well as an interest in its destinies, and sowed the seeds, of which the fruits began to ripen during his lifetime. Raleigh had suffered in health before his last undertaking. He returned broken-hearted by the defeat of his hopes, the decay of his strength, and the death of his eldest son. What shall be said of King James, who would open to an aged paralytic no hope of liberty but through the discovery of mines in Guiana? What shall be said of a monarch who could, under a sentence which had slumbered for fifteen years, order the execution of the decrepit man, whose genius and valor shone through the ravages of physical decay, and whose heart still beat with an undying love for his country? The family of the chief author of early colonization in the United States was reduced to beggary by the government of England, and he himself was beheaded. After a lapse of nearly two centuries, the state of North Carolina, in 1792, revived in its capital "THE CITY OF RALEIGH," in grateful commemoration of his name and fame. Imagination already saw beyond the Atlantic a people whose mother idiom should be the language of England. "Who knows," exclaimed Daniel, the poet-laureate of that kingdom-"Who in time knows whither we may vent The treasures of our tongue? To what strange shores May 'come refined with th' accents that are ours." In 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold, a discreet and intrepid navigator, who remained till death devoted to the English colonization of Virginia, undertook the direct voyage from the British channel to America. From the Azores, to which he was borne by contrary winds, he ran a westerly course across the Atlantic, but the weakness of his ship, the unskilfulness of his crew, and his caution, from ignorance of the ocean and the nearest land, causing him to carry but a low sail, it was only after seven weeks that he came in sight of Cape Elizabeth in Maine. Following the coast to the south-west, he skirted "an outpoint of wooded land;" and, about noon of the fourteenth of May, he anchored "near Savage rock," to the east of York harbor. There he met a Biscay shallop; and there he was visited by natives. Not finding his "purposed place,” he stood to the south, and on the morning of the fifteenth discovered the promontory which he named Cape Cod. He and four of his men went on shore; Cape Cod was the first spot in that region ever trod by Englishmen. Doubling the cape, and passing Nantucket, they touched at No Man's Land, passed round the promontory of Gay Head, naming it Dover Cliff, and entered Buzzard's bay, a stately sound which they called Gosnold's Hope. The westernmost of the islands was named Elizabeth, from the queen, a name which has been transferred to the group. Here they beheld the rank vegetation of a virgin soil: noble forests; wild fruits and flowers bursting from the earth; the eglantine, the thorn, and the honeysuckle; the wild pea, the tansy, and young sassafras; strawberries, raspberries, grape-vines-all in profusion. Within a pond upon the island lies a rocky islet; on this the adventurers built their storehouse and their fort; and the foundations of a colony were laid. The island, the pond, the islet, remain ; the shrubs are luxuriant as of old; but the forests are gone, and the ruins of the fort can no longer be discerned. A traffic with the natives on the main enabled Gosnold to lade the Concord with sassafras root, then esteemed in pharmacy as a sovereign panacea. The band, which was to have nestled on the Elizabeth islands, despairing of supplies of food, and fearing the Indians, determined not to remain. In June the party bore for England, leaving not so much as one European family between Florida and Labrador. The return voyage lasted but five weeks; and the expedition was completed in less than four months, during which entire health. had prevailed. Gosnold and his companions spread the most favorable reports of the regions which they had visited. Could it be that the passage was so safe, the climate so pleasant, the country so inviting? The merchants of Bristol, with the ready assent of Raleigh, and at the instance of Richard Hakluyt,-the enlightened friend and able documentary historian of these commercial enterprises, a man whose fame should be vindicated and asserted in the land which he helped to colonize,-determined to pursue the career of investigation. The Speedwell, a ship of fifty tons and thirty men, the Discoverer, a bark of twenty-six tons and thirteen men, under the command of Martin Pring, set sail for America on the tenth of April, 1603, a few days after the death of the queen. The ship was well provided with trinkets and merchandise, suited to a traffic with the red men, and reached the American shore among the islands of Penobscot bay. Coasting toward the west, Pring made a discovery of many of the harbors of Maine; of the Saco, the Kennebunk, and the York rivers; and the channel of the Piscataqua was examined for three or four leagues. Finding no sassafras, he steered to the south, doubled Cape Ann, and went on shore in Massachusetts; but, being still unsuccessful, he again pursued a southerly track, till he anchored in Old Town harbor, on Martha's Vineyard. Here obtaining a freight, he returned to England, after an absence of about six months, which had been free from disaster or danger. The testimony of Pring having confirmed the report of Gosnold, an expedition, promoted by the earl of Southamp ton and his brother-in-law, Lord Arundel of Wardour, was confided to George Waymouth, a careful and vigilant commander, who, in attempting a north-west passage, had already explored the coast of Labrador. Weighing anchor on Easter Sunday, 1605, on the fourteenth of May he came near the whitish, sandy promontory of Cape Cod. To escape the continual shoals in which he found himself embayed, he stood out to sea, then turned to the north, and on the seventeenth anchored to the north of Monhegan island, in sight of hills to the north-north-east on the main. On Whit Sunday he found his way among the St. George's islands into an excellent harbor, which was accessible by four passages, defended from all winds, and had good mooring upon a clay ooze, and even upon the rocks by the cliff side. The climate was agreeable; the sea yielded fish of many kinds. profusely; the tall and great trees on the islands were much observed; and the gum of the silver fir was thought to be as fragrant as frankincense; the land was of such pleasantness that many of the company wished themselves settled there; trade was carried on with the natives for sables, and skins of deer and otter and beaver. Having in the last of May discovered in his pinnace the broad, deep current of the St. George's, on the eleventh of June, Waymouth, with a gentle wind, passed up with the ship into that river for about eighteen miles, which were reckoned at six-and-twenty, and "all consented in joy" to admire its width of a half mile or a mile; its verdant borders; its gallant and spacious coves; the strength of its tide, which may have risen nine or ten feet, and was set down at eighteen or twenty. On the thirteenth he ascended in a row-boat ten miles farther, and was more and more pleased with the beauty of the fertile ground on each hand. No token was found that ever any Christian had been there before; and at the point where the river trends westward into the main he set up a memorial cross, as he had already done on the rocky shore of the St. George's islands. Well satisfied with his discoveries, on Sunday, the sixteenth of June, he sailed for England, taking with him five of the natives whom he had decoyed, to be instructed in English and to serve as guides to some future expedition. At his coming into the harbor of Plymouth he yielded up three of the natives to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the governor of that town, whose curiosity was thus directed to the shores of Maine. The returning voyagers celebrated its banks, which promised most profitable fishing; its rude people, who were willing to barter costly furs for trifles; the temperate and healthful air of the country, whose "pleasant fertility bewrayed itself to be the garden of Nature." But it was not these which tempted Gorges. He had noticed that all navigations of the English along the more southerly American coast had failed from the want of good roads and havens; these were the special marks at which he levelled; and, hearing of a region safe of approach and abounding in harbors large enough to shelter the ships of all Christendom, he aspired to the noble office of filling it with prosperous English plantations. Gorges had wealth, rank, and influence. He readily persuaded Sir John Popham, lord chief justice of England, to share his intentions. The chief justice was no novice in schemes of colonization, having "labored greatly in the last project touching the plantation of Munster" in Ireland; and they agreed together to send out each a ship to begin a plantation in the region which Waymouth had explored. Chalons, the captain employed by Gorges, in violation of his instructions, taking the southern passage, was carried by the tradewinds even to Porto Rico; and, as he turned to the north, he was captured by the Spanish fleet from Havana. The tall and well-furnished ship provided by Popham sailed from the river of Severn, under the command of Martin Pring. The able mariner, now on his second voyage to the west, disappointed of meeting Chalons, busied himself in the more perfect discovery of all the rivers and harbors along our north-eastern coast; and, on his return, he made the most favorable report of the country which he had explored. The daring and ability of these pioneers upon the ocean, who led the way to the colonization of the United States, deserve the highest admiration. The character of the prevalent winds and currents was unknown. The possibility of making a direct passage was but gradually discovered. The imagined dangers were infinite, the real dangers from tempests and shipwreck, famine and mutinies, heat and cold, diseases known and unknown, were incalculable. The ships at first employed were generally of less than one hundred tons' burden; two of those of Columbus were without a deck; Frobisher sailed in a vessel of but twenty-five tons. Columbus was cast away twice, and once remained for eight months on an island, without any communication with the civilized world; Roberval, Parmenius, Gilbert-and how many others!-went down at sea; and such was the state of the art of navigation that intrepidity and skill were unavailing against the elements without the favor of Heaven. |