The English made some fatal mistakes at the outset. Instead of looking to the fruition of seed-time for true riches, they turned from the wealthy soil upon which they stood, and went upon vain searches for gold in the forests of the adjoining continent. Instead of reciprocating the hospitable friendship of the natives, they returned harshness for kindness, and treachery for confidence, until a flame of revenge was kindled among the Indians which nothing but the blood of Englishmen could quench. Schemes for the destruction of the white intruders were speedily planned, and tribes in the interior stood ready to aid their brethren upon the seaboard. As soon as Grenville departed with the ships, for England, the natives withheld supplies of food, drew the English into perilous positions by tales of gold-bearing shores along the Roanoke River, and finally reduced the colony to the verge of ruin. At that moment, Sir Francis Drake arrived from the West Indies, with his fleet, and afforded them relief. But misfortune and fear made them anxious to leave the country, and the emigrants were all conveyed to England, in June, 1586, by Drake. A few days after their departure, a well-furnished vessel, sent by Raleigh, arrived; and a fortnight later, Grenville entered the inlet with three ships well provisioned. After searching for the departed colony, Grenville sailed for England, leaving fifteen men upon Roanoke.

The intrepid Raleigh was still undismayed by misfortune. He adopted a wise policy, and instead of sending out mere fortune-hunters,' he collected a band of agriculturists and artisans, with their families, and dispatched them [April 26, 1587], to found an industrial State in Virginia. He gave them a charter of incorporation for the settlement; and John White, who accompanied them, was appointed governor of the colony. They reached Roanoke in July; but instead of the expected greetings of the men left by Grenville, they encountered utter desolation. The bones of the fifteen lay bleaching on the ground. Their rude tenements were in ruins, and wild deer were feeding in their little gardens. They had been murdered by the Indians, and not one was left. Manteo did not share in the Indian hatred of the white people, and like Massasoit of New England,' he remained their friend. By command of Raleigh, he received Christian baptism, and was invested, by White, with the title of Lord of Roanoke, the first and last peerage ever created in America. Yet Manteo could not avert nor control the storm that lowered among the Indian tribes, and menaced the English with destruction. The colonists were conscious that fearful perils were gathering, and White hastened to England toward the close of the year for reinforcements and provisions, leaving behind him his daughter, Eleanor Dare (wife of one of his lieutenants), who had just given birth to a child [August 18, 1587], whom they named Virginia. VIRGINIA DARE was the first offspring of English parents born within the territory of the United States.'

year in Virginia, and had correct drawings made of the inhabitants, their dwellings, their gardens, and every thing of interest pertaining to their costumes, customs, and general characteristics. The picture may be accepted as historically correct. 'Page 52. 2 Note 2, page 55.

3 Page 114.

4 Note 6, page 78.

The great Spanish Armada' was preparing for an invasion of Great Britain, when White reached England; and Raleigh, Grenville, and others, were deeply engaged in public affairs. It was not until the following May [1589], that White departed, with two ships, for Virginia. According to custom, he went by the way of the West Indies, and depredated upon Spanish property found afloat. He was beaten in an engagement, lost one of his vessels, and was obliged to return to England. Raleigh's fortune being materially impaired by his munificence in efforts at colonization, he assigned his proprietary rights to others; and it was not until 1590 that White was allowed to return to Roanoke in search of his daughter and the colony he had left. Both had then disappeared. Roanoke was a desolation; and, though Raleigh, who had abandoned all thoughts of colonization, had five times sent mariners, good and true, to search for the emigrants, they were never found.' Eighty years later, the Corees3 told the English settlers upon the Cape Fear River, that their lost kindred had been adopted by the once powerful Hatteras tribe, and became amalgamated with the children of the wilderness. The English made no further attempts at colonization at that time; and so, a century after Columbus sailed for America, there was no European settlement upon the North American Continent. Sir Francis Drake had broken up the military post at St. Augustine [1585], and the Red Men were again sole masters of the vast domain.

4

A dozen years after the failure of Raleigh's colonization efforts, Bartholomew Gosnold, who had been to America, and was a friend of the late proprietor of Virginia, sailed in a small bark [March 26, 1602] directly across the Atlantic for the American coast. After a voyage of seven weeks, he discovered the Continent near Nahant [May 14, 1602], and sailing southward, he landed upon a sandy point which he named Cape Cod, on account of the great number of those fishes in that vicinity. Continuing southward, he discovered Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and the group known as Elizabeth Islands. Upon one of them, which he named Elizabeth, in honor of his sovereign, Gosnold and his company prepared to found a settlement. Upon an islet, in a tiny lake, they built a fort and store-house. Becoming alarmed at the menaces of the Indians and the want of supplies, they freighted their vessel with sassafras

This was a great naval armament, fitted out by Spain, for the invasion of England, in the summer of 1588. It consisted of one hundred and fifty ships, two thousand six hundred and fifty great guns, and thirty thousand soldiers and sailors. It was defeated [July 20] by Admirals Drake and Howard.

2 While Raleigh was making these fruitless searches, the Marquis de la Roche, a wealthy French nobleman, attempted to plant a French colony in America. He was commissioned by the King of France for the purpose, and in 1598 sailed for America with a colony, chiefly drawn from the prisons of Paris. Upon the almost desert island of Sable, near the coast of Nova Scotia, La Roche left forty men, while he returned to France for supplies. He died soon afterward, and for seven years the poor emigrants were neglected. When a vessel was finally sent for them, only twelve survived. They were taken to France, their crimes were pardoned by the knig, and their immediate wants were supplied. 3 Page 20. Note 5, page 20.

5 Dr. Jeremy Belknap, the historian of New Hampshire, discovered the cellar of this storehouse, in 1797.

roots, and returned to England in June, 1602. The glowing accounts of the country which Gosnold gave, awakened the enterprise of some Bristol merchants, and the following year [1603] they fitted out two vessels for the purpose of exploration and traffic with the natives. The command was given to Martin Pring, a friend of both Raleigh and Gosnold. Following the track of the latter, he discovered the shores of Maine, near the mouth of the Penobscot [June], and coasting westward, he entered and explored several of the larger rivers of that State. He continued sailing along the coast as far as Martha's Vineyard, trading with the natives; and from that island he returned to England, after an absence of only six months. Pring made another voyage to Maine, in 1606, and more thoroughly explored the country. Maine was also visited in 1605, by Captain George Weymouth, who had explored the coast of Labrador, in search of a north-west passage to India. He entered the Sagadahock, and took formal possession of the country in the name of King James. There he decoyed five natives on board his vessel, and then sailed for England. These forest children excited much curiosity; and the narratives of other mariners of the west of England, who visited these regions at about the same time, gave a new stimulus to colonizing efforts.

The French now began to turn their attention toward the New World again. In 1603, De Monts, a wealthy French Huguenot,' obtained a commission of viceroyalty over six degrees of latitude in New France, extending from Cape May to Quebec. He prepared an expedition for settlement, and arrived at Nova Scotia, with two vessels, in May, 1604. He passed the summer there, trafficking with the natives; and in the autumn he crossed over to the mouth of the St. Croix (the eastern boundary of Maine), and erected a fort there. He had left a few settlers at Port Royal (now Annapolis), under Poutrincourt. These De Monts joined the following spring [1605], and organized a permanent colony. He named the place Port Royal; and the territory now included in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the adjacent islands, he called ACADIE.' His efforts promised much success; but he was thwarted by jealous men. 1608, he was deprived of his vice-royal commission, when he obtained a grant of the monopoly of the fur trade upon the St. Lawrence, for one year, and another commission, to plant a colony elsewhere in New France. The new expedition was placed under the command of Samuel Champlain (who accompanied the viceroy on his first voyage), and on the 3d of June, 1608, he arrived, with two vessels, at the mouth of the Saguenay, on the St. Lawrence. They ascended the great river, and on the site of Quebec, near where Cartier built his fort almost seventy years before, they planted the first permanent

2

Page 510.

3 Page 49. 4 Page 48. 5 Note 2. page 80.

In

1 Page 46. 6 De Monts first brought swine, and other domestic animals, into this portion of America. Some were also taken from thence to French settlements planted in Canada a few years later. The company of which he was chief, fitted out four vessels. De Monts commanded the two here mentioned, assisted by Champlain and Poutrincourt.

7 In 1613, Samuel Argall made a piratical visit to these coasts, under the direction of the gov ernor of the Virginia colony. He destroyed the remnant of De Monts' settlement at St. Croix, broke up the peaceful colony at Port Royal, and plundered the people of every thing of value. See page 72. 8 Page 49.

HENRY HUDSON.

French settlement in the New World. The following summer, Champlain ascended the Richelieu or Sorel River, the outlet of Lake Champlain, with a war party of Huron' and Algonquin' Indians, and discovered the beautiful lake which bears his name, in the north-eastern part of the State of New York." The English were not idle while the French were exploring, and making efforts at settlement in the direction of the St. Lawrence. Several private enterprises were in progress, among the most i portant of which was that of a company of Londo. merchants who sent Henry Hudson, an intimate friend of Captain Smith, to search for a supposed north-eastern ocean passage to India. He made two unsuccessful voyages to the regions of polar ice [1607-8], when the attempt was abandoned. Anxious to win the honor of first reaching India by the northern seas, Hudson applied to the Dutch East India Company' for aid. The Amsterdam directors afforded it, and on the 4th of April, 1609, Hudson departed from Amsterdam, in command of the Half-Moon, a yacht of eighty tons. He sought a north-eastern passage; but after doubling the capes of Norway, the ice was impassable. Turning his prow, he steered across the Atlantic, and first touching the continent on the shores of Penobscot Bay, he arrived in sight of the capes of Virginia in August, 1609. Proceeding northward, he entered the mouths of several large rivers, and finally passed the Narrows and anchored in New York Bay. He proceeded almost sixty leagues up the river that bears his name, and according to the formula of the age, took possession of the country in the name of the States General of Holland." He returned to Europe in November

1 Page 22.

2 Page 17.

3 Champlain penetrated southward as far as Crown Point; perhaps south of Ticonderoga. It was at about the same time that Hudson went up the river that bears his name, as far as Waterford, so that these eminent navigators, exploring at different points, came very near meeting in the wilderness. Six years afterward Champlain discovered Lake Huron, and there he joined some Huron Indians in an expedition against one of the Five Nations in Western New York. They had a severe battle in the neighborhood of the present village of Canandaigua. Champlain published an account of his first voyage, in 1613, and a continuation in 1620. He published a new edition of these in 1632, which contains a history of New France, from the discovery of Verrazani to the year 1631. Champlain died in 1634. 4 Page 65.

5 Dutch mariners, following the track of the Portuguese, opened a successful traffic with Eastern Asia, about the year 1594. The various Dutch adventurers, in the India trade, were united in one corporate body in 1602, with a capital of over a million of dollars, to whom were given the exclusive privilege of trading in the seas east of the Cape of Good Hope. This was the Dutch East India Company.

6 Entrance to New York Bay between Long and Staten Islands.

7 This was the title of the Government of Holland, answering, in a degree, to our Congress.

8 Hudson, while on another voyage in search of a north-west passage, discovered the great Bay in the northern regions, which bears his name. He was there frozen in the ice during the winter of 1610-11. While endeavoring to make his way homeward in the spring, his crew became mutinous. They finally seized Hudson, bound his arms, and placing him and his son, and seven sick companions, in an open boat, set them adrift upon the cold waters. They were never heard of afterward

1609, and his report of the goodly land he had discovered set in motion those commercial measures which resulted in the founding of a Dutch empire in the New World.

With these discoveries commenced the epoch of settlements. The whole Atlantic coast of North America had been thoroughly or partially explored, the general character and resources of the soil had become known, and henceforth the leading commercial nations of Western Europe-England, France, Spain, and Holland-regarded the transat ntic continent, not as merely a rich garden. without a wall, where depredators rom every shore might come, and, without hinderance, bear away its choicest fruit, but as a land where the permanent foundations of vast colonial empires might be laid, from which parent states would receive almost unlimited tribute to national wealth and national glory.

When we contemplate these voyages across the stormy Atlantic, and consider the limited geographical knowledge of the navigators, the frailty of their vessels' and equipments, the vast labors and constant privations endured by them, and the dangers to which they were continually exposed, we can not but feel the highest respect and reverence for all who were thus engaged in opening the treasures of the New World to the advancing nations of Europe. Although acquisitiveness, or the desire for worldly possessions, was the chief incentive to action, and gave strength to resolution, yet it could not inspire courage to encounter the great dangers of the deep and the wilderness, nor fill the heart with faith in prophecies of success. These sentiments must have been innate; and those who braved the multitude of perils were men of true courage, and their faith came from the teachings of the science of their day. History and Song, Painting and Sculpture, have all commemorated their deeds. Great was thought worthy of having the granite body of Mount Athos hewn into a colossal image of himself, might not Europe and America appropriately join in the labor of fashioning some lofty summit of the Alleghanies' into a huge monument to the memory of the NAVIGATORS Who lifted the vail of forgetfulness from the face of the New World?*

If Alexander the

1 The first ships were generally of less than one hundred tons burden. Two of the vessels of Columbus were without decks; and the one in which Frobisher sailed was only twenty-five tons

burden.

2 Dinocrates, a celebrated architect, offered to cut Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander the Great, so large, that it might hold a city in its right hand, and in its left a basin of sufficient capacity to hold all the waters that poured from the mountain. 3 Note 3, page 19.

4 Page 47. There has been much discussion concerning the claims of certain navigators, to the honor of first discovering the Continent of America. A "Memoir of Sebastian Cabot," illustrated by documents from the Rolls, published in London in 1832, appears to prove conclusively that he, and not his father, was the navigator who discovered North America. John Cabot was a man of science, and a merchant, and may have accompanied his son, in his first voyage in 1497. Yet, in the patent of February, 1498, in which the first voyage is referred to, are the words, "the land and isles of late found by the said John, in our name, and by our commandment." The first commission being issued in the name of John Cabot, the discoveries made by those employed by him, would of course be in his name. A little work, entitled "Researches respecting Americus Vespucius, and his Voyages,' prepared by Viscount Santarem, ex-prime minister of Portugal, casts just doubts upon the statements of Vespucius, concerning his command on a voyage of discovery when, he claims, he discovered South America [page 41] in 1499. He was doubtless an officer under Ojeda; and it is quite certain that he got possession of the narratives of Ojeda and published them as his own. The most accessible works on American discoveries, are Irving's "Life of Columbus;" Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella;" Lives of Cabot and Hudson, in Sparks's "American Biography," and Histories of the United States by Bancroft and Hildreth.