USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. I > Part 5
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Cryptogams, or flowerless plants, including sea algae, are without true stamens or pistils, and propagate by spores, and these are divided and subdivided into many classes. Roots of seaweed fulfill their function when they secure the plants to a foundation, and have but little influence over their growth.
All strictly marine plants are included under the head of algae, and have been divided accordingly to their color into three great sub-orders.
No. 1, Melanospermeae .- Brown colored seaweed with olive brown spores, found growing between the tide-lines. It is very abundant in the tropics, but is also found largely in the temperate regions.
No. 2, Rhodospermeae .- Rose colored seaweed, with red and purple spores, grows in deep waters and belongs chiefly to the temperate zones. Where rhodospermeae is abundant the waters assume a rosy, scarlet or purple hue that is gorgeous in its effect. The seaweeds of this order vie in color with the delicate pink of the wild rose, the flaming scarlet of the trumpet creeper and the purple of the passion flower. Their fairy-like structure is seen in figure 2, dasya elegans, dark purple in color ; figures 4 and 10, grinellia, rosy red ; figures 6 and II, calithomnium, pale red and pink ; figure 3, polysiphonia, light purple shading to brown and black. So delicate are many of the plants of all classes of algae that they can not be discovered on the beach with the naked eye, but must be sought for float- ing in the water. The hair-like plumes and fronds must be seen to be appreciated. A spray extending over four or five square inches, when mounted on a card, the usual manner of preserving them, will, when rubbed between the thumb and finger, disappear like gold leaf, leaving scarcely a trace
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HISTORY OF THE NEW JERSEY COAST.
No. 3, Chloraspermeae .- Bright green-colored seaweed with green spores growing in shallow waters. It is very common all along the At- lantic coast, and is the lowest order in organization. The genus ulva in- cludes sea lettuce among its coarser plants. This is found adhering to shells and piling in thin papery leaves that are very perishable, tearing easily and withering rapidly. It resembles in color and shape the vegeta- ble of the kitchen, but grow's in the wild form of scattered leaves and not in heads. It is not valued in a collection, as it can hot be preserved by ordinary process, although the effect when lying on the beach against the gray sands and driftwood is very pleasing. Sea beard (cladophora rupesta) figure 3, bryopsis plumosa, figure I, both belong to this genus and grow in deeper waters, but are most beautiful in their dainty pencil- ings ; the former is so delicate that its dense tufts must be separated and mounted in single sprays before its structure is revealed.
Eel grass (zostera marina) having long dark green or brown ribbon- like leaves, is found clinging to and winding about nearly every object that comes up from the bays and shallow inlets, and much of it is found on the sea-beach. A mass of flotsam, the size of a, cocoanut, wound about with eel grass, will prove a veritable museum, containing among its varied col- lection a fragment of Irish moss (chrondus chrispus) which has floated down from northern waters, a leaf of red dulse ( rhodymenia), a wrapping of kale, mussel shells the size of a pin's head, the discarded claw of a crab, a sea bean (mecuna urens) of the West Indies, a sea onion or squill, fungi, and lastly, a solid fibrous covering holding securely in the center a mass of fish eggs. The sea horse (hypocampus) is often found in the collection. This tiny creature makes its home among the growing eel grasses in the water: it is a poor swimmer and to partially overcome its feeble powers of motion it secures itself to the long tufts by its prehensile tail, and, as- suming an upright position, floats back and forth with the swaying plants, often coming to grief when a storm tears this seaweed loose and casts it up on the shore, together with the little animal so often given a place in fable instead of in truth, where it belongs by right of existence. Another curiosity, rare it is true, which sometimes serves as a nucleus for this flot- sam, is the sea fan (gorgonia flabellum). It comes from Florida, and the West Indies, a species of coral that hardens into a horny-like texture as soon as it reaches the air. It is of dark brown color, and the closely interlaced branch and clearly defined root seem to dispute its place in zoology and assert its position in botany. The sea fan grows to a foot or more in diameter, and is less than a sixteenth of an inch in thickness. Its growth in the tropics far exceeds the specimens that float up to this coast.
Fucus grows between the tide lines, upon piling and submerged wood
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SEA ALGAE.
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HISTORY OF THE NEW JERSEY COAST. ·
and rocks, and there are many varieties of this tough leathery plant. The kind most found in this locality has long narrow leaves, attached to which are little capsules or berries filled with water. It is olive brown and green, and although coarse dries nicely and is much used for decorating seashore homes of summer residents. It serves as a foundation when growing in the water for innumerable smaller plants.
Gulf weed, or seagrape (sargassum bacciform) and sargassum vul- gare, figure 5, has clusters of air vessels like tiny cherries attached to its thick-leaved foliage. It comes up in detached sprays from the beds that float on the surface of the ocean in different parts of the globe. Its pres- ence in the great masses in which it collects gives the name "Sargossa sea." It is never attached to any object, but is always found floating. Properly speaking, kelp is an incineration of seaweeds for the production of iodides, chiefly iodine, but certain natural brines and crude Chili salt- petre have superceded it in the manufacture of these chemicals. The name kelp is broadly applied to the lamanarian seaweeds used for this purpose. Two kinds of kelp (lamanaria saccharina and lamanaria digitata) having long graceful fluted leaves, so bundant on the coast of Europe, are well- known in the northern waters of the Atlantic and come up on the Jersey coast. The larger leaves, which are of an immense size and great length. are broken and torn into fragments, but the smaller leaves can be found in a perfect condition.
Compared with the abundant growth and immense available quanti- ties, seaweed seems to have but little commercial value all over the world. Sea colander (agarum turni) so appropriately named, the fronds of which are punctured with many little holes, is very odd in appearance, convey- ing the idea that it has been pierced by worms or insects, until a close in- spection reveals the fact that it is the natural growth of the plant.
Sea Apple (manicura plunkenette), a fruit of the West Indies, is occasionally found floating in temperate waters. It has many legends attached to its origin.
Dulse, reddish brown in color, is eaten in Scotland and Ireland, but is
- not sought for its food qualities in this country, where little seaweed is used for that purpose. The true dulse (sar cophyllis edulus) is rare, but the common dulse (rhodymenia) comes up frequently. There are many land plants that grow in the salt marshes and on the beach where they are submerged daily by the flood-tide. When the storm tides sweep over the meadows and up on the sand hills, they are torn loose and carried out to sea, to come up again in the seawrack with the true marine plants. Among these are the sea rocket, a fleshy cruciferous plant of two varieties (cakile maritima and cakile Americana), sea chickweed (arenaria plepoida) also
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called sandwort and purslane; sea grape (cocoboba uvifera) a tropical plant ; marsh rosemary, widely known for its medicinal properties ; sea blite (suaeda maritima) of the goose foot family, growing in the marshes ; and black grass (juncus gerardi) a small rush also growing in the marshes and used for making salt 'hay. Sea holly, sea hulver and many other kinds. are common.
There is an undefined charm in walking along the ocean strand. Some object or many objects which we have never seen before always greet us, while those with which we are familiar, grow a hundredfold more interesting. Thus, the study is never ending, the charm is ever new. A fragment of Iceland moss carries our imagination to the land of perpetual snows, and the long hollow tube of the sea trumpet transports us to the sweltering heat and luxuriant vegetation of the tropics; while the waves of the deep roll over such forms of life that we know are beyond the powers of mind to conceive or imagination to fancy.
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY VOYAGES AND DISCOVERY.
In 1497 England sent out an expedition under the direction of the Cabots to endeavor to discover a northwest passage to the West Indies. As we all know, the quest proved a failure ; but the expedition sailed along the coast of the North American continent from Newfoundland to Florida. It very possibly sighted the New Jersey coast. Did it stay for awhile in New York harbor? That is a question which we fear can never be an- swered. All we know of that voyage seems to indicate that the adven- turers simply sailed as close to the coast line as possible, and seldom sent landing parties ashore. The meager details we have, simply represent the discovery of a coast line, although that was enough, it would seem, when the time came, to give England a foundation for a claim to the whole of the continent by right of discovery. Almost as shadowy is the story of John Verazzano, who, in 1524, sailed along the American coast on a voyage of discovery. It seems more than likely that, after feeling his way carefully along the banks and pockets off the New Jersey coast, he spent some time in New York harbor and landed on some of its shores. His description is well worth remembering, for it is the first glimpse we get of a scene which was soon to undergo remarkable changes :
"After proceeding one hundred leagues we found a very pleasant situation among some steep hills, through which a large river, deep at the mouth, forced its way into the sea. From the sea to the estuary of the river, any ship heavily laden might pass with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet. But as we were riding at anchor in a good berth, we would not venture up in our vessel without a knowledge of the mouth. Therefore we took the boat, and entering the river we found the coun- try on the banks well peopled, the inhabitants not differing much from the others, being dressed out with the feathers of birds of various colors. They came towards us with evident delight, raising loud shouts of ad- miration, and showing us where we could most securely land our boats. We passed up this river about half a league, where we found it formed a most beautiful lake, upon which they were rowing thirty or more of their small boats filled with multitudes who came to see us."
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He did not stay long in this beautiful scene but passed northward. He saw natives gathering wampum on what is now known as Rockaway Beach as he passed out, and on his way to Nantucket discovered Block Island, to which he gave the name of Louise, the mother of King Francis, of France.
We have vague and shadowy records of other voyageurs who looked in more or less through the Narrows from the Lower Bay, but what has reached us regarding their movements and their discovery is so vague and unsatisfactory that the details belong rather to the antiquary than to the historian. Estevan Gomez, a Spanish adventurer, began a voyage across the Atlantic in 1525 and looked in at the Hudson, so it is claimed ; but if he did that much he did no more. About 1540 we read of French skippers ascending the "River of the Steep Hill" as far as what is now Albany, in search of furs, and there is some evidence of their having there built a fort to protect themselves and their possessions. In 1542 Jean Allefonsce, of Saintonge, passed through Long Island Sound and so reached New York harbor, being the first (it is supposed) to have man- aged that bit of seanmanship. Up to that time little was known of the Hudson, although if we agree with Mr. A. J. Weise ("The Discoveries. of America") that it is the Norambega River laid down upon some early maps, it was the subject of much conjecture and even geographical romance.
It was early in September, 1609, that the "Half Moon"-sixty tons burden, under command of Hendrick, or properly Henry, Hudson- dropped anchor in the Lower Bay, somewhere between Sandy Hook and Coney Island, resting there, as it were, in the course of a voyage of dis- covery up the coast from Chesapeake Bay. On August 28, 1609, he had entered Delaware Bay, but finding the course barred by a sand-bank or two he did not proceed very far and kept on his northerly course. He was sent here by the East India Company, of Amsterdam, and hoped, with the experience gained in two previous voyages, to discover the ignis fatuus of seamanship, even to our own day-a northwest passage to India. Sand-banks and shallow water such as he struck in Delaware Bay were not likely to lead to such a passage, and so, although he has been called the discoverer of the great bay, he did little more than merely look at it, and passed on as quickly as he could. When he entered the river which now bears his name, he fondly imagined that he had at last solved the great problem. He spent a few days exploring the shores of New York Bay and questioning the natives as to the course and extent of the water which led inland. Sad to say, he also had trouble with these seemingly inoffensive people, and they killed one of his men; but whether that trag-
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edy was enacted on Coney Island or on Sandy Hook is a point on which the antiquaries have not yet made up their minds. The long Island in- vestigators are positive in locating the scene of this on Coney Island, while the New Jersey authorities will point out the exact spot on Sandy Hook- and there you are! They all agree, however, that a man-John Colman -was killed, and we may call it a tragedy, because it was the beginning of a warfare which, whether carried on by firearms, steel, rum or the diseases ·of civilization, exterminated in time the native population, whose gentle, inoffensive qualities Verazzano so clearly describes. Having learned all he could, he passed up the river almost to Albany, and then, having seen enough to show him that he had not yet discovered the long-sought pas- sage, he made his way back to the open sea.
In one respect, the story of his journey along the river which has preserved his name and is his most enduring memorial, is not pleasant reading. His treatment of the natives was the reverse of kindly, and it has been computed that two hundred were killed by Hudson and his crew during the trip up and down the river. They seem to have been generally friendly and inoffensive, over-curious in many respects, and off Stony Point one was caught, so it is said, in the act of stealing from the ship. To this inalefactor was at once applied the law of the white man, and he was .shot while trying to escape with his plunder. This led to a rupture of friendly relations in that neighborhood, and when the upper end of Man- hattan Island was reached there was a sort of naval battle-Indians, canoes and arrows on the one side, and the "Half Moon" and firearms on the other, and the "Half Moon" won. We read of another naval battle.a little way further down, but with the same result. The natives could not with- stand gunpowder. So Hudson reached the open sea in safety, but left behind him memories which in after years were to help, with later stories of cruelty and wrong, to prompt the red man, as occasion offered and as long as opportunities remained, to wreak a terrible vengeance. But Hudson did even more than this, for he must be credited with being the first to open up to their knowledge the influence and power of rum. Wherever he landed and the Indians proved friendly, or whenever a party .of them on kindly service bent visited the "Half Moon," "fire-water" was produced to bring about a revel, and of the orgies and excesses which fol- lowed each production of that agent of civilization the Indian traditions told in graphic vividness for many a year.
Hudson's report to his employers in Amsterdam was in one sense a ·disappointment. It did not unveil the desired northwest passage, and so "was a failure; but its account of the resources of the country he had seen and its opportunities for trade were not lost in a community whose mer-
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chants were then the most far-reaching and enterprising in the world. He told of the rich trade in peltries that awaited a gatherer, and it was not long before some enterprising merchants chartered a ship to cross the ocean and bring back a load of furs. That venture proved a signal suc- cess, and the trade of the old Netherlands with the New Netherland may thus be said to have commenced. In 1612 Holland merchants syndicated and sent out the "Fortune," under command of Hendrick Christiansen, and the "Tiger," under command of Adriaen Block, and in the following year three more vesseis were dispatched to the Mauritius River, as for a time the Hudson was called.
Of these expeditions much general interest attached to that of Block. His ship performed her mission successfully and was loaded ready for the return journey when she was destroyed by fire. He and his crew at once got sufficient timber to build another ship and constructed one, but as it was too small to attempt to cross the ocean, Block determined to spend the time in local exploration until a fresh ship could come from Holland. In his new boat-the "Restless"-he accomplished more than he had anticipated ; he had built a really staunch, even ocean seaworthy craft, and one that judging from its performance might easily have braved even the fury of mid-Atlantic. In this ship Block explored the waters of Long Island, both on the sound and the ocean front, discovered it to be an island, and then passing along the main land he explored the Connecticut River, the Narragansett, and rounded Cape Cod, entering Massachusetts Bay. Every day seemed to bring forward a new discovery, and his imagination was kept on the stretch inventing names for the rivers, points, islands and bays which he passed. His own name survives to us in Block Island, and to him also is due the name of Hellegat-now Hellgate-simply after a branch of the Scheld in his native land, and it is believed that he erected a block-house or small fort somewhere on the water-front, now part of the territory incorporated under Jersey City.
Block and his discoveries, however, in spite of the fort on the Jersey shore just mentioned, really belongs as a discoverer to Long Island Sound and the New England coasts, rather than to that of New Jersey. For the pioneer of discovery in New Jersey we must look elsewhere for a hero, and on that point we are confronted with a good deal of tradition that is vague and legendary, and which apparently can not be unravelled by antiquarian ingenuity or historic investigation. One great trouble is, that most of our information concerning the Northern Atlantic coast of those early times comes from Dutch sources, and when those early Dutch chron- icles spoke of New Netherland they included, in a vague sort of a way, all the coast line from the Delaware Bay to Cape Cod, and the territory stretch-
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ing back from it to-they neither knew nor cared where. Beyond Cape Cod the Plymouth Company had obtained a footing, and its claim the au- thorities at Amsterdam seemed willing to regard as perfect. Then there was the London Company, founded like that of Plymouth, in 1606, but above all such companies was the claim of England to severeignty over the. whole of the continent, based on the idea of the priority of discovery of the Cabots. All these questions afterward settled themselves, and really, except for the purpose of local history, it is useless to expend time in in- vestigating what sections of the new territory belonged respectively, ac- cording to the laws and ideas prevailing at the beginning of the century,. to England and to Holland.
This much, however, is certain-the Dutch regime extended over most of what is now incorporated into the State of New Jersey, but so far as an exploitation or settlement went, the rulers of the New Netherland. or their people cut comparatively but a small figure. A few scattered points on the Hudson and the Delaware would be all that could be in- cluded in the story, for the bulk of the Dutch immigration stopped at New Amsterdam and passed up the Hudson River. There was an abund- ance of territory immediately outside of the wall of New Amsterdam for farm or bouwerie, and no need of crossing a wide and flowing river for some time to come.
So the pioneers of New Jersey-the bulk of them, that is-were from Great Britain, men and women mainly imbued with religious zeal, men and women who did not come to conform to the doctrinal system there en- dorsed by law, and who crossed the sea in the hope of founding colonies where they could worship God according to their own ideas, the prompt- ings of their own consciences, and where true religious liberty and per- fect toleration might prevail. They did not believe, as did the New Eng- land Puritans, in setting up a new religious despotism to take the place of the one against which they had murmured and from which they had fled. There is a legend, indeed, but a legend which seems to have been accepted as true by such an authority as the late John Fiske-that the historic "Mayflower," when she started on her memorable voyage, was really headed for the Delaware Bay, and that the brethren intended land- ing somewhere on its shores, but that stress of weather and the ignorance of their pilot carried the craft against the rocky coast of New England and to the soil which had been pre-empted (on paper) by the Plymouth Company. There has been some speculation as to how these people would have gotten along had they really entered the Delaware Bay and squatted on the Jersey shore. They would then have been under Dutch rule, and it is questionable how far the rulers of New Amsterdam would 'have per-
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mitted them to go in setting up a theocracy in the territory. The general opinion seemed to be that there would have been trouble, a perpetual clash of authority, although why this notion should have found supporters it is difficult to say. Southold was in territory claimed by the Dutch; it was not so far away from the fort at New Amsterdam as was the shore of the Delaware, and yet as perfect a theocracy flourished there as ever ruled in New England, and, nearer home, the Dutch permitted Lady Moody to. found the town of Gravesend on religious principles, or rather on prin- ciples of the widest kind of religious toleration.
In 1610, or thereabout, Captain Argall passed along the coast, but it is doubtful if he landed anywhere, and we have scant references of visits along the shore by Cornelius Hendrickson in 1616, and by Captain Thomas Dermer in 1620, but the real hero of the discovery of New Jersey was undoubtedly Cornelius Jacobse Mey, the first Director General of New Netherland. In 1623, with a party of pioneer spirits, he left New Amsterdam, then itself but newly founded and little more than a settle- ment, and proceeded southward to explore the territory which Hudson had reported upon, and particularly the South River, the name at first given to the Delaware, and which rejoiced at various times under such designa- tions as Nassau River, Prince Hendrick's and Charles's River. He seems to have experienced none of the trouble which Hudson encountered, finding navigation easy, and he passed in triumph and safety between the Capes, giving to one the name he bore, and which it still retains, that. of Cape Mey or May, and bestowing his christian name on the other, call- ing it Cape Cornelius, afterward changed to Cape Henlopen. He had a weakness of bestowing his name wherever he went. New York Bay he christened "Port Mey" and the Delaware he put down on his map as "New Port Mey."
Mey did more, however, than name the territory through which his course led. He passed through the bay and followed the course of the river beyond where Camden now stands, and near the site of the present city of Gloucester established a settlement to which he gave the name of Fort Nassau. This was the first real settlement in New Jersey, that is, a settlement designed on a permanent basis, and which carries us back to the same year that New Amsterdam and Fort Orange (Albany) had their beginning. There are more or less vague stories of earlier settlements. One chronicle tells us of a village at Bergen, about 1620; a party of pil- grims led by the Rev. John Robinson get credit for settling on the Dela- ware in the same year, and England used to claim the whole territory and enforced the claim as early as 1614, but the settlement of Fort Nassau claims historic priority, and that claim can not be successfully refuted.
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