The Founding of New England. James Truslow Adams

and it proved, fortunately, to be a goodly one, although along the New Hampshire and Massachusetts coasts, he found that the French had recently preceded him, and spoiled his market. While fishing for cod, and trading with the Indians, he also explored a considerable part of the shore, and, as a result of his observations, prepared a map, on which many of the names still familiar to us appear for the first time.⁵⁵ In spite of all the explorers who had preceded him, Smith asserted that the shore was “still but even as a coast unknowne and undiscovered”; and historians formerly dated the beginning of modern New England cartography from the appearance of his chart. Without necessarily detracting from the excellence of Smith’s field-work, however, his claim to be the first accurate cartographer of our coast has been dispelled by the discovery of the excellent map transmitted by the Spanish ambassador in London to King Philip in 1611, and found some years ago in the Archives at Simancas.⁵⁶ This map, prepared for King James in 1610, shows that the New England coast was well known, and had been well drawn, before ever John Smith began his labors. It probably embodies the surveys made by Gosnold, Archer, Pring, Weymouth, Champlain, and, perhaps, others, and shows, for the first time, correctly drawn, such characteristic features as the peculiar hook of Cape Cod. This very point had hitherto been considered the distinguishing mark of excellence of Smith’s map, drawn six years later.

      However, if Smith’s cartographical services cannot now be considered as important as formerly, his work as a popularizer remains unimpaired. Although the map of 1610, until published within the present generation, continued in the form of a single manuscript copy, and was seen in its day by few outside the inner circles of company promotion, Smith’s was published in a large edition, and, together with his Description, which has not yet lost its charm, did much to spread a knowledge of New England among the people. Many a man in disgrace with fortune must have pondered his note for those “that have great spirits, and small meanes,” and have read enviously of “the planters pleasures, and profits,” as set forth by the plausible captain.

      An act of cruelty, which occurred on Smith’s voyage, was to bear unforeseen results in the future. One of the captains, a rascal named Hunt, kidnaped twenty-four savages, and sold them in Spain for slaves. One of these, who was subsequently returned to his native land, was the Squanto who so materially assisted the Pilgrims at Plymouth, as we shall see later.

Of more immediate influence were the fish and furs with which Smith reached London,—valued at £1500,—and which served to direct attention to the possibilities of the region. It was, it is true, a trifle compared with the £90,000 or more which the stockholders of the East India Company were receiving from the annual voyages of their fleet; but interest in colonizing as well as in trading was rapidly growing.⁵⁷ In Ireland, where colonization ran a course curiously analogous to that in America, settlement now proceeded rapidly.⁵⁸ In Newfoundland, two colonies were founded, and in Bermuda people were said to be beginning “to nestle and plant very handsomely.”⁵⁹ Little Englanders of an early type, and opponents of chartered privilege, were not wanting, indeed, to inveigh against the growing imperialism of the times. As “for the Bermudas, we know not yet what they will do; and for Virginia, we know not well what to do with it,” wrote one author; while Bacon compared the visionary possibilities of America with the solid results in Ireland.⁶⁰

While Smith had been ranging our coast, getting information, furs, and fish, another expedition, despatched by Gorges, under Captain Hobson, was seeking gold on Martha’s Vineyard. Needless to say, he did not find it, and, as Smith laconically remarks, he “spent his victuall and returned with nothing.”⁶¹ The tangible cash results of Smith’s own voyage pointed to him as the man whom the company needed, and by them he was made Admiral of New England for life, and started on another voyage, with two ships and Captain Thomas Dermer. He never again, however, saw America. Owing to damages to his vessel, received in a storm only a few days out, he was forced to return to Plymouth; and although Dermer went on, we know nothing of his trip.⁶² On Smith’s next attempt, he was taken prisoner by pirates; and on his fourth start, in 1617, for some reason he never got out of Plymouth harbor.

Voyages to New England now became frequent, however, and it is not necessary to mention them all. In 1615, Sir Richard Hawkins was exploring and trading for Gorges, whose agent, Richard Vines, probably spent the following winter in Maine, bringing back with him the first news of the great plague which was decimating the Indians, and which was to simplify the question of settlement. As Gorges speaks of the “extreme rates” at which he had to hire men to stay the winter quarter, it is probable that he had other parties there, in this or other winters. “This course I held some years together,” he wrote in his old age, “but nothing to my private profit; for what I got one way I spent another; so that I began to grow weary of that business, as not for my turn till better times.”⁶³ The surprising part is, not that he grew weary, but that he still continued the unprofitable business for a lifetime.

In 1618, he received a letter from Captain Dermer, in Newfoundland, saying that he had there found Squanto, one of Gorges’s savages, and that the Indian’s description of New England had made him desirous to “follow his hopes that way,”⁶⁴ The next spring, therefore, the indefatigable Gorges sent out Captain Rocroft to meet Dermer and cooperate with him. Dermer, meanwhile, had returned to England; so Rocroft failed to meet him, and after capturing a French barque off the New England coast, sailed to Virginia, contrary to orders, and was there killed in a quarrel. Gorges reimbursed the Frenchmen for the damages suffered, and, in other respects, made a heavy loss on the voyage, from which he recovered nothing.

As soon as possible after Dermer’s unexpected arrival in England, he was again fitted out and sent to join Rocroft, who had meanwhile gone to Virginia. Having missed his associate in the enterprise, whom he had expected to find at Monhegan, Dermer sailed along the coast, making observations, from Sagadahoc to Martha’s Vineyard, and then on to Virginia. Finding Rocroft dead, he wintered there, and went back to New England in the spring.⁶⁵ Apparently on this visit, he returned Squanto to his native Plymouth, where Dermer seems to have wished to plant. “I would,” he wrote, “that the first plantation might hear be seated, if ther come to the number of 50 persons, or upward”—a desire which was to be fulfilled within a few months by the coming of the Pilgrims.

Meanwhile, the colony in South Virginia, at Jamestown, had been passing through a long series of troubles, which on more than one occasion had nearly ended its career. Those in its first years led the company to publish A True and Sincere Declaration as to the affairs of the settlement, in which the form of government was given as one of the roots of the evils which had “shaken so tender a body.”⁶⁶ As a result of changes effected by the two subsequent charters, which they obtained in 1609 and 1612, the London patentees were incorporated as a joint-stock body, and their territory increased to a strip four hundred miles wide, extending from coast to coast, which they were empowered to grant to others.⁶⁷ The old Royal Council was replaced by one elected by the members of the company, thus becoming subject, not to the king, but to the fifty-six city companies, and to the six hundred and fifty-nine individuals, who formed the membership of the enterprise at the time of the 1612 charter. Governmental powers were also bestowed upon it, and the colony thus became a proprietary province, with a trading company as proprietor.⁶⁸

The unfortunate results of the recent voyages in which Gorges had been interested, so far from dampening his ardor, had made him more anxious than ever to go on with his efforts. The governmental changes in the charter for South Virginia, together, perhaps, with the enlargement of its bounds, moved him to apply for a new charter for the northern plantation.⁶⁹ A dispute in which he had become involved with the southern company, regarding its rights to fish within the limits assigned to the North Virginia patentees, which rights he denied, had won for him the hostility of a part of the Virginia Company’s membership. As the new charter for which he had applied contained a clause giving the New England Company a monopoly of the fishing along their entire section of the coast, it was bitterly attacked by the southerners, who had annually gone to the northern fishing-grounds for an important part of their year’s supplies. The dispute was taken into Parliament, where Gorges defended himself with ability, and thence to the King. The factional