It was an age of licensed commercial monopolies, as well as of other economic experiments. In the year 1600 Chauvin obtained the exclusive right to prosecute the fur-trade in the New Land to the west, and united with him a St. Malo merchant, Pontgravé. They made two lucrative voyages, but established no settlement. Samuel de Champlain, in Pontgravé's company, went out in 1603, ascending the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal. |De Monts' colony.| Later (this same year) De Monts, a Calvinist, was given the viceroyalty and the fur-trade monopoly of Acadia,—between the fortieth and sixtieth degrees of latitude,—and religious freedom was granted there for Huguenots, though the Indians were to be instructed in the Romish faith. De Monts and his strangely assorted party of vagabonds and gentlemen first settled on an island, near the present boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, in the fall of 1604, but the following spring moved to Port Royal,—now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. This, the first French agricultural colony yet planted in America, suffered disaster after disaster; but although Port Royal was abandoned in 1607, the germ of colonization lived. |Quebec established.| In 1608, Champlain—who had, four years before, while in the employ of De Monts, explored the coast as far south as Cape Cod—set up a permanent French post upon the gloomy cliff at Quebec. Soon the Jesuits came; and by the time the "Mayflower" had reached New England, New France was established beyond a doubt, and French influence was penetrating inland. Wandering savages from the Upper Lakes, nearly a thousand miles in the interior, had at last seen the white man and begun to feel his power.
14. English Exploration (1498-1584).
English interests at Newfoundland.
England would have followed up Cabot's discovery of North America with more vigor had not Henry VII., being a Catholic prince, hesitated to set aside the Pope's bull giving the new continent to Spain. His subjects, however, made large hauls of fish along the foggy shores of Newfoundland, and in 1502 some American savages were exhibited to him in London. Henry VIII. was at first similarly scrupulous; but when, in 1533, he got rid of his queen, Catharine of Aragon, he was free from Spanish entanglements, and aspired to make England a maritime nation. Among many other enterprises the northwest passage allured him, although nothing came of his ventures in that direction. With the accession of Edward VI. (1547) a progressive era opened. The Newfoundland fisheries were now so effectively encouraged that by 1574, under Elizabeth, from thirty to fifty English ships were making annual trips to the Grand Banks.
Elizabeth's courtiers looking towards America.
The most popular ventures among the nobles of Elizabeth's court were the northwest passage, American colonization, and freebooting voyages. Writers of voyages and travels and cartographers sprang up on every hand, the most noteworthy being Richard Eden, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Hakluyt, and Martin Frobisher. Patronized by the powerful Earl of Warwick, Frobisher in three successive voyages (1576-1578) vainly sought gold in Labrador. Francis Drake, on his famous buccaneering tour around the world, explored the Pacific coast of the United States as far north as Cape Blanco (1579), unsuccessfully searching for a short cut by water through the continent.
Gilbert's voyage.
Gilbert saw that Newfoundland must thereafter be considered as the nucleus of English settlement in America; and in 1579 Sir Humphrey, himself a soldier and a member of Parliament, accompanied by his step-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, went out to lead the way. Storms and other disasters drove them back, and it was 1583 before another squadron could be equipped. Raleigh remained in England; but Gilbert landed at St. John's, where he found that four hundred vessels of various nationalities, mainly Spanish and Portuguese, were annually engaged in the fisheries. He took possession of the island for the queen, examined the neighboring mainland, and freighted his ships with glistening rock, ignorantly declared by an unskilful expert accompanying the expedition to contain silver. Upon the return voyage the vessel carrying Gilbert was lost, the companion ship, with its worthless cargo, reaching Falmouth safely.
15. English Attempts to colonize (1584-1606).
Amadas and Barlowe.