Although temporarily abandoned as a site for colonizing, the coast of North Virginia was by no means deserted, and the events of the next few years there were of great importance to the future history of the territory. Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch, coasted along its shores during the famous voyage on which he explored the river which bears his name;41 and the following year, Argall and Somers, attempting to sail from Jamestown to Bermuda, were blown out of their course, and having made for the North Virginia coast, spent some time along it, fishing for cod.42 Upon Hudson’s voyage was based the Dutch claim to their portion of North America. The validity of such a claim to the country immediately about the Hudson would depend upon the interpretation of the two difficult points in connection with titles noted at the beginning of this chapter.43 Any such claim extended by Holland to the coasts of the present eastern New England, however, could have no standing whatever, as French and English explorations in that exact locality had been both prior in date and far more thorough. The only real dispute there lay between the English and French, which was soon to be decided in the main by force. In fact, with three nations, to say nothing of Spain, claiming the same territory, all basing their claims upon discovery within a few miles of each other, even where explorations did not actually overlap, the points raised were too fine, in the then inchoate state of international law, to permit of any other arbitrament.
When, owing to the annulling of De Monts’s patent, the French colony at Port Royal had been temporarily abandoned in 1607, de Poutrincourt, who still retained his rights, intended and made a careful examination of the coast. At the island of Matinicus, where the attack on Plastrier had taken place, he found some Englishmen fishing; but although he was urged by some of his party to burn their ships, he would not do so, as they were peaceful civilians, and contented himself with erecting a large cross with the arms of France.44
A couple of years later, under the more aggressive regime of Madame de Guercheville and the Jesuits, an extension of French settlement toward the south was attempted by the founding of a colony on Mt. Desert, which was named St. Sauveur.45 It was not, however, to remain undisturbed for many weeks, for at a meeting of the Quarter Court of the Virginia Company in London, in July, 1612, Captain Argall had been commissioned to drive out foreign intruders from the country claimed under English charters, and had sailed from England for that purpose.46 After wintering in Virginia, he proceeded northward the following summer, to clear the territory as far as 45°, and promptly ran across the newly established Jesuits on the Maine coast, being guided to them by Indians, who were under the mistaken impression that the English were friends.47 The French, being taken wholly unaware, made practically no resistance, the only one among their number who had presence of mind enough even to fire their cannon, having forgotten to aim it. Argall easily overcame such opposition, and having obtained possession of La Saussaye’s commission from the French King, proceeded to break up the colony and dispose of his prisoners.48 Fifteen of to return speedily, and to continue his settlement. Various delays, however, kept him in France for three years, and it was not until the spring of 1610 that he again set sail. The houses and their contents, untouched by the friendly Indians, were found intact, and life at the little colony, which had thus been merely interrupted, was resumed. In the following year, a certain Captain Plastrier, who had been fishing near the Kennebec, complained to the Sieur de Biencourt, Poutrincourt’s son, that he had been attacked and robbed by English, who claimed title to the coast.49 These may have been Captain Williams and his party, who were annually sent out by Francis Popham, or Captains Harlow and Hobson, who were on the coast, in 1611, on a voyage of discovery and Indian kidnaping, for the Earl of Southampton.50 Thus obscurely, off the New England coast, between a French fisherman and English seamen, whose very names are unknown to us, began that duel for empire between France and England, which was to last a century and a half, and which was to decide the fate of the vast continent of North America and the teeming millions of India. Clive and Dupleix, Wolfe and Montcalm, were the successors of these humble pioneers striving to assert the claims of their rival nations to the empire of the world.
The significance of the attack by the English was not lost upon the young Biencourt, who “represented very earnestly” to his people how important it was to “every good Frenchman” to prevent this usurpation by the English of lands claimed by France, and occupied by her citizens “who had taken real possession . . . three and four years before ever the English had set forth”—which was quite true in so far as related to colonizing. In August, Biencourt made a trip along the shore of Maine, stopping at St. Croix Island, where Plastrier had decided to spend the winter, and thence down to the Kennebec, where he inspected the abandoned site of the Popham colony, them, including Biard and another of the Jesuit fathers, were taken back as captives to Virginia, and the remaining thirty, in two small boats, allowed to take their perilous way to rejoin their countrymen to the northward.
Soon afterward, Argall, with three ships and the Jesuit Biard, who, apparently out of personal rancor toward Biencourt, had turned traitor to his former associates, again set sail from Virginia, for the purpose of completely extirpating the French settlements. Revisiting St. Sauveur, he burned the buildings, and tearing down the French cross, erected another. Continuing his voyage, he put in at St. Croix, where he likewise burned the buildings and confiscated the stores collected there.51 Arriving next at Port Royal, from which the inhabitants were temporarily absent, a few miles off, after taking as booty even the locks and nails from the buildings, as well as the food, ammunition, and clothes of the unfortunate French, he burned the whole settlement to ashes.52 It is difficult to conceive of a more dastardly act than thus to rob a peaceful colony of its stores, and then to render it homeless on the approach of winter in a far northern country.
The action, however, if not the manner of it, fitted in with the English temper of the time, which was becoming increasingly aggressive in colonial matters. On the shores of India, as on those of North Virginia, the cannon’s mouth was announcing territorial decisions of vast import for the future. Almost simultaneously with the operations of Argall in Maine, Captain Best, off the Indian coast, was having a running fight, lasting a month, with four Portuguese ships, attended by over a score of galleys, against his own little fleet of only two vessels. As a result of his brilliant victory against these overwhelming odds, the English obtained their first permanent foothold in continental India.53 The glorious battle of Swally, and the petty raiding of Mt. Desert and Port Royal, were alike mere incidents in the struggle of new forces let loose by the age of discovery, and the transformation of the European nations into world powers. The struggles between French and English in North Virginia and India; between English and Portuguese in the Gulf of Cambay; between Dutch and Spanish, or Dutch and Portuguese on many seas; between English and Dutch in Guiana and on the Amazon and in the Spice Islands of the East, must all be considered as but parts of one stupendous drama. Everywhere along the edge of the world, traders and settlers were being tossed on those stormy political waters, where met the new tides of imperial ambition, fast flowing to the farthest confines of the new-found seas.
In that portion of the drama with which we are particularly concerned, a new figure now appears upon the scene, whose services to North Virginia have been somewhat overrated by many, but whose personality remains a matter of fascinating interest. Around few names in American history has legend clustered more luxuriantly than around that of the South Virginian hero Captain John Smith; and as to the real merits of few men is opinion more diverse. Even though it must be frankly admitted that no one will ever again think as highly of the Captain as he thought of himself, yet much of the modern detraction from his character and services is so evidently biased as to be critically of little value. The main importance of his share in North Virginian colonization, unlike his labors in the south, was in his capacity as author, and his efforts to stimulate interest in the possibilities of the New World. He himself, however, wished for and endeavored to achieve a more active part in the settlement of the country to which he attached its present name of New England.
He first saw its shores, on his only voyage thither, off the island of Monhegan, in the spring of 1614, having been sent out by some London merchants “to take Whales and make tryalls of a Myne of Gold and Copper.”54“If those failed, he wrote,