afire by a thousand accidents, burning upon its own funeral pyres, all its primeval glory withered. The forest of old Virginia was jocund and powerful, eternally young and eternally old. The forest was Despot in the land-was Emperor and Pope.

With the forest went the Indian. They had a pact together. The Indians hacked out s.p.a.ce for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, their maize and bean fields and tobacco patches. They took saplings for poles and bark to cover the huts and wood for fires. The forest gave canoe and bow and arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum that was beaten at feasts. It furnished trees serviceable for shelter when the foe was stalked. It was their wall and roof, their habitat. It was one of the Four Friends of the Indians-the Ground, the Waters, the Sky, the Forest. The forest was everywhere, and the Indians dwelled in the forest. Not unnaturally, they held that this world was theirs.

Upon the three ships, sailing, sailing, moved a few men who could speak with authority of the forest and of Indians. Christopher Newport was upon his first voyage to Virginia, but he knew the Indies and the South American coast. He had sailed and had fought under Francis Drake. And Bartholomew Gosnold had explored both for himself and for Raleigh. These two could tell others what to look for. In their company there was also John Smith. This gentleman, it is true, had not wandered, fought, and companioned with romance in America, but he had done so everywhere else. He had as yet no experience with Indians, but he could conceive that rough experiences were rough experiences, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. And as he knew there was a family likeness among dangerous happenings, so also he found one among remedies, and he had a bag full of stories of strange happenings and how they should be met.

They were going the old, long West Indies sea road. There was time enough for talking, wondering, considering the past, fantastically building up the future. Meeting in the ships' cabins over ale tankards, pacing up and down the small high-raised p.o.o.p-decks, leaning idle over the side, watching the swirling dark-blue waters or the stars of night, lying idle upon the deck, propped by the mast while the trade-winds blew and up beyond sail and rigging curved the sky-they had time enough indeed to plan for marvels! If they could have seen ahead, what pictures of things to come they might have beheld rising, falling, melting one into another!

Certain of the men upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery stand out clearly, etched against the sky.

Christopher Newport might be forty years old. He had been of Raleigh's captains and was chosen, a very young man, to bring to England from the Indies the captured great carrack, Madre de Dios, laden with fabulous treasure. In all, Newport was destined to make five voyages to Virginia, carrying supply and aid. After that, he would pa.s.s into the service of the East India Company, know India, Java, and the Persian Gulf; would be praised by that great company for sagacity, energy, and good care of his men. Ten years' time from this first Virginia voyage, and he would die upon his ship, the Hope, before Bantam in Java.

Bartholomew Gosnold, the captain of the Goodspeed, had sailed with thirty others, five years before, from Dartmouth in a bark named the Concord. He had not made the usual long sweep southward into tropic waters, there to turn and come northward, but had gone, arrow-straight, across the north Atlantic-one of the first English sailors to make the direct pa.s.sage and save many a weary sea league. Gosnold and his men had seen Cape Ann and Cape Cod, and had built upon Cuttyhunk, among the Elizabeth Islands, a little fort thatched with rushes. Then, hardships thronging and quarrels developing, they had filled their ship with sa.s.safras and cedar, and sailed for home over the summer Atlantic, reaching England, with "not one cake of bread" left but only "a little vinegar." Gosnold, guiding the Goodspeed, is now making his last voyage, for he is to die in Virginia within the year.

George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, has fought bravely in the Low Countries. He is to stay five years in Virginia, to serve there a short time as Governor, and then, returning to England, is to write "A Trewe Relacyion", in which he begs to differ from John Smith's "Generall Historie." Finally, he goes again to the wars in the Low Countries, serves with distinction, and dies, unmarried, at the age of fifty-two. His portrait shows a long, rather melancholy face, set between a lace collar and thick, dark hair.

A Queen and a Cardinal-Mary Tudor and Reginald Pole-had stood sponsors for the father of Edward-Maria Wingfield. This man, of an ancient and honorable stock, was older than most of his fellow adventurers to Virginia. He had fought in Ireland, fought in the Low Countries, had been a prisoner of war. Now he was presently to become "the first president of the first council in the first English colony in America." And then, miseries increasing and wretched men being quick to impute evil, it was to be held with other a.s.sertions against him that he was of a Catholic family, that he traveled without a Bible, and probably meant to betray Virginia to the Spaniard. He was to be deposed from his presidency, return to England, and there write a vindication. "I never turned my face from daunger, or hidd my handes from labour; so watchful a sentinel stood myself to myself." With John Smith he had a bitter quarrel.

Upon the Discovery is one who signed himself "John Radclyffe, comenly called," and who is named in the London Company's list as "Captain John Sicklemore, alias Ratcliffe." He will have a short and stormy Virginian life, and in two years be done to death by Indians. John Smith quarreled with him also. "A poor counterfeited Imposture!" said Smith. Gabriel Archer is a lawyer, and first secretary or recorder of the colony. Short, too, is his life. His name lives in Archer's Hope on the James River in Virginia. John Smith will have none of him! George Kendall's life is more nearly spun than Ratcliffe's or Archer's. He will be shot for treason and rebellion. Robert Hunt is the chaplain. Besides those whom the time dubbed "gentlemen," there are upon the three ships English sailors, English laborers, six carpenters, two bricklayers, a blacksmith, a tailor, a barber, a drummer, other craftsmen, and nondescripts. Up and down and to and fro they pa.s.s in their narrow quarters, microscopic upon the bosom of the ocean.

John Smith looms large among them. John Smith has a mantle of marvelous adventure. It seems that he began to make it when he was a boy, and for many years worked upon it steadily until it was stiff as cloth of gold and voluminous as a puffed-out summer cloud. Some think that much of it was such stuff as dreams are made of. Probably some breadths were the fabric of vision. Still it seems certain that he did have some kind of an extraordinary coat or mantle. The adventures which he relates of himself are those of a paladin. Born in 1579 or 1580, he was at this time still a young man. But already he had fought in France and in the Netherlands, and in Transylvania against the Turks. He had known sea-fights and shipwrecks and had journeyed, with adventures galore, in Italy. Before Regal, in Transylvania, he had challenged three Turks in succession, unhorsed them, and cut off their heads, for which doughty deed Sigismund, a Prince of Transylvania, had given him a coat of arms showing three Turks' heads in a shield. Later he had been taken in battle and sold into slavery, whereupon a Turkish lady, his master's sister, had looked upon him with favor. But at last he slew the Turk and escaped, and after wandering many days in misery came into Russia. "Here, too, I found, as I have always done when in misfortune, kindly help from a woman." He wandered on into Germany and thence into France and Spain. Hearing of wars in Barbary, he crossed from Gibraltar. Here he met the captain of a French man-of-war. One day while he was with this man there arose a great storm which drove the ship out to sea. They went before the wind to the Canaries, and there put themselves to rights and began to chase Spanish barks. Presently they had a great fight with two Spanish men-of-war, in which the French ship and Smith came off victors. Returning to Morocco, Smith bade the French captain good-bye and took ship for England, and so reached home in 1604. Here he sought the company of like-minded men, and so came upon those who had been to the New World-"and all their talk was of its wonders." So Smith joined the Virginia undertaking, and so we find him headed toward new adventures in the western world.

On sailed the three ships-little ships-sailing-ships with a long way to go.

"The twelfth day of February at night we saw a blazing starre and presently a storme.... The three and twentieth day [of March] we fell with the Iland of Mattanenio in the West Indies. The foure and twentieth day we anch.o.r.ed at Dominico, within fourteene degrees of the Line, a very faire Iland, full of sweet and good smells, inhabited by many Savage Indians.... The six and twentieth day we had sight of Marigalanta, and the next day wee sailed with a slacke sail alongst the Ile of Guadalupa.... We sailed by many Ilands, as Mounserot and an Iland called Saint Christopher, both uninhabited; about two a clocke in the afternoone wee anch.o.r.ed at the Ile of Mevis. There the Captaine landed all his men.... We incamped ourselves on this Ile six days.... The tenth day [April] we set saile and disimboged out of the West Indies and bare our course Northerly.... The six and twentieth day of Aprill, about foure a clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land of Virginia."*

* Percy's "Discourse in Purchas, His Pilgrims," vol. IV, p.

1684. Also given in Brown's "Genesis of the United States", vol. I, p. 152.

During the long months of this voyage, cramped in the three ships, these men, most of them young and of the hot-blooded, physically adventurous sort, had time to develop strong likings and dislikings. The hundred and twenty split into opposed camps. The several groups nursed all manner of jealousies. Accusations flew between like shuttlec.o.c.ks. The sealed box that they carried proved a manner of Eve's apple. All knew that seven on board were councilors and rulers, with one of the number President, but they knew not which were the seven. Smith says that this uncertainty wrought much mischief, each man of note suggesting to himself, "I shall be President-or, at least, Councilor!" The ships became cursed with a pest of factions. A prime quarrel arose between John Smith and Edward-Maria Wingfield, two whose temperaments seem to have been poles apart. There arose a "scandalous report, that Smith meant to reach Virginia only to usurp the Government, murder the Council, and proclaim himself King." The bickering deepened into forthright quarrel, with at last the expected explosion. Smith was arrested, was put in irons, and first saw Virginia as a prisoner.

On the twenty-sixth day of April, 1607, the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery entered Chesapeake Bay. They came in between two capes, and one they named Cape Henry after the then Prince of Wales, and the other Cape Charles for that brother of short-lived Henry who was to become Charles the First. By Cape Henry they anch.o.r.ed, and numbers from the ships went ash.o.r.e. "But," says George Percy's Discourse, "we could find nothing worth the speaking of, but faire meadows and goodly tall Trees, with such Fresh-waters running through the woods as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof. At night, when wee were going aboard, there came the Savages creeping upon all foure from the Hills like Beares, with their Bowes in their mouths, charged us very desperately in the faces, hurt Captaine Gabriel Archer in both his hands, and a sayler in two places of the body very dangerous. After they had spent their Arrowes and felt the sharpnesse of our shot, they retired into the Woods with a great noise, and so left us."

That very night, by the ships' lanterns, Newport, Gosnold, and Ratcliffe opened the sealed box. The names of the councilors were found to be Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Ratcliffe, Edward-Maria Wingfield, John Martin, John Smith, and George Kendall, with Gabriel Archer for recorder. From its own number, at the first convenient time, this Council was to choose its President. All this was now declared and published to all the company upon the ships. John Smith was given his freedom but was not yet allowed place in the Council. So closed an exciting day. In the morning they pressed in parties yet further into the land, but met no Indians-only came to a place where these savages had been roasting oysters. The next day saw further exploring. "We marched some three or foure miles further into the Woods where we saw great smoakes of fire. Wee marched to those smoakes and found that the Savages had beene there burning downe the gra.s.se....We pa.s.sed through excellent ground full of Flowers of divers kinds and colours, a.n.a.l as goodly trees as I have seene, as cedar, cipresse and other kindes; going a little further we came into a little plat of ground full of fine and beautifull strawberries, foure times bigger and better than ours in England. All this march we could neither see Savage nor Towne."*

* Percy's "Discourse."

The ships now stood into those waters which we call Hampton Roads. Finding a good channel and taking heart therefrom, they named a horn of land Point Comfort. Now we call it Old Point Comfort. Presently they began to go up a great river which they christened the James. To English eyes it was a river hugely wide. They went slowly, with pauses and waitings and adventures. They consulted their paper of instructions; they scanned the sh.o.r.e for good places for their fort, for their town. It was May, and all the rich banks were in bloom. It seemed a sweet-scented world of promise. They saw Indians, but had with these no untoward encounters. Upon the twelfth of May they came to a point of land which they named Archer's Hope. Landing here, they saw "many squirels, conies, Black Birds with crimson wings, and divers other Fowles and Birds of divers and sundrie colours of crimson, watchet, Yellow, Greene, Murry, and of divers other hewes naturally without any art using... store of Turkie nests and many Egges." They liked this place, but for shoal water the ships could not come near to land. So on they went, eight miles up the river.

Here, upon the north side, thirty-odd miles from the mouth, they came to a certain peninsula, an island at high water. Two or three miles long, less than a mile and a half in breadth, at its widest place composed of marsh and woodland, it ran into the river, into six fathom water, where the ships might be moored to the trees. It was this convenient deep water that determined matters. Here came to anchor the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. Here the colonists went ash.o.r.e. Here the members of the Council were sworn, and for the first President was chosen Edward-Maria Wingfield. Here, the first roaming and excitement abated, they began to unlade the ships, and to build the fort and also booths for their present sleeping. A church, too, they must have at once, and forthwith made it with a stretched sail for roof and a board between two trees whereon to rest Bible and Book of Prayer. Here, for the first time in all this wilderness, rang English axe in American forest, here was English law and an English town, here sounded English speech. Here was placed the germ of that physical, mental, and, spiritual power which is called the United States of America.

CHAPTER III. JAMESTOWN

In historians' accounts of the first months at Jamestown, too much, perhaps, has been made of faction and quarrel. All this was there. Men set down in a wilderness, amid Virginian heat, men, mostly young, of the active rather than the reflective type, men uncompanioned by women and children, men beset with dangers and sufferings that were soon to tag heavily their courage and patience-such men naturally quarreled and made up, quarreled again and again made up, darkly suspected each the other, as they darkly suspected the forest and the Indian; then, need of friendship dominating, embraced each the other, felt the fascination of the forest, and trusted the Indian. However much they suspected rebellion, treacheries, and desertions, they practiced fidelities, though to varying degrees, and there was in each man's breast more or less of courage and good intent. They were p.r.o.ne to call one another villain, but actual villainy-save as jealousy, suspicion, and hatred are villainy-seems rarely to have been present. Even one who was judged a villain and shot for his villainy seems hardly to have deserved such fate. Jamestown peninsula turned out to be feverous; fantastic hopes were matched by strange fears; there were homesickness, incompatibilities, unfamiliar food and water and air, cla.s.s differences in small s.p.a.ce, some petty tyrannies, and very certain dangers. The worst summer heat was not yet, and the fort was building. Trees must be felled, cabins raised, a field cleared for planting, fishing and hunting carried on. And some lading, some first fruits, must go back in the ships. No gold or rubies being as yet found, they would send instead cedar and sa.s.safras-hard work enough, there at Jamestown, in the Virginian low-country, with May warm as northern midsummer, and all the air charged with vapor from the heated river, with exhalations from the rank forest, from the many marshes.

"The first night of our landing, about midnight," says George Percy in his "Discourse", "there came some Savages sayling close to our quarter; presently there was an alarm given; upon that the savages ran away.... Not long after there came two Savages that seemed to be Commanders, bravely dressed, with Crownes of coloured haire upon their heads, which came as Messengers from the Werowance of Paspihe, telling us that their Werowance was comming and would be merry with us with a fat Deere. The eighteenth day the Werowance of Paspihe came himselfe to our quarter, with one hundred Savages armed which guarded him in very warlike manner with Bowes and Arrowes." Some misunderstanding arose. "The Werowance, [seeing] us take to our armes, went suddenly away with all his company in great anger." The nineteenth day Percy with several others going into the woods back of the peninsula met with a narrow path traced through the forest. Pursuing it, they came to an Indian village. "We Stayed there a while and had of them strawberries and other thinges.... One of the Savages brought us on the way to the Woodside where there was a Garden of Tobacco and other fruits and herbes; he gathered Tobacco and distributed to every one of us, so wee departed."

It is evident that neither race yet knew if it was to be war or peace. What the white man thought and came to think of the red man has been set down often enough; there is scantier testimony as to what was the red man's opinion of the white man. Here imagination must be called upon.

Newport's instructions from the London Council included exploration before he should leave the colonists and bring the three ships back to England. Now, with the pinnace and a score of men, among whom was John Smith, he went sixty miles up the river to where the flow is broken by a world of boulders and islets, to the hills crowned today by Richmond, capital of Virginia. The first adventurers called these rapid and whirling waters the Falls of the Farre West. To their notion they must lie at least half-way across the breadth of America. Misled by Indian stories, they believed and wrote that five or six days' march from the Falls of the Farre West, even through the thick forest, would bring them to the South Sea. The Falls of the Farre West, where at Richmond the James goes with a roaring sound around tree-crowned islet-it is strange to think that they once marked our frontier! How that frontier has been pushed westward is a romance indeed. And still, today, it is but a five or six days' journey to that South Sea sought by those early Virginians. The only condition for us is that we shall board a train. Tomorrow, with the airship, the South Sea may come nearer yet!

The Indians of this part of the earth were of the great Algonquin family, and the tribes with which the colonists had now to do were drawn, probably by a polity based on blood ties, into a loose confederation within the larger ma.s.s. Newport was "told that the name of the river was Powhatan, the name of the chief Powhatan, and the name of the people Powhatans." But it seemed that the chief Powhatan was not at this village but at another and a larger place named Werowocomoco, on a second great river in the back country to the north and east of Jamestown. Newport and his men were "well entreated" by the Indians. "But yet," says Percy, "the Savages murmured at our planting in the Countrie."

The party did not tarry up the river. Back came their boat through the bright weather, between the verdurous banks, all green and flower-tinted save where might be seen the brown of Indian clearings with bark-covered huts and thin, up-curling blue smoke. Before them once more rose Jamestown, palisaded now, and riding before it the three ships. And here there barked an English dog, and here were Englishmen to welcome Englishmen. Both parties had news to tell, but the town had most. On the 26th of May, Indians had made an attack four hundred of them with the Werowance of Paspihe. One Englishman had been killed, a number wounded. Four of the Council had each man his wound.

Newport must now lift anchor and sail away to England. He left at Jamestown a fort "having three Bulwarkes at every corner like a halfe Moone, and foure or five pieces of Artillerie mounted in them," a street or two of reed-thatched cabins, a church to match, a storehouse, a market-place and drill ground, and about all a stout palisade with a gate upon the river side. He left corn sown and springing high, and some food in the storehouse. And he left a hundred Englishmen who had now tasted of the country fare and might reasonably fear no worse chance than had yet befallen. Newport promised to return in twenty weeks with full supplies.

John Smith says that his enemies, chief amongst whom was Wingfield, would have sent him with Newport to England, there to stand trial for attempted mutiny, whereupon he demanded a trial in Virginia, and got it and was fully cleared. He now takes his place in the Council, beforetime denied him. He has good words only for Robert Hunt, the chaplain, who, he says, went from one to the other with the best of counsel. Were they not all here in the wilderness together, with the savages hovering about them like the Philistines about the Jews of old? How should the English live, unless among themselves they lived in amity? So for the moment factions were reconciled, and all went to church to partake of the Holy Communion.

Newport sailed, having in the holds of his ships sa.s.safras and valuable woods but no gold to meet the London Council's hopes, nor any certain news of the South Sea. In due time he reached England, and in due time he turned and came again to Virginia. But long was the sailing to and fro between the daughter country and the mother country and the lading and unlading at either sh.o.r.e. It was seven months before Newport came again.

While he sails, and while England-in-America watches for him longingly, look for a moment at the att.i.tude of Spain, falling old in the procession of world-powers, but yet with grip and cunning left. Spain misliked that English New World venture. She wished to keep these seas for her own; only, with waning energies, she could not always enforce what she conceived to be her right. By now there was seen to be much clay indeed in the image. Philip the Second was dead; and Philip the Third, an indolent king, lived in the Escurial.

Pedro de Zuniga is the Spanish Amba.s.sador to the English Court. He has orders from Philip to keep him informed, and this he does, and from time to time suggests remedies. He writes of Newport and the First Supply. "Sire.... Captain Newport makes haste to return with some people-and there have combined merchants and other persons who desire to establish themselves there; because it appears to them the most suitable place that they have discovered for privateering and making attacks upon the merchant fleets of Your Majesty. Your Majesty will command to see whether they will be allowed to remain there.... They are in a great state of excitement about that place, and very much afraid lest Your Majesty should drive them out of it.... And there are so many... who speak already of sending people to that country, that it is advisable not to be too slow; because they will soon be found there with large numbers of people."* In Spain the Council of State takes action upon Zuniga's communications and closes a report to the King with these words: "The actual taking possession will be to drive out of Virginia all who are there now, before they are reenforced, and.... it will be well to issue orders that the small fleet stationed to the windward, which for so many years has been in state of preparation, should be instantly made ready and forthwith proceed to drive out all who are now in Virginia, since their small numbers will make this an easy task, and this will suffice to prevent them from again coming to that place." Upon this is made a Royal note: "Let such measures be taken in this business as may now and hereafter appear proper."

* Brown's "Genesis of the United States", vol. 1, pp. 116-118.

It would seem that there was cause indeed for watching down the river by that small, small town that was all of the United States! But there follows a Spanish memorandum. "The driving out... by the fleet stationed to the windward will be postponed for a long time because delay will be caused by getting it ready."* Delay followed delay, and old Spain-conquistador Spain-grew older, and the speech on Jamestown Island is still English.

* Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 127.

Christopher Newport was gone; no ships-the last refuges, the last possibilities for home-turning, should the earth grow too hard and the sky too black-rode upon the river before the fort. Here was the summer heat. A heavy breath rose from immemorial marshes, from the ancient floor of the forest. When clouds gathered and storms burst, they amazed the heart with their fearful thunderings and lightnings. The colonists had no well, but drank from the river, and at neither high nor low tide found the water wholesome. While the ships were here they had help of ship stores, but now they must subsist upon the grain that they had in the storehouse, now scant and poor enough. They might fish and hunt, but against such resources stood fever and inexperience and weakness, and in the woods the lurking savages. The heat grew greater, the water worse, the food less. Sickness began. Work became toil. Men pined from homesickness, then, coming together, quarreled with a weak violence, then dropped away again into corners and sat listlessly with hanging heads.

"The sixth of August there died John Asbie of the bloodie Flixe. The ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling. The tenth day died William Bruster gentleman, of a wound given by the Savages.... The fourteenth day Jerome Alik.o.c.k, Ancient, died of a wound, the same day Francis Mid-winter, Edward Moris, Corporall, died suddenly. The fifteenth day their died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthrope. The sixteenth day their died Thomas Gower gentleman. The seventeenth day their died Thomas Mounslie. The eighteenth day theer died Robert Pennington and John Martine gentlemen. The nineteenth day died Drue Piggase gentleman.

"The two and twentieth day of August there died Captain Bartholomew Gosnold one of our Councell, he was honourably buried having all the Ordnance in the Fort shot off, with many vollies of small shot....

"The foure and twentieth day died Edward Harrington and George Walker and were buried the same day. The six and twentieth day died Kenelme Throgmortine. The seven and twentieth day died William Roods. The eight and twentieth day died Thomas Stoodie, Cape Merchant. The fourth day of September died Thomas Jacob, Sergeant. The fifth day there died Benjamin Beast...."*

* Percy's "Discourse."

Extreme misery makes men blind, unjust, and weak of judgment. Here was gross wretchedness, and the colonists proceeded to blame A and B and C, lost all together in the wilderness. It was this councilor or that councilor, this ambitious one or that one, this or that almost certainly ascertained traitor! Wanting to steal the pinnace, the one craft left by Newport, wanting to steal away in the pinnace and leave the ma.s.s-small enough ma.s.s now!-without boat or raft or straw to cling to, made the favorite accusation. Upon this count, early in September, Wingfield was deposed from the presidency. Ratcliffe succeeded him, but presently Ratcliffe fared no better. One councilor fared worse, for George Kendall, accused of plotting mutiny and pinnace stealing, was given trial, found guilty, and shot.

"The eighteenth day [of September] died one Ellis Kinistone.... The same day at night died one Richard Simmons. The nineteenth day there died one Thomas Mouton...."

What went on, in Virginia, in the Indian mind, can only be conjectured. As little as the white mind could it foresee the trend of events or the ultimate outcome of present policy. There was exhibited a see-saw policy, or perhaps no policy at all, only the emotional fit as it came hot or cold. The friendly act trod upon the hostile, the hostile upon the friendly. Through the miserable summer the hostile was uppermost; then with the autumn appeared the friendly mood, fortunate enough for "the most feeble wretches" at Jamestown. Indians came laden with maize and venison. The heat was a thing of the past; cool and bracing weather appeared; and with it great flocks of wild fowl, "swans, geese, ducks and cranes." Famine vanished, sickness decreased. The dead were dead. Of the hundred and four persons left by Newport less than fifty had survived. But these may be thought of as indeed seasoned.

CHAPTER IV. JOHN SMITH

With the cool weather began active exploration, the object in chief the gathering from the Indians, by persuasion or trade or show of force, food for the approaching winter. Here John Smith steps forward as leader.

There begins a string of adventures of that hardy and romantic individual. How much in Smith's extant narrations is exaggeration, how much is dispossession of others' merits in favor of his own, it is difficult now to say.* A thing that one little likes is his persistent depreciation of his fellows. There is but one n.o.ble Adventurer, and that one is John Smith. On the other hand evident enough are his courage and initiative, his ingenuity, and his rough, practical sagacity. Let us take him at something less than his own valuation, but yet as valuable enough. As for his adventures, real or fict.i.tious, one may see in them epitomized the adventures of many and many men, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, blazers of the material path for the present civilization.

* Those who would strike John Smith from the list of historians will commend the author's caution to the reader before she lets the Captain tell his own tale. Whatever Smith may not have been, he was certainly a consummate raconteur. He belongs with the renowned story-tellers of the world, if not with the veracious chroniclers.-Editor.

In December, rather autumn than winter in this region, he starts with the shallop and a handful of men up a tributary river that they have learned to call the Chickahominy. He is going for corn, but there is also an idea that he may hear news of that wished-for South Sea.

The Chickahominy proved itself a wonderland of swamp and tree-choked streams. Somewhere up its chequered reaches Smith left the shallop with men to guard it, and, taking two of the party with two Indian guides, went on in a canoe up a narrower way. Presently those left with the boat incautiously go ash.o.r.e and are attacked by Indians. One is taken, tortured, and slain. The others get back to their boat and so away, down the Chickahominy and into the now somewhat familiar James. But Smith with his two men, Robinson and Emry, are now alone in the wilderness, up among narrow waters, brown marshes, fallen and obstructing tree trunks. Now come the men-hunting Indians-the King of Pamaunck, says Smith, with two hundred bowmen. Robinson and Emry are shot full of arrows. Smith is wounded, but with his musket deters the foe, killing several of the savages. His eyes upon them, he steps backward, hoping he may beat them off till he shall recover the shallop, but meets with the ill chance of a boggy and icy stream into which he stumbles, and here is taken.

See him now before "Opechancanough, King of Pamaunck!" Savages and procedures of the more civilized with savages have, the world over, a family resemblance. Like many a man before him and after, Smith casts about for a propitiatory wonder. He has with him, so fortunately, "a round ivory double-compa.s.s dial." This, with a genial manner, he would present to Opechancanough. The savages gaze, cannot touch through the gla.s.s the moving needle, grunt their admiration. Smith proceeds, with gestures and what Indian words he knows, to deliver a scientific lecture. Talking is best anyhow, will give them less time in which to think of those men he shot. He tells them that the world is round, and discourses about the sun and moon and stars and the alternation of day and night. He speaks with eloquence of the nations of the earth, of white men, yellow men, black men, and red men, of his own country and its grandeurs, and would explain antipodes.

Apparently all is waste breath and of no avail, for in an hour see him bound to a tree, a st.u.r.dy figure of a man, bearded and moustached, with a high forehead, clad in shirt and jerkin and breeches and hosen and shoon, all by this time, we may be sure, profoundly in need of repair. The tree and Smith are ringed by Indians, each of whom has an arrow fitted to his bow. Almost one can hear a knell ringing in the forest! But Opechancanough, moved by the compa.s.s, or willing to hear more of seventeenth-century science, raises his arm and stops the execution. Unbinding Smith, they take him with them as a trophy. Presently all reach their town of Orapaks.

Here he was kindly treated. He saw Indian dances, heard Indian orations. The women and children pressed about him and admired him greatly. Bread and venison were given him in such quant.i.ty that he feared that they meant to fatten and eat him. It is, moreover, dangerous to be considered powerful where one is scarcely so. A young Indian lay mortally ill, and they took Smith to him and demanded that forthwith he be cured. If the white man could kill-how they were not able to see-he could likewise doubtless restore life. But the Indian presently died. His father, crying out in fury, fell upon the stranger who could have done so much and would not! Here also coolness saved the white man.

Smith was now led in triumph from town to town through the winter woods. The James was behind him, the Chickahominy also; he was upon new great rivers, the Pamunkey and the Rappahannock. All the villages were much alike, alike the still woods, the sere patches from which the corn had been taken, the bear, the deer, the foxes, the turkeys that were met with, the countless wild fowl. Everywhere were the same curious, crowding savages, the fires, the rustic cookery, the covering skins of deer and fox and otter, the oratory, the ceremonial dances, the manipulations of medicine men or priests-these last, to the Englishmen, pure "devils with antique tricks." Days were consumed in this going from place to place. At one point was produced a bag of gunpowder, gained in some way from Jamestown. It was being kept with care to go into the earth in the spring and produce, when summer came, some wonderful crop.

Opechancanough was a great chief, but higher than he moved Powhatan, chief of chiefs. This Indian was yet a stranger to the English in Virginia. Now John Smith was to make his acquaintance.