Howsoever they speed, they undertake an hazardous attempt, considering the savages have been this year, as those to the north use to be by the French, furnished (in exchange of skins) by some unworthy people of our nation with pieces, shot, powder, swords, blades and most deadly arrow heads; and with shallops from the French, which they can manage as well as any Christian, as also their pieces, it being an ordinary thing with them to hit a bird flying. And how little they are to be trusted here as well as in Virginia, may appear by the killing lately of the master of a ship of Plymouth[52] with eighteen of his company among the islands toward the northeast, which was the cause that the same ship lost her fishing voyage and went empty home.
Now, as concerning the soil, it is all along, as far as I could perceive, rocky, rough and uneven; and, that as I hear, from a little on this side [of] Cape Cod as far as to Newfoundland, being all along the sea coast a labyrinth of innumerable islands or broken lands rent in sunder by intricate channels, rivers and arms of the sea. Upon these rocky grounds do grow naturally fir, spruce, birch and other trees, and in some open places abundance of rasps, gooseberries, hurts[53] and such fruit; in other places, high[54] rank grass for the grazing of cattle, to make hay withal; as likewise, great plenty of pease like our English pease, growing naturally without any tilth. Upon these rocky places, there is passing good soil, yet culturable with hoe and spade rather than with the plow. Yet they say that up the river Prinaquie[55] there is a place of even champian[56] country without any rocks, abounding with variety of excellent timber, and like at Anquam[57] nearer unto Cape Ann,[58] a level of more beauty and largeness.
Within an infinity of rocks may be intombed abundance of rich minerals, among which silver and copper are supposed to be the chief. Out of these rocks do gush out delicate streams of water which, together with the temper of the air, maketh this place marvelous wholesome in summer—which is the cause I have not known one man sick all the time I was there, save only that villain which accused you falsely concerning Swabber, and died (aboard the Bona Nova) as he had lived, frantic.[59] Yet is the air too cold here for the summer, but with an easterly wind subject to fogs and mists.
The people[60] seem to be of one race with those in Virginia, both in respect of their qualities and language. They are great lovers of their children and people, and very revengeful of wrongs offered. They make their canoes, their arrows, their bows, their tobacco pipes and other their implements far more neat and artificially than in those parts. They dress, also, and paint leather; and make trousers, buskins, shoes with far greater curiosity. Corn they set none in their parts toward the north, and that is the cause why Indian corn, pease and such like is the best truck[61] for their skins—and then in winter especially, when hunger doth most pinch them, which is the season when the French do use to trade with them. They have the same names of numbers with them in the south. Accamus (in the southern language, a dog) they call here Aramouse. For Malta (no), they pronounce Madda; for Matcheray (nought), Mathat; for Mitchin (to eat), Mitterim; for Kijos (the sun), Hijos; and many other like or self-same words spoken by the rebels[62] of the South Colony. Neither is their manner of singing and dancing much different. Their babes here also they bind to a board and set them up against a wall, as they do here in the south. Likewise, their head they anoint with oil mixed with vermillion; and are of the same hair, eyes and skin that those are of.
EMMANUEL ALTHAM
Emmanuel Altham (1600-1635/1636)
Emmanuel Altham was born a gentleman, though his family had its connections with commerce and the legal profession rather than the titled aristocracy. His two older brothers successively held the family’s country seat at Mark Hall, Latton, about twenty miles north of London. As a younger son, Altham inherited little of his parents’ wealth and so, over objections by his relatives, sought excitement and his fortune in the expanding world of English overseas trade. Altham began as an investor in the Company of Adventurers for New Plymouth, served for a time as agent of the Company, and became an admirer of the colonists and New England with such ardor that he could more easily envision the colony’s future success than see the hardships which the planters were enduring when he first arrived. He went to the New World with a sense of honor, moreover, rather than the qualities of a hard-driving trader. Perhaps he was not a typical Adventurer: his devotion to the cause of colonization and taste for the heroic side of commerce rather than the ledger went beyond the ordinary, and helped keep English backing for the Pilgrim plantation alive when profit did not.
Altham crossed the Atlantic to Plymouth the first time in the summer of 1623. He went as “Captain” of the Little James (James Bridge, master), the pinnace of about 44 tons which the Company was sending to the plantation for use in fishing and fur-trading expeditions. In 1623, the expert in charge of sailing a ship was her “master,” and if there was a captain, he had command over the military and mercantile affairs of the voyage. Since his ship carried authorization to operate as a privateer, Altham had the decision about taking prizes as well as the transaction of business. After a year in New England waters, described in the first three of Altham’s letters printed here, he recrossed the ocean with the ship. She was seized for the satisfaction of debts to two of the Company’s members, Thomas Fletcher and Thomas Goffe, who sent her (but not under Altham) on a second voyage in 1625.
Altham’s fourth letter from New England describes the occasion of his second expedition, on his own. Evidently his hopes for a future with the colony faded, for he returned to England some time before July 1626 and soon afterwards began to look for employment as a soldier with the East India Company.
Through the influence of his brother, Sir Edward, he was sent to the Company’s fort at Surat and spent over two years in exploits around the Indian Ocean. The East India Company’s business was a mixture of trade and raid—competing with the Portuguese for control of port cities in India and the trade to which they gave access. The climax of these years, for Altham, was an expedition to Madagascar and Mozambique to intercept the fleet of caracks from Portugal.