The Beginners of a Nation Part 3

In December, 1606, there lay at Blackwall, below London, the Susan Constant, of one hundred tons, the G.o.dspeed, of forty tons, and the little pinnace Discovery, of but twenty tons--three puny s.h.i.+ps to bear across the wintry Atlantic the beginners of a new nation. The setting forth of these argonauts produced much excitement in London. Patriotic feeling was deeply stirred, public prayers were offered for the success of the expedition, sermons appropriate to the occasion were preached, and the popular feeling was expressed in a poem by Michael Drayton. Even those who were too sober to indulge the vain expectations of gold mines and spice islands that filled the imaginations of most Englishmen on this occasion could say, as Lord Bacon did later: "It is with the kingdoms on earth as it is with the kingdom of heaven: sometimes a grain of mustard seed proves a great tree. Who can tell?" On the 19th of that most tempestuous December the little fleet weighed anchor and ran down on an ebb tide, no doubt, as one may nowadays see s.h.i.+ps rush past Blackwall toward the sea. Never were men engaged in a great enterprise doomed to greater sorrows.

From the time they left the Thames the s.h.i.+ps were tossed and delayed by tempests, while the company aboard was rent by factious dissensions.

II.

[Sidenote: The laws and orders.]

Those who shaped the destinies of the colony had left little undone that inventive stupidity could suggest to a.s.sure the failure of the enterprise. King James, who was frivolously fond of puttering in novel projects, had personally framed a code of unwise laws and orders. The supremacy of the sovereign and the interests of the Church were pedantically guarded, but the colony was left without any ruler with authority enough to maintain order. The private interest of the individual, the most available of all motives to industry, was merged in that of the commercial company to which Virginia had been granted.

All the produce of the colony was to go into a common stock for five years, and the emigrants, men without families, were thrown into a semi-monastic trading community like the Hanseatic agencies of the time, with the saving element of a strong authority left out. Better devices for promoting indolence and aggravating the natural p.r.o.neness to dissension of men in hard circ.u.mstances could scarcely have been hit upon. Anarchy and despotism are the inevitable alternatives under such a communistic arrangement, and each of these ensued in turn.

III.

[Sidenote: Character of the emigrants.]

[Sidenote: Smith's Gen. Hist., iii, c. i and c. xii.]

[Sidenote: Advertis.e.m.e.nts for Planters of New Eng., p. 5.]

[Sidenote: Comp. Briefe Declaration in Pub. Rec. Off., Sainsbury i, 66; and New Life of Va.]

[Sidenote: Essay on Plantations.]

The people sent over in the first years were for the most part utterly unfit. Of the first hundred, four were carpenters, there was a blacksmith, a tailor, a barber, a bricklayer, a mason, a drummer.

There were fifty-five who ranked as gentlemen, and four were boys, while there were but twelve so-called laborers, including footmen, "that never did know what a day's work was." The company is described by one of its members as composed of poor gentlemen, tradesmen, serving men, libertines, and such like. "A hundred good workmen were better than a thousand such gallants," says Captain Smith. Of the moral character of the first emigrants no better account is given. It was perhaps with these men in view that Bacon declared it "a shameful and unblessed thing" to settle a colony with "the sc.u.m of the people."

IV.

[Sidenote: The arrival.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1607.]

[Sidenote: Percy, in Purchas, p. 1689.]

The s.h.i.+ps sailed round by the Canaries, after the fas.h.i.+on of that time, doubling the distance to Virginia. They loitered in the West Indies to "refresh themselves" and quarrel, and they did not reach their destination until seedtime had well-nigh pa.s.sed. They arrived on the 6th of May, according to our style. Driven into Hampton Roads by a storm, they sailed up the wide mouth of a river which they called the James, in honor of the king. At that season of the year the banks must have shown ma.s.ses of the white flowers of the dogwood, mingled with the pink-purple blossoms of the redbud against the dark primeval forest. Wherever they went ash.o.r.e the newcomers found "all the ground bespread with many sweet and delicate flowers of divers colors and kinds." The sea-weary voyagers concluded that "heaven and earth had never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation."

[Sidenote: The first meetings with Indians.]

[Sidenote: Percy, in Purchas iv, pp. 1685, 1686.]

They were like people in an enchanted land--all was so new and strange. On the first landing of a small party they had a taste of savage warfare. "At night, when wee were going aboard, there came the savages creeping from the Hills like Beares, with their Bowes in their Mouthes, charged us very desperately, hurt Captain Gabrill Archer in both hands, and a Sayler in two places of the body very dangerous.

After they had spent their arrowes, and felt the sharpness of our shot, they retired into the Woods with a great noise and so left us."

[Ill.u.s.tration: James River.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1607.]

But the newly arrived did not find all the Indians hostile. The chief of the Rappahannocks came to welcome them, marching at the head of his train, piping on a reed flute, and clad in the fantastic dress of an Indian dandy. He wore a plate of copper on the shorn side of his head.

The hair on the other side was wrapped about with deer's hair dyed red, "in the fas.h.i.+on of a rose." Two long feathers "like a pair of horns" were stuck in this rosy crown. His body was stained crimson, his face painted blue and besmeared with some glistering pigment which to the greedy eyes of the English seemed to be silver ore. He wore a chain of beads, or wampum, about his neck, and his ears were "all behung with bracelets of pearls." There also depended from each ear a bird's claw set with copper--or "gold," adds the narrator, indulging a delightful dubiety.

[Sidenote: Purchas i, 686 and following.]

During the period of preliminary exploration every trait of savage life was eagerly observed by the English. The costume, the wigwams, and most of all the ingenious weapons of wood and stone, gave delight to the curiosity of the newcomers.

V.

[Sidenote: Founding of Jamestown.]

[Sidenote: Note 1.]

[Sidenote: Relatyon of the Discovery of our River, Am. Antiq. Soc., iv, 61.]

The colonists chose for the site of their town what was then a malarial peninsula; it has since become an island. The place was naturally defended by the river on all sides, except where a narrow stretch of sand made a bridge to the main. Its chief advantage in the eyes of the newcomers was that the deep water near the sh.o.r.e made it possible to moor the s.h.i.+ps by merely tying them up to trees on the river bank. Here the settlers planted cotton and orange trees at once, and experimental potatoes, melons, and pumpkins, but they postponed sowing grain until about the first of June in our reckoning.

[Sidenote: The winter of misery.]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1607.]

[Sidenote: Purchas, p. 1690.]

They took up their abode in hastily built cabins roofed with sedge or bark, and in ragged tents. The poorer sort were even fain to shelter themselves in mere burrows in the ground. Ill provided at the start, the greater part of their food was consumed by the seamen, who lingered to gather comminuted mica for gold. In this hard environment, rent by faction, dest.i.tute of a competent leader and of any leader with competent authority, the wonder is that of this little company a single man survived the winter. "There never were Englishmen left in any foreign country in such misery as we were in this new-discovered Virginia," says George Percy, brother to the Earl of Northumberland. A pint of worm-eaten barley or wheat was allowed for a day's ration.

This was made into pottage and served out at the rate of one small ladleful at each meal. "Our drink was water, our lodgings castles in the air," says Smith. The misery was aggravated by a constant fear of attack from the Indians, who had been repulsed in an energetic a.s.sault made soon after the landing of the English. It was necessary for each man to watch every third night "lying on the cold, bare ground," and this exposure in a fever swamp, with the slender allowance of food of bad quality and the brackish river water, brought on swellings, dysenteries, and fevers. Sometimes there were not five men able to bear arms. "If there were any conscience in men," says Percy, "it would make their hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men without relief every day and night for the s.p.a.ce of about six weeks." The living were hardly able to bury the dead, whose bodies were "trailed out like dogs." Half of the hundred colonists died, and the survivors were saved by the Indians, who, having got a taste of muskets and cannon in their early attack on Jamestown, now brought in supplies of game, corn, persimmons, and other food, to trade for the novel trinkets of the white men.

VI.

[Sidenote: Emergence of Captain John Smith.]

Peril and adversity bring the capable man to the front. The colony proceeded, by means of the technicalities habitually used in those days, to rid itself of its president, Wingfield, a man of good intentions but with no talents suitable to a place of such difficulty.

Slowly, by one change and then another, the leaders.h.i.+p fell into the hands of Captain John Smith. During the voyage he had drawn upon himself the jealousy of the others, probably by his boastful and self-a.s.serting habit of speech. When the list of councilors, till then kept secret, was opened at Jamestown and his name was found in it, he was promptly excluded by his a.s.sociates. It was only on the intercession of the clergyman, Hunt, that he was at length admitted to the Council.

His paradoxical character has been much misunderstood. Those who discredit the historical accuracy of Captain Smith's narratives consider his deeds of no value. It is the natural result and retribution of boasting that the real merit of the boaster is cast into the rubbish heap of contempt along with his false pretensions.

On the other hand, those who appreciate Smith's services to the colony in its dire extremities believe that the historical authority of such a man must be valid.

[Sidenote: His romantic tendencies.]

His character, double and paradoxical as it is, presents no insoluble enigma if we consider the forces of nature and of habit underlying its manifestations. According to his own highly colored narrative, he had fed his fervid imagination on romances of chivalry. The first natural result in a youth so energetic as he, was that he should set out to emulate the imaginary heroes of whom he had read. It was equally a matter of course that a man of his vanity should exaggerate his own adventures to the size of those that had excited his admiration. The same romantic turn of the imagination that sent him a-wandering after exploits in Flanders and in the wars with the Turks, in Barbary, and in Ireland, made his every adventure seem an exploit of heroic size.

Such a man is valuable when boldness and aggressive action are in request; to relate facts where autobiography is involved he is little fitted.

[Sidenote: His story of his own life.]

According to Smith's own narrative, he was robbed and s.h.i.+pwrecked at sea; he slew three infidel champions in single combat and cut off their heads, just for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the ladies; he was made captive by the Turks and escaped by slaying his master with a flail; he encountered pirates; in the plunder of a s.h.i.+p he secured by the grace of G.o.d a box of jewels; and, to round off his story, he was beloved in romance fas.h.i.+on by a fair Turkish lady, one Tragabigzanda; befriended by a Russian lady, the good Calamata; and, later, was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the open jaws of death by the devotion of the lovely Princess Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhatan, of Virginia. What more could one ask? Here are the elements of all the romances. But, to crown all, he emulated the misadventure of the prophet Jonah, and he even out-Jonahed Jonah. He got ash.o.r.e by mere swimming without the aid of a whale, when cast overboard by Catholic pilgrims to appease a tempest. Never any other wanderer since the safe return of Ulysses pa.s.sed through such a succession of marvelous escapes as this young John Smith. His accidents and achievements, even without exaggeration, were fairly notable, doubtless, but they are forever obscured by his vices of narration.

[Sidenote: Interest in colonization.]

[Sidenote: His character.]