Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

Vines, a hero in the best sense of the term, spent the winter of 1616–17 at a place called Winter Harbor, the exact position of which we have been unable to ascertain, though it was probably somewhere between the mouth of the Penobscot and Cape Cod. He found the Indians afflicted with a terrible disease, which had succeeded, perhaps resulted from, the awful civil war alluded to above; and by the generous kindness and scientific skill with which he alleviated their sufferings, he so won upon their affections, that he was able to travel alone in the wildest forests, secure of a hospitable reception in every wigwam.

Thus protected by an invisible armor, Vines went up the Saco River till he came to its source at Crawford’s Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; and, when the spring permitted navigation, he cruised in and out of the harbors of Maine till he had acquired a thorough knowledge of their geography.

In 1619, while Vines was still peacefully at work among the Indians, a Captain Dermer was sent out by Gorges to explore the coast of New England. Leaving his vessel at the island of Monhegan, situate about twenty miles South-west of the mouth of the Penobscot, Dermer made his coast-survey in an open pinnace, discovering and passing through the now celebrated Long Island Sound, which divides Long Island from New York and Connecticut. On his return trip, Dermer landed on Martha’s Vineyard, where he was severely wounded in a skirmish with the natives, and crossed the strip of country near Cape Cod destined to be the first home of the Pilgrim Fathers; but he did nothing to further the cause of colonization, and of his career after his voyage nothing is known beyond the fact that he died in obscurity in Virginia soon after its completion.

In 1620, the indefatigable Sir Ferdinando Gorges succeeded in obtaining a new patent for the Plymouth Company from the King, which dissolved its connection with the South Virginia Company, and gave to it all lands between the 40th and 48th degrees of north latitude; thus, as those who have carefully followed the course of our narrative will recognize at once, encroaching alike on the rights of the Southern English Company and of the French, who were now firmly establishing themselves in Canada. Regardless, however, of the clamor and excitement caused by the concession it had won from the English monarch, the new Plymouth Company lost not a moment in availing itself of its extended privileges; and in 1621, the year of the arrival in New England of the Pilgrim Fathers, a grant, to which the name of Nova Scotia was given, was made by it to Sir William Alexander of all lands between Cape Sable and the St. Lawrence.

The Scotch colonists sent out by Sir William to people his new territory, found the spots most suitable for settlement already occupied by fishermen of different nationalities; and, failing to obtain any recognition of their claims, they shortly returned to their native country. The sea-coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts were, however, still free to the emigrant; and in 1623, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had hitherto reaped no personal benefit in return for all his efforts on behalf of his Company, obtained from it, in conjunction with John Mason, a grant called Laconia, embracing all lands between the Merrimac and Kennebec, and stretching away to the great Canadian lakes, of which the first had been discovered by the Frenchman, Champlain, in 1608. A vessel bearing a number of emigrants started for New England in the summer of 1623, and, disembarking on the shores of New Hampshire, founded the two settlements of Portsmouth and Dover.

In the same year, Robert Gorges, a son of Ferdinando, was appointed governor-general over the whole of the lands belonging to the Plymouth Company, and received as his private share in these lands three hundred square miles on Massachusetts Bay. The governor did not, however, care for his new possessions, and, after a flying visit to them, ceded them to Captain Levett, one of his assistants, who made a thorough exploration of Maine, and built a house on its shores, to which he gave the name of York. A permanent English settlement was also founded in Maine, in 1625, by two merchants of Bristol, Robert Aldworth and Giles Eldridge by name, who, having bought the Monhegan Island and a neighboring point of the mainland, quickly converted their desolate shores into flourishing colonies. In 1630, too, we find our old friend, Richard Vines, rewarded at last for his long years of work among the Indians by a grant of land on the Saco, while an estate of similar extent on the other side of the river was given to his comrade, John Oldham. From these two concessions sprung the towns of Biddeford and Saco; and looking round upon the results obtained at various points by different members of the Plymouth Company, under the energetic superintendence of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, before the expiration of its patent in 1635, we find English communities growing up throughout the length and breadth of Maine. It is round the little band of Puritans, however, who settled, by sufferance as it were, on the rocky shores of Cape Cod, in the neighboring province of Massachusetts, that the most absorbing interest gathers; and their history—as that of men who founded religious and political liberty in the future United States, and who are proudly claimed as ancestors by the noblest of our American cousins—must be given in some detail here.

To account for the presence of English Puritans on American shores, it is necessary to go back a few years, to the beginning of the reign of James I., when the brief respite from persecution, enjoyed during the closing years of Elizabeth’s life by the aspirants after a purer ritual than that sanctioned by the State, was succeeded by yet greater oppression than any hitherto endured.

At the little village of Scrooby, in the midland counties of England, a small body of separatists, under the ministry of William Brewster, were in the habit of meeting regularly for worship, and by their zeal and good works were winning to their own persuasion large numbers of the common people, when their elder and two of their chief members were summoned before the Ecclesiastical Commission of York for heresy, and condemned to pay a fine of £20 each. This was but the beginning of evils; fines were succeeded by imprisonment and indignities of every kind; and warned by previous experience—some of their co-religionists had fled to Holland a few years before—the Scrooby separatists resolved, like them, to seek a refuge in the Protestant Republic. To the number of 200, the Puritans, most of them well-to-do men, disposed as quietly as they could of their lands and houses, and agreeing to meet at Boston, in Lincolnshire, stealthily made their way from the homes they were willing to forsake rather than abjure their belief.

A large number succeeded in embarking on board a vessel bound for Holland in Boston Harbor, but they were betrayed by the captain, who handed them over to some officers in quest of them. They were searched, robbed of all their valuables, and marched back to Boston. A month’s imprisonment was succeeded by a second attempt at escape, ending even more disastrously than the first. A Dutch ship was this time engaged to convey the sufferers for their faith to Holland, and it was arranged that the embarkation should take place at a lonely spot somewhere between Grimsby and Hull. The women and children were sent to the rendezvous in a small vessel; the men marched thither in small parties by land. All seemed likely to go well. The two detachments met on the low sands of the Lincoln shores, and eager greetings were exchanged between husbands and wives, fathers and little ones. The men were embarking on the Dutch vessel, on which their families were to join them immediately, when a loud tumult suddenly arose on the beach, and down rushed a mob of country people, wild with delight at having arrived in time to cut off the heretics.

The few men already on the Dutch vessel were carried off, whether they would or no, by its affrighted master; and of the remainder, some endeavored to protect the women and children, while others hurried off in different directions and escaped. From one magistrate to another the luckless emigrants who had been taken prisoners were marched, bearing themselves so nobly and simply in their trial, that many were won over to their belief, and the hearts of others, even in those unrelenting days, were touched. No magistrate would convict them of any worse crime than a desire to be with those belonging to them, and, after much wandering to and fro, a public subscription was got up on their behalf, which enabled them to take ship for Amsterdam, where, in the winter of 1608, nearly the whole of the original Scrooby congregation met once more. Even in Amsterdam, however, their rest was not to be; for, in the little English community which had already settled there, disputes, some of them most trivial in their character, had arisen, and the Scrooby people had therefore little heart to join it. They had had enough of conflict with foes at home to make them sick of strife, and more than sick of strife among brethren; and so, with their pastor at their head, they moved on to Leyden.