Waymouth, to trade and explore. Waymouth followed up one of the great rivers, supposed to be the Kennebec, and enthusiastically recommended its valley for settlement. Securing the usual home freight of fish and furs, he returned, taking with him five natives. Waymouth has suffered much obloquy from the report that these natives were carried away for slaves; but he himself says he took them to England that they might be taught as interpreters for future expeditions. It is certain that Gorges took three of the number into his family, and kept them three years; and this benevolent man was wont to say that the training of these interpreters had alone rendered possible his future schemes of colonization.

In 1607 Gorges and the cruel Judge Popham planted a colony at Phillipsburg (or Sagadahoc, as is supposed), by the mouth of the Kennebec. Two ships came, "The Gift of God" and the "Mary and John," bringing a hundred persons. Through August they found all delightful; but when the ships went back in December, fifty-five of the number returned to England weary of their experiment and fearful of the cold. The remaining colony of forty-five persons was curiously overweighted in its attempt to maintain the aristocratic distinctions which the average English mind then thought essential. It had a president (Popham's brother), an admiral (Gilbert), a master of ordnance, a sergeant-major, a secretary, a marshal, a commander of fortifications, and a "searcher." These eight formed the council. The rest of the people had no voice or vote upon any matters whatever, either in church or state. During the winter there was one death only, but that was the president. With spring the ships returned from England. Admiral Gilbert learned that a great estate had fallen to him and called for attention. His associates were disappointed in both soil and climate, and the rigors of a Maine winter can hardly have had attractions for emigrants from the green slopes of southern England; so every soul returned with Gilbert. Notwithstanding this result, Gorges continued for more than thirty years to push explora

1609-14-]

HUDSON. - BLOK.-SMITH.

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tion and emigration to that region; but his ambition and liberality ever resulted in disappointment and loss.1

Meanwhile, in 1609, Henry Hudson, an English sailor in Dutch employ, came over in his galliot the "Half Moon," and explored the river which bears his name. From 1610 to 1614 Admiral Blok, in the same service, examined Long Island Sound and the rivers emptying into it; he even pushed his researches as far as Boston Harbor, from which fact the Dutch set up a claim, "by right of discovery," to all the territory from the fortieth to the forty-fifth parallel, naming the whole region "Nieu Nederland." The smaller district generally understood by New Netherland was not specifically so called until 1623, when a permanent settlement was begun there.2

In 1614 the celebrated John Smith came to the Maine coast with a couple of vessels, on a venture made by four persons. Soon finding that the mine of gold and copper which he had been specially charged to investigate lay beyond terrestrial research, and that the specified alternative of whaling would be a "costly conclusion," he set his two crews (forty-nine men and boys) at catching and curing fish, of which they took sixty thousand within a month. He then, in an open boat with a few men, explored the coast from the Penobscot to Plymouth and Cape Cod; but while reconnoitring traded thriftily, gathering in cleven hundred beaver-skins. The map of New England which he then prepared, makes a surprising approach to accuracy, considering how little could be positively known; and this map was used by the Pilgrims.

Smith found at least forty native villages along the coast, and more than two hundred well-wooded islands, many of the latter "planted with corn, groves, mulberries, savage gardens;

1 The same spring in which Maine was deserted because too cold, the French were colonizing at Quebec with great confidence, that place being farther south than Paris.

2 In 1614 Blok's ship "Tiger" was burned with its cargo in New York Harbor. The following winter he built there a barque of sixteen tons, called "The Unrest," and went home in her. Blok doubtless visited Plymouth, as some Dutch navigator made a map of it at about that time. It is worthy of note that this map, like Champlain's, shows Clark's and Saquish as two islands.

the sea-coast, as you pass, shows you corn-fields and great

If fo; in Braße foo foft Smiths Acts to beare)

I fix thy Fame,to make Braße Steele out weare.

troops of well-proportioned people." He adds: "I would

1614-16.]

SMITH'S EXPEDITION. - BRAWNDE.

151

rather live here than anywhere." (This was before the ravages of the plague.) On this trip Smith sustained two attacks from the Neponsets of the Cohasset region; the first seems to have been bloodless, but the second resulted in the death of one native. Smith gave to many points along his route good English names which are still in use, but applied to different places from those to which he assigned them. Only three remain as he affixed them, and they are: Plymouth, Charles River, and Cape Ann. This exploration is commemorated by a small monument lately erected at the Isles of Shoals, once called "Smith's Isles," a name which should have been retained.1

Loading his own ship with the furs, oil, and cod-fish collected in his absence, Smith sailed for home, leaving Hunt to get a cargo of dry fish and take it in the other ship to Spain. In doing this Hunt went to Cape Cod Bay and there seized twenty-seven natives for slaves, as related in connection with the European's grave found on Cape Cod by the Pilgrims. Smith expressed intense indignation at this act of Hunt's, and might well do so, on business grounds as well as from humanity; for this deed proved the cause of serious disasters to future voyagers, and put the Pilgrims in great peril at "First Encounter." Smith continued through life an energetic friend of New England colonization, though his most promising plans brought him only disappointment. Notwithstanding a tendency to inveracity as to his personal exploits, Smith was a brave and noble man, whose services are worthy of honorable commemoration from Maine to Virginia.2

In 1616 Captain Edward Brawnde was at "Sodquin" and Monhegan, in a ship of two hundred tons called the "Nachen" (?), "bound about Cape Cod for the discovery of certain peril which is told by the savages to be there." He was under the orders of John Smith, "Admiral of New Eng

He changed Cape Cod to "Cape James," and called the Cape harbor "Milford Haven." (See Map.)

2 Smith was son of George Smith, of Willoughby, and was born 1579; died 1631.

land." The "certain peril" was the Malabar shoals, off Monamoy.

In 1619 the indefatigable, if visionary, Gorges sent one of Smith's captains, Thomas Dermer, to join one Rocroft already on the Maine coast, and take charge of a trading and exploring expedition. On arriving, Dermer found that Rocroft, after setting ashore a part of his crew for mutiny, had abandoned his post and gone to Virginia. Dermer, loading his own ship (of two hundred tons) with fish and furs, sent her home; then with a few men, and Tisquantum as interpreter, proceeded in an open pinnace of only five tons to re-explore the coast from the Kennebec to Cape Cod, giving attention to the inlets and harbors. On this trip he redeemed the two French sailors already noticed on page 78.

Dermer accompanied Tisquantum to the latter's home at Patuxet (Plymouth), where, alas! the returning wanderer found no one to welcome him. Dermer says: "When I arrived at my savage's native country, finding all dead, I travelled almost a day's journey westward to a place called Namasket (Middleborough), where, finding inhabitants, I despatched a messenger a day's journey west to Pokanoket, which bordereth on the sea, whence came to see me two kings attended with a guard of fifty armed men, who being well satisfied with what my savage and I discoursed unto them, and being desirous of novelty, gave me content in whatsoever I demanded." These two kings were, of course, Massasoit and Quadequina, who a year and a half later gratified their love of "novelty" in their visit to the Pilgrims. The common people were much prejudiced against the English on account of an unprovoked slaughter made by a shipmaster. The French had possessed their minds with the idea that he was English; but Dermer doubted his having been so. The natives were bent upon killing the captain, and indeed finally spared him only upon Tisquantum's earnest entreaty.

After wintering in Virginia, Dermer returned to Cape Cod for trading and observation. In July, 1620, he likened the soil of Eastham and Brewster to the best tobacco land of Virginia,