Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

MOUNT DESERT ISLE.

A dense fog prevented the mouth of the river being perceived; and, when it cleared away, La Saussaye found himself opposite the beautiful island of Grand Manan, already visited by Champlain, and called by him Mont Desert, with the mighty rock now known as Great Head standing out against the forest-clad buttresses of the Green and Newport Mountains. So beautiful did Grand Manan appear to the French visitors, and so wide a missionary field seemed opened to them on it and the neighboring islands, that La Saussaye determined to remain there, and having set up a cross as an emblem of his peaceful intentions, he set his men to work to build and plant.

But, alas! Grand Manan was within the limits of the New World already ceded to the English, and before the first crops sown by the French had had time to germinate, Captain Argall—the same who had carried off Pocahontas—sailing up the coast on one of his exploring expeditions from Virginia, heard of the infant settlement, and bore down upon it, bent on its destruction. The French, dreaming of no evil, were, some on land, others, to the number of ten, on board their vessel, at anchor off Bar Harbor.

Boarding the little ship, Argall secretly possessed himself of La Saussaye’s papers, including the royal commission under which the Frenchman had acted, and then gave orders for the bombardment of the group of houses which La Saussaye had hoped would have formed the nucleus of the church in the wilderness he had set his heart on founding.

La Saussaye and some of his missionaries were now placed in a boat and sent adrift, to find their way back to Port Royal as best they could. Near the coast of Nova Scotia they were picked up by some fishing vessels, and carried to France. Less fortunate were Father Biard, one of the Jesuit priests, and the secular members of the settlement of Mont Desert, for they were taken to Virginia by Argall, and there thrown into prison by the authorities. They were treated with every possible indignity, until their captor, fearing the consequences to himself, confessed his theft of La Saussaye’s commission, and obtained their release.

This was but the beginning of that strife between the French and English for territory belonging to neither, which finally resulted in a world-wide struggle between the two nations. A little later, Argall was sent north, with orders to “remove every landmark of France south of the forty-sixth degree;” and he accomplished his work with an energy and thoroughness worthy of a better cause. First, every trace of the French occupation was obliterated on Grand Manan; and then Port Royal, now deserted by all but a little remnant under the leadership of Biencourt, Pourtrincourt’s son, was burned to the ground.

The next European visitors to Maine were our old friend John Smith and Thomas Hunt—the shipmaster who, in 1614, made a cruise up its coasts, collecting not only the fish so plentiful in its bays and rivers, but also a number of “savages,” who were sent to Spain by Hunt, and there sold for slaves. Smith—who, as we have seen in our account of his work in Virginia was a clear-headed and far-sighted man—turned his time to better account than did his comrade, and embodied the results of a careful survey of Maine and the neighboring islands in a map, which he took to England and submitted to Charles I., urging him to inaugurate a company for the colonization of a country so rich in resources, and to give to that country the name of New England.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH’S MAP OF NEW ENGLAND.

The latter part of this advice was followed at once, and the districts now forming the six Eastern States of the Union—namely, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut—were long collectively known as New England. Its 65,000 square miles of fertile country had already been granted to the Plymouth Company by James I., in 1606, so that no new scheme of colonization was necessary; but Smith’s report so stimulated the zeal of the English that in 1615, Richard Hawkins, then President of the Northern Company, himself sailed to Maine. So terrible a civil war was at that time raging among the natives, that Hawkins effected nothing; but in the following year, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the most active members of the Company, sent out a physician named Richard Vines at his own expense, with instructions to make a settlement somewhere in New England.