Part 17

This spirit it was which so early carried the French to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the north, and the Spaniard to the same river on the south. It was long before our frontiers reached their settlements in the west, and a _voyageur_ or _coureur de bois_ is still our conductor there. Prairie is a French word, as Sierra is a Spanish one. Augustine in Florida, and Santa Fé in New Mexico [1582], both built by the Spaniards, are considered the oldest towns in the United States. Within the memory of the oldest man, the Anglo-Americans were confined between the Appalachian Mountains and the sea, “a space not two hundred miles broad,” while the Mississippi was by treaty the eastern boundary of New France. (See the pamphlet on settling the Ohio, London, 1763, bound up with the travels of Sir John Bartram.) So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders. Cabot spoke like an Englishman, as he was, if he said, as one reports, in reference to the discovery of the American Continent, when he found it running toward the north, that it was a great disappointment to him, being in his way to India; but we would rather add to than detract from the fame of so great a discoverer.

Samuel Penhallow, in his history (Boston, 1726), p. 51, speaking of “Port Royal and Nova Scotia,” says of the last that its “first seizure was by Sir Sebastian Cobbet for the crown of Great Britain, in the reign of King Henry VII.; but lay dormant till the year 1621,” when Sir William Alexander got a patent of it, and possessed it some years; and afterward Sir David Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, “to the surprise of all thinking men, it was given up unto the French.”

Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, who was not the most likely to be misinformed, who, moreover, has the _fame_, at least, of having discovered Wachusett Mountain (discerned it forty miles inland), talking about the “Great Lake” and the “hideous swamps about it,” near which the Connecticut and the “Potomack” took their rise; and among the memorable events of the year 1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irishman’s expedition to the “White hill,” from whose top he saw eastward what he “judged to be the Gulf of Canada,” and westward what he “judged to be the great lake which Canada River comes out of,” and where he found much “Muscovy glass,” and “could rive out pieces of forty feet long and seven or eight broad.” While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a _terra incognita_ to them,—or rather many years before the earliest date referred to,—Champlain, the _first Governor of Canada_, not to mention the inland discoveries of Cartier,[1] Roberval, and others, of the preceding century, and his own earlier voyage, had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.

In Champlain’s “Voyages,” printed in 1613, there is a plate representing a fight in which he aided the Canada Indians against the Iroquois, near the south end of Lake Champlain, in July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft says he joined the Algonquins in an expedition against the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the northwest of New York. This is that “Great Lake,” which the English, hearing some rumor of from the French, long after, locate in an “Imaginary Province called Laconia, and spent several years about 1630 in the vain attempt to discover.” (Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. Coll., Vol. II., p. 68.) Thomas Morton has a chapter on this “Great Lake.” In the edition of Champlain’s map dated 1632, the Falls of Niagara appear; and in a great lake northwest of _Mer Douce_ (Lake Huron) there is an island represented, over which is written, “_Isle ou il y a une mine de cuivre_,”—“Island where there is a mine of copper.” This will do for an offset to our Governor’s “Muscovy Glass.” Of all these adventures and discoveries we have a minute and faithful account, giving facts and dates as well as charts and soundings, all scientific and Frenchman-like, with scarcely one fable or traveller’s story.

Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans long before the seventeenth century. It may be that Cabot himself beheld it. Verrazzani, in 1524, according to his own account, spent fifteen days on our coast, in latitude 41° 40 minutes (some suppose in the harbor of Newport), and often went five or six leagues into the interior there, and he says that he sailed thence at once one hundred and fifty leagues northeasterly, _always in sight of the coast_. There is a chart in Hackluyt’s “Divers Voyages,” made according to Verrazzani’s plot, which last is praised for its accuracy by Hackluyt, but I cannot distinguish Cape Cod on it, unless it is the “C. Arenas,” which is in the right latitude, though ten degrees west of “Claudia,” which is thought to be Block Island.

The “Biographic Universelle” informs us that “An ancient manuscript chart drawn in 1529 by Diego Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmographer, has preserved the memory of the voyage of Gomez [a Portuguese sent out by Charles the Fifth]. One reads in it under (_au dessous_) the place occupied by the States of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, _Terre d’Etienne Gomez, qu’il découvrit en_ 1525 (Land of Etienne Gomez, which he discovered in 1525).” This chart, with a memoir, was published at Weimar in the last century.

Jean Alphonse, Roberval’s pilot in Canada in 1642, one of the most skilful navigators of his time, and who has given remarkably minute and accurate direction for sailing up the St. Lawrence, showing that he knows what he is talking about, says in his “_Routier_” (it is in Hackluyt), “I have been at a bay as far as the forty-second degree, between Norimbegue [the Penobscot?] and Florida, but I have not explored the bottom of it, and I do not know whether it passes from one land to the other,” _i.e._ to Asia. (“ J’ai été à une Baye jusques par les 42e degres entre la Norimbegue et la Floride; mais je n’en ai pas cherché le fond, et ne sçais pas si elle passe d’une terre à l’autre.”) This may refer to Massachusetts Bay, if not possibly to the western inclination of the coast a little farther south. When he says, “I have no doubt that the Norimbegue enters into the river of Canada,” he is perhaps so interpreting some account which the Indians had given respecting the route from the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic by the St. John, or Penobscot, or possibly even the Hudson River.

We hear rumors of this country of “Norumbega” and its great city from many quarters. In a discourse by a great French sea-captain in Ramusio’s third volume (1556-65), this is said to be the name given to the land by its inhabitants, and Verrazzani is called the discoverer of it; another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or the river, Aguncia. It is represented as an island on an accompanying chart. It is frequently spoken of by old writers as a country of indefinite extent, between Canada and Florida, and it appears as a large island with Cape Breton at its eastern extremity, on the map made according to Verrazzani’s plot in Hackluyt’s “Divers Voyages.” These maps and rumors may have been the origin of the notion, common among the early settlers, that New England was an island. The country and city of Norumbega appear about where Maine now is on a map in Ortelius (“Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,” Antwerp, 1570), and the “R. Grande” is drawn where the Penobscot or St. John might be.

In 1604, Champlain being sent by the Sieur de Monts to explore the coast of Norumbegue, sailed up the Penobscot twenty-two or twenty-three leagues from “Isle Haute,” or till he was stopped by the falls. He says: “I think that this river is that which many pilots and historians call Norumbegue, and which the greater part have described as great and spacious, with numerous islands; and its entrance in the forty-third or forty-third and one half or, according to others, the forty-fourth degree of latitude, more or less.” He is convinced that “the greater part” of those who speak of a great city there have never seen it, but repeat a mere rumor, but he thinks that some have seen the mouth of the river since it answers to their description.

Under date of 1607 Champlain writes: “Three or four leagues north of the Cap de Poitrincourt [near the head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia] we found a cross, which was very old, covered with moss and almost all decayed, which was an evident sign that there had formerly been Christians there.”

Also the following passage from Lescarbot will show how much the neighboring coasts were frequented by Europeans in the sixteenth century. Speaking of his return from Port Royal to France in 1607, he says: “At last, within four leagues of Campseau [the Gut of Canso], we arrived at a harbor [in Nova Scotia], where a worthy old gentleman from St. John de Lus, named Captain Savale, was fishing, who received us with the utmost courtesy. And as this harbor, which is small, but very good, has no name, I have given it on my geographical chart the name of Savalet. [It is on Champlain’s map also.] This worthy man told us that this voyage was the forty-second which he had made to those parts, and yet the Newfoundlanders [_Terre neuviers_] make only one a year. He was wonderfully content with his fishery, and informed us that he made daily fifty crowns’ worth of cod, and that his voyage would be worth ten thousand francs. He had sixteen men in his employ; and his vessel was of eighty tons, which could carry a hundred thousand dry cod.” (Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612.) They dried their fish on the rocks on shore.

The “Isola della Réna” (Sable Island?) appears on the chart of “Nuova Francia” and Norumbega, accompanying the “Discourse” above referred to in Ramusio’s third volume, edition 1556-65. Champlain speaks of there being at the Isle of Sable, in 1604, “grass pastured by oxen (_bœufs_) and cows which the Portuguese carried there more than sixty years ago,” _i.e._ sixty years before 1613; in a later edition he says, which came out of a Spanish vessel which was lost in endeavoring to settle on the Isle of Sable; and he states that De la Roche’s men, who were left on this island seven years from 1598, lived on the flesh of these cattle which they found “_en quantie)_,” and built houses out of the wrecks of vessels which came to the island (“perhaps Gilbert’s”), there being no wood or stone. Lescarbot says that they lived “on fish and the milk of cows left there about eighty years before by Baron de Leri and Saint Just.” Charlevoix says they ate up the cattle and then lived on fish. Haliburton speaks of cattle left there as a rumor. De Leri and Saint Just had suggested plans of colonization on the Isle of Sable as early as 1515 (1508?) according to Bancroft, referring to Charlevoix. These are but a few of the instances which I might quote.

Cape Cod is commonly said to have been discovered in 1602. We will consider at length under what circumstances, and with what observation and expectations, the first Englishmen whom history clearly discerns approached the coast of New England. According to the accounts of Archer and Brereton (both of whom accompanied Gosnold), on the 26th of March, 1602, old style, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold set sail from Falmouth, England, for the North part of Virginia, in a small bark called the _Concord_, they being in all, says one account, “thirty-two persons, whereof eight mariners and sailors, twelve purposing upon the discovery to return with the ship for England, the rest remain there for population.” This is regarded as “the first attempt of the English to make a settlement within the limits of New England.” Pursuing a new and a shorter course than the usual one by the Canaries, “the 14th of April following” they had sight of Saint Mary’s, an island of the Azores. As their sailors were few and “none of the best” (I use their own phrases), and they were “going upon an unknown coast,” they were not “overbold to stand in with the shore but in open weather”; so they made their first discovery of land with the lead. The 23d of April the ocean appeared yellow, but on taking up some of the water in a bucket, “it altered not either in color or taste from the sea azure.” The 7th of May they saw divers birds whose names they knew, and many others in their “English tongue of no name.” The 8th of May “the water changed to a yellowish green, where at seventy fathoms” they “had ground.” The 9th, they had upon their lead “many glittering stones,”—“which might promise some mineral matter in the bottom.” The 10th, they were over a bank which they thought to be near the western end of St. John’s Island, and saw schools of fish. The 12th, they say, “continually passed fleeting by us sea-oare, which seemed to have their movable course towards the northeast.” On the 13th, they observed “great beds of weeds, much wood, and divers things else floating by,” and “had smelling of the shore much as from the southern Cape and Andalusia in Spain.” On Friday, the 14th, early in the morning they descried land on the north, in the latitude of forty-three degrees, apparently some part of the coast of Maine. Williamson (History of Maine) says it certainly could not have been south of the central Isle of Shoals. Belknap inclines to think it the south side of Cape Ann. Standing fair along by the shore, about twelve o’clock the same day, they came to anchor and were visited by eight savages, who came off to them “in a Biscay shallop, with sail and oars,”—“an iron grapple, and a kettle of copper.” These they at first mistook for “Christians distressed.” One of them was “apparelled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge, made after our sea-fashion, hoes and shoes on his feet; all the rest (saving one that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were naked.” They appeared to have had dealings with “some Basques of St. John de Luz, and to understand much more than we,” say the English, “for want of language, could comprehend.” But they soon “set sail westward, leaving them and their coast.” (This was a remarkable discovery for discoverers.)

“The 15th day,” writes Gabriel Archer, “we had again sight of the land, which made ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason of a large sound that appeared westward between it and the main, for coming to the west end thereof, we did perceive a large opening, we called it Shoal Hope. Near this cape we came to anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of cod-fish, for which we altered the name and called it Cape Cod. Here we saw skulls of herring, mackerel, and other small fish, in great abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but without danger; also we came to anchor again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the land in the latitude of forty-two degrees. This Cape is well near a mile broad, and lieth northeast by east. The captain went here ashore, and found the ground to be full of peas, strawberries, whortleberries, etc., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore somewhat deep; the firewood there by us taken in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel, and beach. A young Indian came here to the captain, armed with his bow and arrows, and had certain plates of copper hanging at his ears; he showed a willingness to help us in our occasions.”

“The 16th we trended the coast southerly, which was all champaign and full of grass, but the islands somewhat woody.”

Or, according to the account of John Brereton, “riding here,” that is, where they first communicated with the natives, “in no very good harbor, and withal doubting the weather, about three of the clock the same day in the afternoon we weighed, and standing southerly off into sea the rest of that day and the night following, with a fresh gale of wind, in the morning we found ourselves embayed with a mighty headland; but coming to an anchor about nine of the clock the same day, within a league of the shore, we hoisted out the one half of our shallop, and Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and three others, went ashore, being a white sandy and very bold shore; and marching all that afternoon with our muskets on our necks, on the highest hills which we saw (the weather very hot), at length we perceived this headland to be parcel of the main, and sundry islands lying almost round about it; so returning towards evening to our shallop (for by that time the other part was brought ashore and set together), we espied an Indian, a young man of proper stature, and of a pleasing countenance, and after some familiarity with him, we left him at the sea side, and returned to our ship, where in five or six hours’ absence we had pestered our ship so with codfish, that we threw numbers of them overboard again; and surely I am persuaded that in the months of March, April, and May, there is upon this coast better fishing, and in as great plenty, as in Newfoundland; for the skulls of mackerel, herrings, cod, and other fish, that we daily saw as we went and came from the shore, were wonderful,” etc.

“From this place we sailed round about this headland, almost all the points of the compass, the shore very bold; but as no coast is free from dangers, so I am persuaded this is as free as any. The land somewhat low, full of goodly woods, but in some places plain.”

It is not quite clear on which side of the Cape they landed. If it was inside, as would appear from Brereton’s words, “From this place we sailed round about this headland almost all the points of the compass,” it must have been on the western shore either of Truro or Wellfleet. To one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along the Cape, the only “white, sandy, and very bold shore” that appears is in these towns, though the bank is not so high there as on the eastern side. At a distance of four or five miles the sandy cliffs there look like a long fort of yellow sandstone, they are so level and regular, especially in Wellfleet,—the fort of the land defending itself against the encroachments of the Ocean. They are streaked here and there with a reddish sand as if painted. Farther south the shore is more flat, and less _obviously_ and abruptly sandy, and a little tinge of green here and there in the marshes appears to the sailor like a rare and precious emerald. But in the Journal of Pring’s Voyage the next year (and Salterne, who was with Pring, had accompanied Gosnold) it is said, “Departing hence [_i.e._ from Savage Rocks] we bore unto that great gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year before.”[2]

So they sailed round the Cape, calling the southeasterly extremity “Point Cave,” till they came to an island which they named Martha’s Vineyard (now called No Man’s Land), and another on which they dwelt awhile, which they named Elizabeth’s Island, in honor of the Queen, one of the group since so called, now known by its Indian name Cuttyhunk. There they built a small storehouse, the first house built by the English in New England, whose cellar could recently still be seen, made partly of stones taken from the beach. Bancroft says (edition of 1837), the ruins of the fort can no longer be discerned. They who were to have remained becoming discontented, all together set sail for England with a load of sassafras and other commodities, on the 18th of June following.

The next year came Martin Pring, looking for sassafras, and thereafter they began to come thick and fast, until long after sassafras had lost its reputation.

These are the oldest accounts which we have of Cape Cod, unless, perchance, Cape Cod is, as some suppose, the same with that “Kial-ar-nes” or Keel-Cape, on which, according to old Icelandic manuscripts, Thorwald, son of Eric the Red, after sailing many days southwest from Greenland, broke his keel in the year 1004; and where, according to another, in some respects less trustworthy manuscript, Thor-finn Karlsefue (“that is, one who promises or is destined to be an able or great man”; he is said to have had a son born in New England, from whom Thorwaldsen the sculptor was descended), sailing past, in the year 1007, with his wife Gudrida, Snorre Thorbrandson, Biarne Grinolfson, and Thorhall Garnlason, distinguished Norsemen, in three ships containing “one hundred and sixty men and all sorts of live stock” (probably the first Norway rats among the rest), having the land “on the right side” of them, “roved ashore,” and found “_ör-æfi_ (trackless deserts),” and “_Strand-ir láng-ar ok sand-ar_ (long narrow beaches and sand-hills),” and “called the shores _Furdustrand-ir_ (Wonder-Strands), because the sailing by them seemed long.”

According to the Icelandic manuscripts, _Thorwald_ was the first, then,—unless possibly one Biarne Heriulfson (_i.e._ son of Heriulf) who had been seized with a great desire to travel, sailing from Iceland to Greenland in the year 986 to join his father who had migrated thither, for he had resolved, says the manuscript, “to spend the following winter, like all the preceding ones, with his father,”—being driven far to the southwest by a storm, when it cleared up saw the low land of Cape Cod looming faintly in the distance; but this not answering to the description of Greenland, he put his vessel about, and, sailing northward along the coast, at length reached Greenland and his father. At any rate, he may put forth a strong claim to be regarded as the discoverer of the American continent.

These Northmen were a hardy race, whose younger sons inherited the ocean, and traversed it without chart or compass, and they are said to have been “the first who learned the art of sailing on a wind.” Moreover, they had a habit of casting their door-posts overboard and settling wherever they went ashore. But as Biarne, and Thorwald, and Thorfinn have not mentioned the latitude and longitude distinctly enough, though we have great respect for them as skilful and adventurous navigators, we must for the present remain in doubt as to what capes they did see. We think that they were considerably further north.

If time and space permitted, I could present the claims of other several worthy persons. Lescarbot, in 1609, asserts that the French sailors had been accustomed to frequent the Newfoundland Banks from time immemorial, “for the codfish with which they feed almost all Europe and supply all sea-going vessels,” and accordingly “the language of the nearest lands is half Basque”; and he quotes Postel, a learned but extravagant French author, born in 1510, only six years after the Basques, Bretons, and Normans are said to have discovered the Grand Bank and adjacent islands, as saying, in his _Charte Géographique_, which we have not seen: “Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utilitatem summa litterarum memoria a Gallis adiri solita, et ante mille sexcentos annos frequentari solita est; sed eo quod sit urbibus inculta et vasta, spreta est.” “This land, on account of its very lucrative fishery, was accustomed to be visited by the Gauls from the very dawn of history, and more than sixteen hundred years ago was accustomed to be frequented; but because it was unadorned with cities, and waste, it was despised.”

It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered the mine, but I discovered it to the world. And now Bob Smith is putting in his claim.