[Illustrations]
"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall."—Page 266"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall."—Page 266
"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall."—Page 266"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall."—Page 266
The evening meal was less formal. When all were gathered about the fire, the Grand Master presented the collar and staff of office to his successor, and drank his health in a cup of wine.
The winter was unusually mild; until January they needed nothing warmer than their doublets. On the fourteenth, a Sunday, they went boating on the river, and came home singing the gay songs of France. A little later they went to visit the wheat fields two leagues from the fort, and dined merrily out of doors. When the snow melted they saw the little bright blades of the autumn sowing already coming up from the rich black soil. Winter was over, and work began in good heart. Poutrincourt was not above gathering turpentine from the pines and making tar, after a process invented by himself. Then late in spring a ship came into harbor with news which ended everything. The fur-traders of Normandy, Brittany and the Vizcayan ports had succeeded in having the privilege of De Monts withdrawn. Hardly more than a year after his arrival Lescarbot left his beloved gardens, and in October all the colonists were once more in France. Membertou and his Indians bewailed their departure, and held them in long remembrance. Wilderness houses soon go back to their beginnings, and it was not long before all that was left of the brave and gayFrench colony was a little clearing where the herb of immortality, the tansy of Saint Athanase, lifted its golden buttons and thick dark green foliage above the remnant of the garden of Helêne.
Yet the experience of that year was not lost. It was the first instance of a company of settlers in that northern climate passing the winter without illness, discord or trouble with the Indians. Later, in the little new settlements of Quebec and Montreal, some of the colonists met again under the wise and kindly rule of Champlain. Little Helêne lived to bring her own roses to a garden in New France, and teach Indian girls the secrets which old Jacqueline taught her. And it is recorded in the history of the voyageurs, priests and adventurers of France in the New World that wherever they went they were apt to take with them seeds and plants of wholesome garden produce, which they planted along their route in the hope that they might thus be of service to those who came after them.
[Contents]
Amsterdam's the cradle where the race was rocked—All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked.Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet,Played the children by canals, up and down the street.Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,—Little Nick of Leyden sailed his wooden shoe."Quarter-deck and cabin—rig her fore-and-aft,"—Thus he murmured wisely as he launched his craft."Cutlass, pike and musquetoun, howitzer and shot—But our knives and mirrors and beads are worth the lot."Room enough for cargo to last a year or two,In the round amidships of a wooden shoe!Bobbing on the waters of the Nieuwe VleiSee the bantam galleot, short and broad and high.Laden for the Indies, trading all the way,Frank and shrewd and cautious, fiery in a fray,—Sagamore and mandarin are all the same to you,Little Nick of Leyden with your wooden shoe!
Amsterdam's the cradle where the race was rocked—All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked.Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet,Played the children by canals, up and down the street.Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,—Little Nick of Leyden sailed his wooden shoe.
"Quarter-deck and cabin—rig her fore-and-aft,"—Thus he murmured wisely as he launched his craft."Cutlass, pike and musquetoun, howitzer and shot—But our knives and mirrors and beads are worth the lot."Room enough for cargo to last a year or two,In the round amidships of a wooden shoe!
Bobbing on the waters of the Nieuwe VleiSee the bantam galleot, short and broad and high.Laden for the Indies, trading all the way,Frank and shrewd and cautious, fiery in a fray,—Sagamore and mandarin are all the same to you,Little Nick of Leyden with your wooden shoe!
[Contents]
All along the coast of Britain, from John o' Groat's to Beachey Head, from Saint Michael's Mount to Cape Wrath, twinkled the bonfires on the headlands. Henry Hudson, returning from a voyage among icebergs, guessed at once what this chain of lights meant. The son of Mary Queen of Scots had been crowned in London.[1]
Hudson's keen eyes were unusually grave and thoughtful as theMuscovy Ducksailed up to London Pool on the incoming tide. The sailors looked even more sober, for most of them were English Protestants, with a few Flemings, and John Williams the pilot was an Anabaptist. It was he who asked the question of which all were thinking.
"Master Hudson, d'ye think the new King will light them other fires—the ones at Smithfield?"
Hudson shook his head. "That's a thing no man can say for certain, John. But there's the Low Countries and the Americas to run to. 'T is not as it was in Queen Mary's day."
"Aye, but Spain has got all of America, pretty near, and the French are nabbing the rest," said the pilot doubtfully.
"Nay, that's a bigger place than you guess, over yonder. Ever see the map that Doctor Dee made for Queen Bess near thirty years ago? I remember himshowing it to my grandsire with the ink scarce dry on it. The country Ralegh's people saw has got room for the whole of France and England, and plenty timber and corn-land. Sir Walter he knew that."
There was plague in London when they landed, and all sought their families in fear and trembling, not knowing what might have come and gone in their absence. Hudson's house was at Mortlake on the Thames above London, and there he was rejoiced to find all well. Young John Hudson was brimful of Mr. Brereton's new Relacion of the Voyage of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and Captain Bartholomew Gilbert to the North part of Virginia by permission of the honorable Knight Sir Walter Ralegh. Strawberries bigger than those of England, and cherries in clusters like grapes, blackbirds with carnation-colored wings, Indians who painted their eyebrows white and made faces over mustard, were mixed higgledy-piggledy in his bubbling talk. Hudson, turning the pages of the new book, saw at once that on this voyage around Cape Cod the little shipConcordhad sailed seas unknown to him.
"Why won't the Company send you to the Americas, Dad?" the boy asked eagerly. "When will I be old enough to go to sea?"
"Wait till ye're fourteen at least, Jack," his father answered. "There's much to learn before ye're a master mariner."
In the next few years things were not so well with English mariners as they had been. Cecil and Howard, picking a quarrel with Ralegh, had him shut up in the Tower. The Dutch were trading everywhere, seizing the chances King James missed. But Hudson was in the employ of the Muscovy Company like hisfather and grandfather, and the Russian fur trade was making that Company rich.
Captain John Smith, a shrewd-faced soldier with merry eyes, appeared at the house one day and told entertaining stories of his campaigns under Prince Sigismund of Bohemia. He and the boy John drove the neighbors nearly distracted with curiosity, one winter evening, signalling with torches from the house to the river.[2]To anxious souls who surmised a new Guy Fawkes conspiracy Captain Smith showed how he had once conveyed a message to the garrison of a beleaguered city in this way. Here was the code. The first half of the alphabet was represented by single lights, the second half by pairs. To secure attention three torches were shown at equal distances from one another, until a single light flashed in response to show that the signal was understood. For any letter from A to L a single light was shown and hidden one or more times according to the number of the letter from the beginning; thus, three flashes meant C; four meant D, and so on. For a letter between M and Z the same plan was followed using two torches. The end of a word was signified by three lights. In this way Smith had spelled out the message, "On Thursday night I will charge on the east; at the alarum, sally you." He had, however, translated it into Latin, to make it short.
John Hudson found new interest in Latin.
When Captain Smith began to talk of joining a new colony to go to Virginia the boy begged hard to be allowed to go. But just at this time the Muscovy Company was sending Henry Hudson to look for a way round through northern seas to the Spice Islands. The Dutch were already trading in the Portuguese Indies. If England could reach them by a shorter route, itwould be a very pleasant discovery for the Muscovy Company.
Even in 1607 geographers believed in an open polar sea north of Asia. Hudson tried the Greenland route. Sailing east of Greenland he found himself between that country and the islands named "Nieuwland" by William Barents the Dutch navigator in 1596. Their pointed icy mountains seemed to push up through the sea. Icebergs crowded the waters like miniature peaks of a submerged range. Hudson returned to report to the company "no open sea."
In 1608 he was again sent out on the same errand. This time he steered further east, between those islands and another group named by Barents Nova Zembla. He sailed nearer to the pole than any man had been before him, and found whales bigger, finer and more numerous than anywhere else. Rounding the North Cape on his way home he made the first recorded observation of a sun-spot. In August, when he returned and made his report, there was a sensation in the seafaring world.
The Dutch promptly sent whaling ships into the arctic seas, and suggested, through Van Meteren the Dutch consul in London, a friend of Hudson, that the English navigator should come to Amsterdam and talk of entering their service. While there, he received an offer from the French Ambassador, suggesting that his services would be welcome to a proposed French East India Company. Hearing this, the Dutch hastened to secure him, and on April 4, 1609, he sailed from Amsterdam in a yacht of eighty tons called theHalf Moonand shaped rather like one, manned by a crew of twenty, half English and half Netherlanders, and John as cabin-boy.
John was in such a state of bliss as a boy can know when sailing on the venture of his dreams. His father had told him in confidence that as his sailing orders were almost the same as the year before, he did not expect to find the northern route to India in that direction. Failing this theHalf Moonwould look for it in the western seas. Of this plan he had said nothing in Holland.
He found, as he had expected, that the arctic waters were choked with ice, and turning southward he headed for the Faroe Isles. While in Holland he had had a letter from Captain John Smith, who had explored the regions about Chesapeake Bay. No straits leading to the western ocean had been discovered there, and no Sea of Verrazzano. Captain Smith's opinion was that if such a passage existed it would be somewhere about the fortieth parallel. Explorations had already been made farther north. Davis Strait had been discovered some years before by John Davis, now dead. Martin Frobisher had found another strait leading northwest. Both of these were so far north that they were likely to be ice-bound by the time the littleHalf Mooncould reach them. Hudson meant to look along the coast further south, and see what could be found there.
TheHalf Moontook in water at the Faroes and anchored some seven weeks later, on July 18, in Penobscot Bay. Her foremast was gone and her sails ripped and rent by the gales of the North Atlantic, and the carpenter with a selected crew rowed ashore and chose a pine tree for a new mast. While this was a-making and the sails were patched up, the crew not otherwise engaged went fishing.
"I say," presently observed John Hudson, who knew Brereton's Relacion by heart, "this must ha' beenthe place where they caught so many fish that they were 'pestered with Cod' and threw numbers of 'em overboard. This makes twenty-seven, Dad, so far."
During that week they caught fifty cod, a hundred lobsters and a halibut which John declared to be half as big as the ship. Two French boats appeared, full of Indians ready to trade beaver skins for red cloth. The strawberry season was past, but John found wild cherries, small, deep red, in heavy bunches. When he tried to eat them, however, they were so sour that he nearly choked. Cautiously he tasted the big blue whortleberries that grew on high bushes; near water, and found them delicious. He had been eating them by the handful for some time when he became aware that there was a feaster on the other side of the thicket. Receiving no reply to his challenge he went to investigate and saw a brown bear standing on his hind legs and raking the berries off the twigs with both forepaws, into his mouth. At sight of John he dropped on all fours and cantered off.
Leaving the bay they cruised along the coast past Cape Cod, and then steered southwest for the fortieth parallel. Wind and rain came on in the middle of August, and they were blown toward an inlet which Hudson decided to be the James. Not knowing how the English governor of Jamestown might regard an intrusion by a Dutch ship, he turned north again, and on the twenty-eighth of August entered a large bay and took soundings. More than once theHalf Moon, light as she rode, grounded on sand-banks, and Hudson shook his head in rueful doubt.
"D' you think the straits are here, Dad?" asked John when he had a chance to speak with his father alone.
"Hardly. This is fresh water. It's the mouth of a river."[3]
"Yes, but might there be an isthmus—or the like?"
"A big river with as strong a current as this would not rise on a narrow, level strip of land, son. It's bringing down tons of sand to make these banks we run into. There's a great wide country inland there."
The chanteys of the sailors were heard at daybreak in the lonely sea, as theHalf Moonwent on her way northward. On September 3 the little ship edged into another and bigger bay to the north. Whether it was a bay or a lake Hudson was at first rather doubtful. The shores were inhabited, for little plumes of smoke arose everywhere, and soon from all sides log canoes came paddling toward the ship. These Indians were evidently not unused to trading, for they brought green tobacco, hemp, corn and furs to sell, and some of them knew a few words of French. By this, and by signs, they gave Hudson to understand that three rivers, or inlets, came into this island-encircled sea, the largest being toward the north. Hudson determined to follow this north river and see where it led.
As he sailed cautiously into the channel, taking soundings and observing the shores, he was puzzled. The tide rose and fell as if this were an inlet of the sea, and it was far deeper than an ordinary river. In fact it was more like a Norwegian fiord.[4]It might possibly lead to a lake, and this lake might have an outlet to the western ocean. That it was a strait he did not believe. Even in the English Channel the meeting tides of the North Sea and the Atlantic made rough water, and theHalf Moonwas drifting as easily as if she were slipping down stream. In any event, nothing else had been found, either north or south of this point, which couldpossibly be a strait, and Hudson meant to discover exactly what this was before he set sail for Amsterdam.
They passed an Indian village in the woods to the right, and according to the Indians who had come on board the place was called Sapokanican,[5]and was famous for the making of wampum or shell beads. A brook of clear sweet water flowed close by. Presently Hudson anchored and sent five men ashore in a boat to explore the right-hand bank of the channel. Night came on, and it began to rain, but the boat had not returned. Hudson slept but little. In the morning the missing men appeared with a tale of disaster. After about two leagues' travel they had come to a bay full of islands. Here they had been attacked by two canoes carrying twenty-six Indians, and their arrows had killed John Colman and wounded two other men. It grew so dark when the rain began that they dared not seek the ship, and the current was so strong that their grapnel would not hold, so that they had had to row all night.
Sailing only in the day time and anchoring at night the little Dutch ship went on to the north, looking between the steep rocky banks like a boat carved out of a walnut-shell, in the wooden jaws of a nutcracker. After dark, fires twinkled upon the heights, and the lapping waters about the quiet keel were all shining with broken stars. The flame appeared and vanished like a signal, and John Hudson wondered if the Indians knew John Smith's trick of sending a message as far as a beacon light could be seen.
One night he climbed up on the poop with the ship's great lantern and tried the flashing signals he remembered. Before many minutes two of the wild men had drawn near to watch, and although John could not makeout the meaning of the light that came and went upon the cliffs, it was quite clear that they could. One of them waved his mantle in front of the lantern, and turning to the boy nodded and grinned good-naturedly. The signal fires must have talked to some purpose, for the next day a delegation paddled out from the shore to invite the great captain, his son and his chief officers to a feast.
When the party arrived at the house of the chief, which was a round building, or pavilion, of saplings sheathed with oak bark, mats were spread for them to sit upon, and food was served in polished red wooden bowls. Two hunters were sent out to bring in game, and returned almost at once with pigeons which were immediately dressed and cooked by the women. One of the hunters gave John one of the arrowheads used for shooting small birds; it was no bigger than his least fingernail and made of a red stone like jasper. A fat dog had also been killed, skinned and dressed with shell knives, and served as the dish of honor. Hudson hastily explained in English to his companions that whether they relished dog or not, it would never do to refuse it, as this was a special dish for great occasions.
"Dad," said John that night, "do you think any ship with white men ever came up here before?"
"No," said Hudson.
"I hope they'll call this the Hudson."
The water was now hardly more than seven feet deep, and the tide rose only a few inches. Hudson came reluctantly to the conclusion that there was no proceeding further in a ship. He sent a boatload of men several leagues up-stream, but they came back with the report that the river was much the same so far as they had gone.
During the voyage they had often seen parties of the savages, usually friendly but sometimes hostile. Flights of arrows occasionally were aimed at theHalf Moon, and the crew replied with musket-shots which sometimes but not always hit the mark. The painted warriors had a way of disappearing into the woods like elves. Once, in spite of all endeavors to shake him off, a solitary Indian in a small canoe followed along under the stern till he saw the chance of climbing up the rudder to the cabin window. He stole the pillow off the commander's bed, two shirts, and two bandoliers (ammunition-belts), the tinkle of which betrayed him. The mate saw him making off with his plunder and shot him, whereupon the other Indians paddled off at top speed, some even leaping from their canoes to swim ashore. A boat put out and recovered the stolen property, and when a swimming Indian caught the side of it to overturn it the cook valiantly beat him off with a sword. These with many other adventures were duly written down by Robert Juet the mate.
To John Hudson the voyage was a journey of enchantment. Nothing he had ever seen was in the least like the glory of the autumn forests, mantling the mountains in scarlet, gold, malachite, russet, orange and purple. He had been in the gardens at Lambeth where Tradescant the famous gardener ruled, but there was more color in a single vivid maple standing blood-red in a bit of lowland than in all his Lancaster roses. And the great river had its flowers as well. A tall plant like an elfin elm covered with thick-set tiny blossoms yellow as broom, grew wild over the pastures, and interspersed with this fairy forest were thickets of deep lavender daisies with golden centers. In lowlandglades were tall spikes of cardinal blossoms, and clusters of deep blue flowers like buds that never opened. Vines loaded with bunches of scarlet and orange berries like waxwork, and others bearing fluffy bunches of silky gray down curly as an old man's beard, climbed the trees that overhung the stream. The mountains in the upper river came right down to the water like the glacis of a giant fort, and fitful winds pounced upon theHalf Moonand rocked her like a cradle. Once there was a late thunder-shower, and the noise of the thunder among the humped ranges was for all the world like balls rolling in a great game of bowls played by goblins of the mountains.
On the fourth of October, theHalf Moonleft the island which the Indians called Manahatta, passed through the Narrows and sailed for Europe. Looking back at those green shores with their bronze feather-crowned people watching to see the flight of their strange guest, John Hudson felt that when he was a man, he would like nothing better than to have an estate on the shores of the noble river, which no white boy had ever before set eyes on. Where a great terrace rose, some fifty miles above Manahatta, walled around by mountains and almost two hundred feet above the river, there should be a fort, of which Captain John Smith should be the commander; and in the broadening of the river below to form an inland sea, his father's squadron should ride, while the Indians of all the upper reaches of the river should come to pay tribute and bring wampum, furs and tobacco in exchange for trinkets. And on the island at the mouth of the river there would be a great city, greater than Antwerp, to which all the ships of the world should come as they came now to Antwerp and to London.So dreaming, John Hudson saw the shores of this new world vanish in the blue line, where earth and sky are one.
[1]The kindling of bonfires and beacon lights on the accession of a sovereign or any other occasion of national rejoicing is a very old custom in Britain and is still kept up. At the time of Queen Victoria's jubilee trees were planted closely to form a great V on the side of the Downs, and when the fires were lighted on Ditchling Beacon and other heights the letter stood out black against the close turf of the hillside.[2]The account of Smith's campaigns and signalling code is given in his autobiography.[3]The Delaware.[4]Some authorities consider the Hudson River to be actually a fiord or fjord and not a true river.[5]Greenwich Village.
[1]The kindling of bonfires and beacon lights on the accession of a sovereign or any other occasion of national rejoicing is a very old custom in Britain and is still kept up. At the time of Queen Victoria's jubilee trees were planted closely to form a great V on the side of the Downs, and when the fires were lighted on Ditchling Beacon and other heights the letter stood out black against the close turf of the hillside.
[1]The kindling of bonfires and beacon lights on the accession of a sovereign or any other occasion of national rejoicing is a very old custom in Britain and is still kept up. At the time of Queen Victoria's jubilee trees were planted closely to form a great V on the side of the Downs, and when the fires were lighted on Ditchling Beacon and other heights the letter stood out black against the close turf of the hillside.
[2]The account of Smith's campaigns and signalling code is given in his autobiography.
[2]The account of Smith's campaigns and signalling code is given in his autobiography.
[3]The Delaware.
[3]The Delaware.
[4]Some authorities consider the Hudson River to be actually a fiord or fjord and not a true river.
[4]Some authorities consider the Hudson River to be actually a fiord or fjord and not a true river.
[5]Greenwich Village.
[5]Greenwich Village.
[Contents]
The Tailor sat with his goose on the table—(Table of Laws it was, he said)Fashioning uniforms dyed in sable,Picked out with gold and sanguine red."This," he said as he snipped and drafted,"Sublimely foreshadowing cosmic FateWith world-dominion august, resplendent,Will wear, as nothing can wear but Hate!"Chimerical dreams of souls romanticAre out of date as an old wife's rune.Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic—"When in at the door came a lilting tune!"Here to-day and gone to-morrow—All in the luck of the road!Didn't come to stay forever,But we'll take our share of the load!"Highlanders, Irish, Danes, Egyptians,Norman or Slav the dialects ran;Something more than a board-school shaped them—Drill and discipline never made man!Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda,Moscow, Assaye, Khartoum or Glencoe,—Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires.England has only her world to show!They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire,Guarding their land in the old-time way,And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,—"The foe of the past is a friend to-day.""It's a long, long road to the Empire(From Beersheba even to Dan)And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,—And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!"
The Tailor sat with his goose on the table—(Table of Laws it was, he said)Fashioning uniforms dyed in sable,Picked out with gold and sanguine red.
"This," he said as he snipped and drafted,"Sublimely foreshadowing cosmic FateWith world-dominion august, resplendent,Will wear, as nothing can wear but Hate!
"Chimerical dreams of souls romanticAre out of date as an old wife's rune.Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic—"When in at the door came a lilting tune!
"Here to-day and gone to-morrow—All in the luck of the road!Didn't come to stay forever,But we'll take our share of the load!"
Highlanders, Irish, Danes, Egyptians,Norman or Slav the dialects ran;Something more than a board-school shaped them—Drill and discipline never made man!
Once they knew Crecy, Hastings, Drogheda,Moscow, Assaye, Khartoum or Glencoe,—Now the old hatreds are tinder for campfires.England has only her world to show!
They are not dreamers, these men of the Empire,Guarding their land in the old-time way,And this is the style that prevails in the Legions,—"The foe of the past is a friend to-day."
"It's a long, long road to the Empire(From Beersheba even to Dan)And the time is rather late for a chronic Hymn of Hate,—And we know the tailor doesn't make the man!"
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Barefoot and touzle-headed, in the coarse russet and blue homespun of an apprentice, a small boy sidled through the wood. Like a hunted hedgehog, he was ready to run or fight. Where a bright brook slid into the meadows, he stopped, and looked through new leaves at the infinite blue of the sky. Words his grandfather used to read to him came back to his mind.
"Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountain."
The Bible which old Joseph Bradford had left to his grandson had been taken away, but no one could take away the memory of it. If he had dared, Will would have shouted aloud then and there. For all his hunger and weariness and dread of the future the strength of the land entered into his young soul. He drank of the clear brook, and let it wash away the soil of his pilgrimage. Then he curled himself in a hollow full of dry leaves, and went to sleep.
When he woke, it was in the edge of the evening. Long shadows pointed like lances among the trees. A horse was cropping the grass in a clearing, and some one beyond the thicket was reading aloud. For an instant he thought himself dreaming of the old cottage at Austerfield—but the voice was young and lightsome.
"Where a man can live at all, there can he live nobly."
The reader stopped and laughed out. A lively snarling came from a burrow not far away, where two badgers were quarrelling conscientiously.
"Just like folks ye be, a-hectorin' and a-fussin'. What's the great question to settle now—predestination or infant baptism?—Why, where under the canopy did you come from, you pint o' cider?"
"I be a-travelin'," Will said stoutly.
"Runaway 'prentice, I should guess. I was one myself at fifteen."
"I'm 'leven, goin' on twelve," said the boy, standing as straight as he could.
"Any folks?"
"I lived with granddad until he died, four year back."
"And so you're wayfarin', be you? What can you do to get your bread?"
The urchin dug a bare toe into the sod. "I can work," he said half-defiantly. "Granddad always said I should be put to school some day, but my uncle won't have that. I can read."
"Latin?"
"No—English. Granddad weren't college-bred."
"Nor I—they gave me more lickings than Latin at the grammar school down to Alvord, 'cause I would go bird's-nesting and fishing sooner than study myhic,haec,hoc. And now I've built me a booth like a wild man o' Virginia and come out here to get my Latin that I should ha' mastered at thirteen. All the travel-books are in Latin, and you have to know it to get on in foreign parts."
"Have you been in foreign parts?"
"Four year—France and Scotland and the Low Countries. But I got enough o' seeing Christians kill one another, and says I to myself, John Smith, you go see what they're about at home. And here I found our fen-sludgers all by the ears over Bishops and Papists and Brownists and such like. In Holland they let a man read's Bible in peace."
"Is that the Bible you got there?"
"Nay—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus—a mighty wise old chap, if he was an Emperor. And I've got Niccolo Macchiavelli's seven books o' the Art o' War. When I'm weary of one I take to t' other, and between times I ride a tilt." He waved his hand toward a ring fastened on a tree, and a lance and horse-furniture leaning against the trunk.
"Our folks be Separatists," the boy said.
"Well, and what of it?" laughed the young man. "As I was a-reading here—a man is what his thoughts make him. Be he Catholic or Church Protestant or Baptist, he's what he's o' mind to be, good or bad. Other folk's say-so don't stop him—no more than them badgers' worryin' dams the brook."
This was a new idea to Will. His hunger for books was so keen that it had seemed to him that without them, he would be stupid as the swine. John Smith seemed to understand it, for he added,
"You bide here with me awhile, lad. Maybe there's a way for you to get learning, yet."
Will shared the leafy booth and simple fare of his new friend for a fortnight, doing errands, rubbing down the black horse, Tamlane, and at odd times learning his conjugations. When John Smith left his hermitage and went to fight against the Turks in Transylvania, he placed a little sum of money with a Puritanscholar at Scrooby to pay for the boy's schooling for a year or two. The yeoman uncle had a family of his own to provide for, and was glad to have Will off his hands.
Transylvania in 1600 was on the very frontier of Christendom. John Smith needed all the philosophy he had learned from his favorite author when, after many adventures, he was taken prisoner and sent to the slave-market of Axopolis to be sold. Bogal, a Turkish pacha, bought the young Englishman to send as a gift to his future wife, Charatza Tragabigzanda, in Constantinople.
Chained by the neck in gangs of twenties the slaves entered the great Moslem city. John Smith was left at the gate of a house exactly like all the others in the narrow noisy street. The beauty of an Oriental palace is inside the walls. Within the blank outer wall of stone and mud-brick, arched roofs, painted and gilded within, were upheld by slender round pillars of fine stone—marble, jasper, porphyry, onyx, red syenite, highly polished and sometimes brought from old palaces and temples in other lands. Intricate carving in marble or in fine hard wood adorned the doorways and lattices, and the balconies with their high lattice-work railings where the women could see into a room below without being seen. In the courtyards fountains plashed in marble basins, and from hidden gardens came the breath of innumerable roses. On floors of fine mosaic were silken many-hued rugs, brought in caravans from Bagdad, Moussoul or Ispahan, and the soft patter of bare feet, morocco shoes and light sandals came from the endless vistas of open arches. A silken rustling and once a gurgle of soft laughter might have told the Englishman that he was watched, but heknew no more what it meant than he understood the Arabic mottoes, interwoven with the decoration of the blue-and-gold walls.
Charatza's curiosity was aroused at the sight of a slave so tall, ruddy and handsome. She sent for him to come into an inner room where she and her ladies sat, closely veiled, upon a cushioned divan. Bogal's letter said that the slave was a rich Bohemian nobleman whom he had captured in battle, and whose ransom would buy Charatza splendid jewels. But when spoken to in Bohemian the captive looked perfectly blank. He did not seem to understand one word.
Arabic and Turkish were no more successful. At last the young princess asked a question in Italian and found herself understood. It did not take long for her to find out that the story her lover had written had not a word of truth in it. She was as indignant as a spirited girl would naturally be.
In one way and another she made opportunities to talk with the Englishman and to inquire of others about his career. She presently discovered that he was the champion who had beheaded three Turkish warriors, one after another, before the walls of the besieged city Regall. She made up her mind that when she was old enough to control her own fortune, which would be in the not very distant future, she would set him free and marry him. Such things had been done in Constantinople, and doubtless could be done again.
But meantime Charatza's mother, learning that her daughter had been talking to a slave, was not at all pleased and threatened, since he was no nobleman and would not be ransomed, to sell him in the market. Charatza was used to having her way sooner or later, and managed to have him sent instead to her brother, apacha or provincial governor in Tartary. She sent also a letter asking the pacha to be kind to the young English slave and give him a chance of learning Turkish and the principles of the Koran.
This was far from agreeable to a brother who had already heard of his sister's liking for the penniless stranger,—especially as he found that the Englishman had no intention of turning Moslem. The slave-master was told to treat him with the utmost severity, which meant that his life was made almost unbearable. A ring of iron, with a curved iron handle, was locked around his neck, his only garment was a tunic of hair-cloth belted with undressed hide, he was herded with other Christian slaves and a hundred or more Turks and Moors who were condemned criminals, and, as the last comer, had to take the kicks and cuffs of all the others. The food was coarse and unclean, and only extreme hunger made it possible to eat it.
John Smith was not the man to sit down hopelessly under misfortune, and he talked with the other Christians whenever chance offered, about possible plans of escape. None of them saw any hope of getting away, even by joining their efforts. It may be that some of this talk was overheard; at any rate Smith was sent after a while to thresh wheat by himself in a barn two or three miles from the stone castle where the governor lived. The pacha rode up while he was at work and began to abuse him, taunting him with being a Christian outcast who had tried to set himself above his betters by winning the favor of a Turkish lady. The Englishman flew at him like a wildcat, dragged him off his horse and broke his skull with the club which was used instead of a flail for threshing. Then he dressed himself in the Turk's garments, hid the bodyunder a heap of grain, filled a bag with wheat for all his provision, mounted the horse of his late master, and rode away northward. He knew that Muscovy was in this general direction, and coming to a road marked by a cross, rode that way for sixteen days, hiding whenever he heard any sound of travelers for fear the iron slave-ring should betray him. At last he came to a Russian garrison on the River Don, where he found good friends. In 1604, after some other adventures, he came again to England. All London was talking of the doings of King James, who in one short year had managed to dissatisfy both Catholics and Protestants. Since the voyages of Gosnold, Pring and Weymouth there was much interest in Virginia. Ralegh was a prisoner in the Tower. There was talk of a trading association to be called the London Company, and it was said that this company planned a new plantation somewhere north of Roanoke. Smith could see the great future which might await an English settlement in that rich land. He decided to join the adventurers going out in the fleet of Captain Christopher Newport. Before sailing, he went to Lincolnshire to bid farewell to his own people, and in the shadow of the Tower of Saint Botolph's he espied a tall lad whose look recalled something.
"Why," he cried with a hearty clasp of the hand. "'t is thyself grown a man, Will! And how goes the Latin?"
"I love it well," the youth answered shyly. "Master Brewster hath also instructed me in the Greek. If—if I had known where to send it I would have repaid the money you was so kind as to spare."
"Nay, think no more o't—or rather, hand it on to some other young book-worm," laughed the beardedand bronzed captain. "And how be all your folk?"
The lad's eyes rested wistfully upon the quaint old seaport streets. "The Bishop rails upon our congregation," he said. "Holland is better than a prison, and we shall go there soon."
Smith's practical mind saw the uselessness of trying to get any Non-Conformist taken on by a royal colony in Virginia just then. "'Tis a hard case," he said sympathetically, "but we may meet again some day. There's room enough in the Americas, the Lord knows, for all the honest men England can spare."
Thus they parted, and on April 26, 1607, the Virginia voyagers saw land at the mouth of the Chesapeake.
The company was rather top-heavy. Out of the hundred who were enrolled, fifty-two were gentlemen adventurers, each of whom thought himself as good as the rest and even a little better. No sooner had the ship dropped anchor than thirty of them went ashore to roam the forest, laughing and shouting as if they had the country to themselves. The appearance of five Indians sent them scurrying back to the ship with two of their number wounded, for they had no weapons with them. That night the sealed orders of the London Company were opened, and it was found that the directors had appointed a council of seven to govern the colony and choose a president for a year. The colonists were charged to search for gold and pearls and for a passage to the East Indies. Nothing more original in the way of a colonial enterprise had occurred to the directors. Success in these undertakings meant immediate profits with which the new Company could compete with Bristol, Antwerp, and the Muscovy Company's rich fur trade.
In the list of names for the council appeared that of Captain John Smith, which was somewhat embarrassing, since a scandalous tale had been set going during the voyage, that he intended to lead a mutiny and make himself governor of the colony. This was so far believed that he was kept a prisoner through the last part of the voyage. The other councilors, Newport, Gosnold, Wingfield, Ratcliffe, Martin and Kendall, held their election without him and chose Wingfield president.
Next day the carpenters began work on the shallop, which had been shipped in sections, and Wingfield ordered Smith inland with a party of armed men, to explore. They saw no Indians, but found a fire where oysters were still roasting, and made a good meal off them, though some of the luscious shellfish were so large that they had to be cut in pieces before they were eaten. Coasting along the bay they discovered a river, which was explored when the shallop was launched. Upon this river they saw an Indian canoe forty feet long, made of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, Indian fashion, with hot stones and shell gouges. They found also oysters in abundance and in some of them fresh-water pearls. After spending seventeen days in examining the country, they chose for their settlement a peninsula on the north side of the river called the Powhatans by the Indians, from the tribe living on its banks. This site was about forty miles from the sea, and here, on May 13, they moored their ships to trees in six fathom of water and named the place Jamestown, and the river the King's River.
Thus far the Indians had been friendly, and Wingfield would not have any fortifications built, or any military drill, for fear of arousing their anger. CaptainKendall, despite orders, constructed a crescent-shaped line of fence of untrimmed boughs, but most of the weapons remained in packing-cases on board ship. Wingfield, who regarded Smith as a rather dangerously outspoken man to have about just then, sent him with Newport and twenty others, to explore the river to its head. On the sixth day they passed the chief town of the Powhatans. On May 24 they reached the head of the river, set up a cross, and proclaimed in the wilderness the sovereignty of King James Stuart.
The thrifty eye of the Lincolnshire yeoman observed many things with satisfaction during this march. There might not be any gold mines, but there was unlimited timber, and the meadows would make as good pasture for cattle as any in England. In the forests were red deer and fallow deer, bears, otters, beavers, and foxes, besides animals unknown in Europe. One moonlight night, while examining deer tracks near a little stream, Smith saw humped on a fallen log above it a furry beast about the size of a badger, with black face and paws like a bear, and a bushy tail with crosswise rings of brown and black. This queer animal was eating something, and dipping the food into the water before each mouthful. When Smith described it to the Indians he could make nothing of the name they gave it, but wrote it down as best he could—Araughcoune. Another new kind of creature was of the size of a rabbit, grayish white, with black ears and a tail like a rat. It would hang by its tail from a tree, until knocked off with a stick, and then curl up with shut eyes and pretend to be dead. It was excellent eating when roasted with wild yams,—rather like a very small suckling pig, the colonists later discovered. For the most part, however, Smith was inclined to thinkthey would have to depend upon their provisions and the corn they could buy from the Indians.
On returning to Jamestown they found that the Indians had been raiding the settlement, the colonists at the time being all at work and taken completely by surprise. Seventeen men had been wounded, and a boy killed. After this, the men were drilled each day, the guns were unpacked and a palisade was begun.
Newport was in a hurry to return to England, and Wingfield now suggested that Smith, who was still supposed to be under arrest, should go with him and save any further trouble. This did not suit Smith at all. He demanded an open trial, got it, and was triumphantly cleared of all charges.
Of the privation, dissensions and sickness which followed Newport's departure, the bad water, rotten food, constant trouble with savages, and the unreasonable demands of the directors of the London Company, all historians have told. One story, which Smith was wont to tell with keen relish, deals with the instructions of the Company that the Indian chief, "King Powhatan," should be crowned with all due ceremony, just at a time of year when every hand in the colony was needed for attending to the crops. Smith and Newport had just come to a reasonable understanding with that astute savage, by which he treated them with real respect; and the attention paid him by his "brother James," as he proceeded to call the King of England, rather turned his head. He liked the red cloak sent him, but had no idea what a crown meant. The raccoon skin mantle which he removed when robed in the royal crimson was sent to England and is now in a museum at Oxford.
After some years of strenuous toil and adventureJohn Smith went back to London. An explosion of powder, whether accidental or intentional was never known, wounded him seriously just before he left Jamestown, and he did not recover from it for some time.
"And what is in your mind to do next, Captain?" asked Master William Simons the geographer when they had finished, between them, the new map of Virginia. Smith's eyes twinkled as he snapped the cover on his inkhorn.
"Why, 't is hard for an old rover like me to lie abed when there's man's work to be done. You know, the London Company holds only the southern division of the King's Patent for Virginia; the north's given to Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth. And that's never been settled yet."
"There was a colony of Captain George Popham and Ralegh Gilbert went out, five year ago," said Simons doubtfully. "They said they could not endure the bitter climate."
"Sho," said Smith impatiently, one stubbed forefinger on the map, "'t is in almost the same latitude as France. Maybe they chose the wrong place for their plantation. Why, the French trade furs with the savages, all up and down the Saint Laurence, and mind the cold no more than nothing at all. The first thing we know, the Dutch will be out here finding a road to the Indies."
Both men laughed. They had lost faith in that road to fortune.
"Anyhow Hudson didn't find it when they sent him to look for it the year afore he died," said Simons, "or they'd be into it now. But what are you scheming?"
"First make a voyage of exploration," said Smith. "I ha' talked with one and another that told me they taken a draught of the coast, and I ha' six or seven of the plots they drew, so different from one another and out of proportion they do me as much good as so much waste paper—though they cost me more," added the veteran grimly. "With a true map o' the coast, we'd know whereabouts we were."
"No gold nor silver, I hear."
"Maybe not. But what commodity in England decays faster than wood? And where will you find better forest than along that shore? Build shipyards there, and our English folk would make a living off'n that and the fisheries. I know how 't was in Boston—the Flemings would salt their fish down right aboard the ships when the fleets came in. But men for work like this must be men—not tyrants, nor slaves."
John Smith's eyes flashed, and his lips closed so tightly that his thick mustaches and beard stuck straight out like a lion's. He had seen a plenty of both slavery and tyranny in his life.
In fact there was a neck-and-neck race between the Plymouth Company and the Dutch West India Company, for the control of the northern province. Dutch fur traders were already on Manhattan Island living in makeshift wooden huts, and Adrian Block was exploring Long Island Sound, when John Smith went out to map the coast north of Cape Cod for Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the Plymouth Company in 1614. The two little English ships reached the part of the coast called by the Indians Monhegan in April of that year. They had general instructions to meet the cost of the expedition, if possible, by whaling, fishing and fur-trading. No true whales were found, however, and by the timethe ships reached the fishing grounds the cod season was nearly past. Mullet and sturgeon were plentiful in summer, and while the sailors fished, Smith took a few men in a small boat and ranged the coast, trading for furs. Within a distance of fifty or sixty miles they got in exchange for such trifles as were prized by the Indians, more than a thousand beaver skins, a hundred or more martens and as many otter-pelts. On a rocky island four leagues from shore, in latitude 431/2, he made a garden in May which gave them all salad vegetables through June and July. Not a man of the twenty-five was ill even for a day. Cod, they learned, were abundant from March to the middle of June, and again from September to November, for cor-fish—salt fish or Poor John. The Indians said that the herring were more than the hairs of the head. Sturgeon, mullet, salmon, halibut and other fish were plentiful. Smith had a vision of comfortable independent mariners settled on farms all along the coast, sending their fish to market the year round, and sleeping every night at home. It seemed to him that here, in a hardy thrifty province which gold-seekers and gentlemen adventurers might scorn, he could contentedly end his days.
There was a pleasant inlet on the coast of a bold headland, north of Cape Cod, which he thought would be his choice for his plantation. This headland he had named Cape Tragabigzanda. There were three small round islands to be seen far to seaward, which he called the Three Turks' Heads. One Sunday, "a faire sunshining day," he climbed a green height above Anusquam, and sitting on a huge boulder surveyed the bright and peaceful landscape and chose the site for his house. Good stone there would be in abundance, and mighty timbers that had been growing for him since the daysof Noah. In this Province of New England a strong and fearless race would found new towns with the old names—Boston, Plymouth, Ipswich, Sandwich, Gloucester. So he dreamed until the sun went down under a canopy of crimson and gold, while the boat rocked in the little bay where he would have his wharf.
In 1619, when English Puritans began preparations for the founding of a new colony, he offered his services, but the older men would have none of him. He was a "Church of England Protestant" and one of the unregenerate with whom they had no fellowship. They took his map as a guide, and settled, not on Cape Tragabigzanda, which Prince Charles had re-named Cape Anne, but in the bay which he had called Plymouth. He spent some years in London writing an account of his adventures, and died in 1631 at the age of fifty-two—Captain John Smith, Admiral of New England.