CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| Introduction: Old Bristol | [1] |
| [Part I]—Simeon Potter and the Prince Charles of Lorraine | |
| 1—Simeon Potter | [37] |
| 2—Letter of Father Fauque | [48] |
| [Part II]—Norwest John and the Voyage of the Juno | |
| 1—Norwest John | [97] |
| 2—Voyage of the Juno | [100] |
| [Part III]—James de Wolf and the Privateer Yankee | |
| 1—James De Wolf | [205] |
| 2—Journal of the Yankee | [225] |
| Index | [289] |
TALES OF AN OLD SEA PORT
INTRODUCTION: OLD BRISTOL
From the earliest days of the Plymouth Colony the name Mount Hope Lands has been applied to the peninsula in Narragansett Bay of which Bristol, Rhode Island, is the chief town. The history of this town is more crowded with notable incident than that of any other in New England. First and most picturesque is the story of the Norsemen. Around Mount Hope the legends of the Norsemen cluster, shadowy, vague, elusive, and yet altogether fascinating. Only legends they are and must remain.
After the lapse of a thousand years of changing climates and of varying shores no man can definitely locate the Vinland of the Vikings. Many have attempted to do so, and, like the late Professor E. N. Horsford,[1] have established their theses to their own satisfaction and the satisfaction of the present dwellers in their Vinland, but they have not succeeded in convincing any one else. One of the latest writers[2] approaching the subject without local prejudice, and judging of the past by the ever changing present, will have it that the physical conditions of the lands around Narragansett Bay in the eleventh century were such as to make it more than probable that the “Hop” of the Norsemen is the Mount Hope of today.[3] In his conclusions all good Bristolians, yea more, all good Rhode Islanders, cheerfully join. Scandinavian writers insist that the name “Mount Hope” is of Norse origin. They assert that it is only an English spelling of the Indian name Montop, or Monthaup, and they are probably correct in their assertion. The Indians had no written language and our Pilgrim ancestors spelled the Indian words as they pleased, sometimes in half a dozen ways upon the same page. They go on to say that the termination “hop” was the name which Thorfinn and his companions gave to this region when they wintered here in 1008, and they bring forward the old Norse sagas to prove it. This is the story as the sagas tell it:
In the year of Our Lord 1000 the Norsemen first visited the shores of Vinland. They came from Greenland, a hundred years and more after their countrymen had discovered and colonized Iceland. Their ship was an open boat from fifty to seventy-five feet long, similar to the one dug from the sands at Sandefjord, Norway, in 1880, which is preserved in the museum of the university at Christiania. It was propelled by oars and had a short mast amidships on which was spread a small square sail. Both mast and sail were used only when the wind was fair. They came creeping along from headland to headland, seldom venturing out of sight of land in the unfamiliar seas. The mariner’s compass was then unknown, except perhaps to the Chinese, and the art of propelling a boat against the wind by “tacking” had not been developed, unless possibly by those same Chinese. It would have been impossible to tack in one of the Viking ships. In the first place the sail area was too small and in the second place the steering was all done from one side. A long steering oar was fastened upon a fulcrum about two feet long on the right side of the boat, the steer-board, starboard side. On one tack the oar would have been useless because submerged, on the other equally useless because it could not go deep enough to “grip” the water. To men accustomed to the icy Arctic seas, voyages southward held out no terrors; they were only pleasant summer excursions.
Thirty-five men made up the party and their leader was Leif Ericson. His purpose was to explore the coasts which his countryman, Biarni Heriulfson, had seen several years before, when in attempting to cross from Iceland to Greenland adverse winds had driven him to lands lying far to the south, possibly the island of Newfoundland. Leif was sailing in Biarni’s ship which he had bought for the voyage. The first shores sighted they conjectured to be those which Biarni had seen. They offered no attractions. The explorers called the country Helluland, the Land of Broad Stones, and passed on to Markland, the Land of Woods, which may have been Nova Scotia. A few more days brought them to an island where they noticed a peculiar sweetness in the dew. They may have been the first “Off Islanders” to land upon Nantucket, which is noted for its honey-dew. Following the coast they came to a place “where a river flowed out of a lake.” The region was inviting but the tide was low and the explorers were obliged to wait until high water before they could pass over the broad shallows into the lake beyond. Here they disembarked and erected temporary habitations which soon gave place to permanent dwellings when they determined to winter at that place. The new houses were easily constructed from the stones which abundantly covered the fields as they do even to this day.
The place seemed a paradise to the hardy voyagers. Fish of many kinds leaped from the waters of the river and bay. Salmon larger than any they had before seen were especially abundant. Many wild animals roamed through the forests, as the deer wander through the woods and pastures of Rhode Island at the present time. The denizens of the frigid zone rightly imagined that cattle might easily find provender throughout the winter, in a climate so soft and mild. They experienced no severe cold; “no snow fell and the grass did not wither much.” They had chanced upon one of the mild winters with which we are occasionally favored. Three or four times in the last thirty years the Mount Hope Lands have known seasons when there were but few snow storms and those slight, seasons when in the sheltered nooks of the forest the grass did not wither much. The next party encountered “real New England weather,” and doubtless objurgated Leif’s party for romancing concerning the climate. “The equality in length of days was greater than in Iceland or Greenland. On the shortest day the sun remained above the horizon from 7.30 to 4.30.”[4]
The dwellings having been completed, Leif divided his men into two parties in order to explore the country. One party was to remain at home while the other went abroad, and the exploring party was always to return at nightfall. Especial charge was given the men to keep together. The fear of the unknown was a marked characteristic of the Dark Ages, even among the Norsemen who dreaded no human foes. One of the party was a German, Tyrker by name, a kind of foster father of Leif. He was missing one night when the explorers came home and Leif at once started in search of him with a party of twelve men. They were soon met by Tyrker, whom they welcomed with great joy. But the man acted most strangely. At first he spoke only in German, his mother tongue, and rolled his eyes and made strange facial contortions when they did not understand what he said. After a time the Norse language came back to him and he explained his queer behavior. He had chanced upon some wild grapes and the memories his discovery brought back were too much for him. Whether he had found some of the fox-grapes which are still so common in New England, or whether, as Professor Fernald conjectures, the fruit was either a wild currant or a rock cranberry, we can not know; but the adventurers were immensely pleased at his discovery. They filled the “long boat,” which was carried with them as a tender, with the dried fruit, when in the early spring they returned to Brattahlid, their home port. Because of the grapes the name Vinland was given to the region.