USA > Virginia > Tazewell County > Tazewell County > History of Tazewell county and southwest Virginia, 1748-1920 > Part 9
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In 1518 Francis I., King of France, became interested in the colonization of the New World; and six years later, in 1524, a voyage of discovery was started out with John Verrazzano, a native of Florence, in command. The object of this expedition was to search for a northwest passage to Asia. Verrazzano began his voyage in January, 1524, with a fleet of four vessels. Three of the ships were so badly damaged in a storm that they were compelled to return to France, but the determined navigator continued the voyage in his remaining vessel, the Dolphin. After a very rough and dan- gerous voyage of fifty days' duration, on the 7th of March the mariner came in sight of land near Wilmington, North Carolina. He changed his course south and hunted for a good harbor. Finding none, he returned northward and anchored for a few days at a point between the mouth of Cape Fear River and Pamlico Sound. Verraz- zano and his crew went on shore and met some of the native inhabi- tants, who were found to be of a kind and peaceable disposition. After a few days' stay at that place, he again sailed northward, exploring the coast, and entered the harbor of New York. Thence he sailed to the present port of Newport, Rhode Island, and made a stay of fifteen days, viewing and outlining the coast thereabout. Leaving Newport, he continued his course along and up the coast of New England, passed to the east of Nova Scotia, and arrived at Newfoundland in the latter part of May. In July he returned to France and upon his arrival at home published an account of his discoveries which caused much excitement among his countrymen.
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The entire country whose seacoast he had explored and mapped was claimed by right of discovery to belong to France.
On account of the distracted condition of the country, not until ten years after the Verrazzano expedition did any French explorers again visit America. In 1534 Chabot, Admiral of France, succeeded in awakening the interest of Francis I. in a scheme for exploring and colonizing the New World. James Cartier, a trained mariner of St. Malo, in Brittany, was selected to conduct the expedition. With two ships he left the harbor of St. Malo in April, and reached the shores of Newfoundland in May. Without delay he sailed around the island, crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence and anchored in a bay, which he called Bay of Chaleurs. Failing to find the westward passage, that all the voyagers had sought without avail, he then sailed along the coast as far as the inlet of Gaspe; and there, upon a point of land, raised a cross with a shield and the lilies of France thereon. This was to notify other nations that the discoverer had taken possession of the country for France. In August, Cartier left the Bay of Gaspe and discovered the St. Law- rence River. On the ninth of August he started back to France and arrived safely at St. Malo. The report of his discoveries made him popular and famous in his country.
Friends of Cartier urged the king to give the discoverer another commission and provide him with ships to make a second voyage. A new commission was given him, and three ships were furnished by the king. A number of the young nobles became volunteers to accompany Cartier on this voyage. The company sailed for the New World in May, 1535, and after a difficult and stormy voyage arrived on the coast. The gulf Cartier had discovered on his first voyage was given the name of St. Lawrence, in honor of the Saint of that name. Afterwards the same name was given to the great river which is by far the largest body of fresh water in the world. The St. Lawrence River, under the name of St. Louis, has its source in the same extensive plateau which starts the Father of Waters on its lengthy journey to the Gulf of Mexico and the Red River of the North towards Hudson Bay. It is 2,200 miles from its source to where the river enters the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The St. Louis River flows into Lake Superior and goes on through a succession of lakes-Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario- until its mighty volume pours out of Ontario and becomes the won- derful St. Lawrence River. It is four hundred miles from where
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the St. Lawrence issues from Lake Ontario to the splendid gulf that bears the same name.
After entering the river Cartier sailed up stream to an island, afterwards called Orleans. There he came in contact with a tribe of Indians of the Algonquian family. From these natives he received the information that farther up the river there was an Indian town on the Island of Hochelaga. This excited his curiosity, he sailed up the river in a small boat, and found a beautiful native village nestling at the foot of a hill. He climbed the hill, and the view from its summit was so magnificent that he immediately called the place Mont-Real. Upon this site the splendid city of Montreal now stands. Returning to his ships, Cartier and his men passed an unpleasant winter where they were anchored. In the spring a cross was put up on a point of land, bearing the emblem and the arms of France, and with an inscription declaring that the country was a possession of Francis I. The name of New France was given to the country. Cartier then sailed for home, and on the 6th of July arrived at St. Malo. His report of the character of the St. Lawrence regions, the very cold climate and failure to find any indi- cations of silver and gold, discouraged the people of France from further early attempts to plant a colony there.
After a lapse of four years, under the title of viceroy and lieu- tenant general of New France, in 1540, Francis de la Roque, Lord of Roberval, was commissioned by the King of France to establish a colony, with regal authority in land, territories, and islands that were bordering on the St. Lawrence. He selected Cartier, who was familiar with the country, to take charge of the expedition as captain general and chief pilot. Cartier started out from St. Malo in the spring of 1541; he made a safe voyage to the St. Lawrence and built a fort near the site of Quebec. There the colonists remained through the winter, and nothing of moment having been accom- plished, Cartier with his ships and men returned to France. About the time of his departure, Roberval arrived upon the scene with a number of colonists. He did nothing more than to verify the reports of former discoverers, and returned to France.
The repeated unsuccessful attempts to found colonies on the St. Lawrence so discouraged the French Government that a period of fifty years elapsed from the failure of Roberval before another effort of importance was made by the French to plant a colony in America. There were, however, several private enterprises that tried to make settlements in Florida and Carolina. The most
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notable of these was conceived by Admiral Coligny, the Protestant admiral of France. He resolved to do something for the persecuted Huguenots of his country. In 1562 he seeured from his sovereign, Charles IX., the privilege of planting a Protestant colony in America. He selected John Ribault, a practical seaman, to take charge of the Huguenot expedition. It started from France in February and first touched on the Florida coast, and entered the St. Johns River. Thenee the ships were sailed up the coast until they arrived at Port Royal on the Carolina coast. It was determined to make a settlement there, the colonists were landed on the island and a fort was ereeted. In honor of Charles IX. the place was ealled Carolina. A century afterward the English adopted the name and gave it to all the country which lies between the Savannah River and the southern boundary of Virginia. Ribault returned to France for more supplies and colonists, leaving twenty-six men in the fort as a garrison. He failed to return with reinforcements and supplies, and in the spring the dissatisfied men of the garrison united and killed their captain, who was trying to hold them at the post. The mutineers constructed a rough boat they thought would prove sea- worthy and made a desperate attempt to cross the ocean with the hope of getting back to France. They were tossed about on the sea for many weeks, and when nearly dead from starvation were reseued by an English ship and taken to the coast of Franee.
Two years later Coligny, who was still hopeful of establishing a Protestant colony in America, started out another expedition in charge of Laudonniere. The colonists located on the banks of the St. John's River in Florida, fifteen miles west of St. Augustine. This eolony was afterwards brutally destroyed by Menendez, the Spaniard, as has been related in a previous chapter.
Again, in 1598, the government of France decided to assert its claims of discovery by colonization. The Marquis of La Roche, under a commission from the king, undertook to locate a colony on Sable Island, Nova Scotia. The site was most unfavorable and the colonists were chiefly criminals, who had been turned out of prisons upon promise of enduring the hardships of a settlement in North- eastern America. After establishing the settlement, La Roche returned to France to get additional supplies and more emigrants, but he died shortly after arriving home. He had left about forty criminals at the settlement on Sable Island. They suffered frightful hardships on the gloomy island for seven years, but were at last rescued by some passing ships and conveyed to France.
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The time it seems had arrived when France was to plant a suc- cessful and permanent colony in the northeastern section of America. In the year 1603 the King of France gave a commission to De Monts which granted him sovereign control of that part of the continent which lies between the latitude of Philadelphia and one degrce north of Montreal. In the spring of 1604 he came to America with a number of colonists to take possession of the magnifi- cent domain that had been given him by his generous monarch. He reached the coast of Nova Scotia, and the captain of one of his ships, whose name was Poutrincourt, was so delighted with a harbor he discovered on the west coast that he requested the privilege of locating there with his family. His request was granted and he was given the harbor and many acres of land adjacent thereto. De Monts, with the remainder of the colony, crossed the Bay of Fundy, and built a fort at the mouth of the St. Croix River. In the spring of 1605 De Monts and his colony returned to the harbor where Poutrincourt had located. At that place, on the 14th of November, 1605, the first permanent French settlement on American soil was established. The fort and harbor were named Port Royal and the country was called Acadia. They are now called Annapolis.
In 1603, two years before the settlement was made at Port Royal by De Monts, the most noted and successful of all the French explorers, Samuel Champlain, made a voyage of exploration to the St. Lawrence country. He was the son of a sea captain, was a trained soldier, and had on one occasion accompanied a Spanish expedition to the West Indies. A company of Rouen merchants had become impressed with the idea that great wealth could be won from the fur trade of the St. Lawrence regions; and they employed Champlain to go to that country and establish a trading-post for them. He made the trip and chose as a site for the post and fort the locality where the great city of Quebec was afterwards built. Champlain returned to France in the autumn of 1603, made report to his employers, and his choice for the site of the trading-post was accepted. He made a second trip to the St. Lawrence for the mer- chants in 1608, and in July of that year laid the foundation for the city of Quebec. The next year he explored the great lake which bears his name and that will make him famous as long as civilization stands. Later on the intrepid explorer began to investigate the entire lake regions of the North and even extended his travels into the great unknown West. He died at Quebec in 1635.
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ENGLISH DISCOVERIES AND SETTLEMENTS.
The discovery of the New World by Columbus excited as intense interest in England as it had provoked in Continental Europe. A Venetian by the name of John Cabot was then residing in Bristol. He was an accomplished navigator and was seized with a desire to make a voyage to the newly discovered continent. On the 5th of March, 1496, he was commissioned by Henry VII., King of England, to make explorations in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans under the English flag. The commission empowered Cabot and his three sons, or either of them, to sail east, west or north, with authority to take possession, in the name of the King of England, of all continents or islands he, or they, might discover. John Cabot had been a sailor from his boyhood, and was a man of adventurous disposition and daring spirit. In May, 1497, with a fleet of five vessels, he sailed from Bristol on a voyage of discovery in the Atlantic Ocean, accompanied by his three sons, Ludivico, Sebastiano, and Sanzio. On the 24th of June he came in sight of the mainland of the North American Continent at a point somewhere on the coast of Labrador. It was on St. John's Day when he sighted land, and was thirteen months and one week previous to the day on which Columbus first discovered the mainland of the American Continent at the mouth of the Orinoco River, South America. This is why many writers have insisted that John Cabot was the first discoverer of the American Continent. Cabot, however, was as much in error as to the character of his discovery as was the illustrious Genoese navigator. Columbus thought he had certainly reached India when he landed on the eastern shores of America, and that by traveling a westerly overland course the Ganges could be reached. Cabot believed the land he discovered was the eastern shore of the Asiatic Continent and was a part of the dominion of the Cham of Tartary. He explored the shore lines for several hundred miles. Finding no people inhabiting the land when he went on shore, he raised the English flag and took possession of the country in the name of Henry VII., King of England. After making such investigations as he thought necessary to determine the character and extent of the country, Cabot sailed for England, and arrived at Bristol, after a voyage that covered a little more than three months. 'The people of Bristol received him with joyous acclaim, and Henry VII. not only made him a very liberal donation of money, but urged the suc- cessful navigator to make a second voyage. Subsequently, another
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fleet was provided and a new commission, with far more liberal provisions, was given him, but, for some reason that has not been explained, John Cabot never made 'a second voyage. He disap- peared from public notice; and where and when he died history does not record.
In May, 1498, the same month in which Columbus started on his third voyage to discover the mainland of America, Sebastian Cabot, second son of John, sailed from Bristol with two ships on another exploring expedition. His company was composed largely of young English volunteers, the expense of the expedition being borne chiefly by young Cabot; and his object was to discover a northwest passage to Cathay and Japan. The voyage was uneventful until he arrived west of Greenland, in July, where icebergs were so thick and dan- gerous that the bold navigator was forced to change his course. He first went ashore at a point near where his father had landed the year previous. From that place he directed his course south- ward and crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In succession the coast lines of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Maine were explored; and he then sailed along the Atlantic coast from Maine to a point as far south as Cape Hatteras. All the country which bordered on the Atlantic coast as far as Cabot navigated was formally claimed by him for the Crown of England. For some reason the discoveries of the Cabots were not utilized by Henry VII. It has been sug- gested by a few historians that the repeated failures to discover a passage to the Indies and inability to find gold and other precious metals, in part, made the English Government lose interest in the New World. Others have accounted for the strange neglect by citing the fact that Henry VII. was a devout Catholic and was unwilling to contravene the wishes and decrees of the Pope of Rome. At that time all the Catholic monarchs of Europe accorded the Pope as full power and authority in temporal matters as they did in spiritual affairs. The Pope, who was especially favorable to Spain, because it was the most zealous friend of the Church of all the Catholic countries, had published a bull which gave Spain first and complete title to all of North America, and practically all of South America. No matter what was the cause, the King of England withdrew his attention from America and made no further effort to assert title to any part of the New World by right of discovery. At his death he was succeeded as monarch by his son, Henry VIII .. and one of the earliest acts of the young king was to surrender to his father-in-law, the King of Spain, the services of Sebastian Cabot.
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During the reign of Henry VIII., there were sundry attempts made by English mariners to discover the mythical northwestern passage to Asia. When the strangely constituted English monarch repudiated his Spanish wife, Catharine of Aragon, and abandoned the Roman Church, he entered his country as a vigorous rival of Spain for control of the New World. Then came the incipient move- ment to crown England "Mistress of the Seas" and make her supreme in the commerce of the world.
Upon the accession of Edward VI. to the throne of his father, Henry VIII., there was an added impulse to the maritime spirit of England, and that spirit was more thoroughly aroused by the recall from Spain of the venerable navigator, Sebastian Cabot. For "good service done and to be done" he was made grand pilot. But Cabot seems to have lost interest in the Western Hemisphere and directed his energies to establishing trade relations with China and with the theretofore unknown country of the Muscovites. It was an English ship that entered the icy harbor of Archangel in 1553 and disclosed Russia to Southern and Western Europe. Though Sebastian Cabot did so much for England as a discoverer, and continued her faithful servant until he reached an extremely old age, like that of his father, his death was obscure; and his burial place is not only unmarked, but, to the shame of the country he served so well. is actually unknown.
After the death of Edward VI. his half-sister, known in history as "Bloody Mary", became Queen of England. In 1554 she married Philip, son of Charles V., heir to the Spanish throne, much against the will of her ministers and the Protestant element of the Nation. Queen Mary was the daughter of Catharine of Aragon, a devout Catholic and fierce supporter of the Papacy; and an intolerant foe of Protestanism. The barbarous persecutions of Protestants that disgraced the latter part of her reign were not sufficient, however. to completely check the growing passion of Englishmen for mari- time adventure. Upon her death, in November, 1558, her half- sister, Elizabeth, the great "Virgin Queen," ascended the English throne. Her reign was a long one, lasting nearly forty-five years ; and in accomplishment was, possibly, the most noted and splendid England has ever known. During the Elizabethan Period the litera- ture of the world was enriched by the productions of Shakespeare, Spencer, Bacon, and other brilliant and profound English writers. Martin Frobisher and Francis Drake created a new spirit of mari- time enterprise, and laid a foundation for building the wonderful
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commercial and naval power England has ever since enjoyed. The greed of gold, that had given inspiration to all the former explorers of America, still existed and manifested itself in the performances of Frobisher and Drake, but it was under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth that Englishmen first made earnest effort to establish colonies in America.
While Drake was occupied with his daring naval adventures, which Bancroft says "were but a career of splendid piracy against a nation with which his sovereign and his country professed to be at peace," Sir Humphrey Gilbert was maturing plans for planting colonies in North America. He was a half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh by his mother's side, and it is said bore a striking resem- blance to him in character. In June. 1578, Gilbert obtained letters patent from Queen Elizabeth, investing him. his heirs, and assigns with authority to discover, occupy and possess such remote "heathen lands not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people as should seem good to him or them." He succeeded in enlisting quite a large company of young men, among them Walter Raleigh; and, largely at his own expense. made preparation for a voyage to America. After he had assembled his ships and company, dissensions arose, which caused a good many of the men to withdraw from the expedition. But, with a reduced number of ships and men, Gilbert persisted in his enterprise; and on the 19th of November, 1578, he sailed from England, accompanied by Raleigh, for the New World. In the way of accomplishments the expedition was a complete failure, as no report of where it went and what it did is found in history. Gilbert returned with his fleet to England in the summer of 1579. Undaunted by the failure of his first undertaking he launched a second expedition, assisted again by Walter Raleigh. The queen tried to dissuade him from the second voyage, but failing in that effort, commanded Raleigh, who had become a favorite of Elizabeth, to not accompany his brother. However, she sent Gilbert a letter on the eve of his departure, in which she wished him "as good hap and safety to his ship as if she herself were there in person."
The fleet, consisting of five ships, sailed from Plymouth on the 11th of June, 1583; but on the 13th one of the vessels, that had been built and equipped at Raleigh's expense, deserted and returned to port. Gilbert proceeded with his voyage, and on the 5th of August landed on the coast of Newfoundland. He took formal possession of the country for his sovereign; and some of his men
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found in the adjacent hills pieces of mica which a mineralogist, who was in the company, pronounced silver. The crews of the ships became insurbordinate and one of the vessels was so unfit that it had to be abandoned. Samples of the supposed silver ore were taken aboard, and, with his three remaining ships, Gilbert started southward to make further explorations; but a storm was encoun- tered and the largest ship was lost near Cape Breton. It was then determined to return to England, with what was left of the fleet, as speedily as possible. At midnight, on September the 9th, a raging storm came upon the two little vessels, and the Squirrel, on which Gilbert was sailing, suddenly went down and he and his crew perished.
Walter Raleigh then resolved to accomplish that which his gal- lant brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had striven so hard to do but had so unfortunately failed to perform. He obtained from Qucen Elizabeth a patent which was more ample in its provisions than the one which had been issued to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. It constituted Raleigh lord proprietor of an extensive region in the New World. He concluded to profit by the failure of those explorers who had vainly sought a northwest passage to Asia, or to make settlements in the northern section of the continent. His scheme was to seek the more congenial clime of the South Atlantic coast, and there plant a colony. In pursuance of this plan, he fitted out two ships with ample crews and provisions and placed them under the com- mand of Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow. On the 27th of April. 1584, they started on an exploring voyage to the southern mainland of the North American Continent. They sailed over the same cir- cuitous route that had been used by Columbus and other explorers- that is, by way of the Canaries and the West Indies. A short stop was made at the West India Islands, and, then, the expedition sailed northward. In due time, on the 4th of July, 1584, it reached the Carolina coast, where explorations were made for a distance of a hundred miles or more along the shores; and on the 13th of July the ships were anchored in a small convenient harbor. After piously returning thanks to Almighty God for the safe voyage and their happy arrival on the delightful coast, the commanders and their men went on shore and took possession of the country for and in the name of the Queen of England. This occurred on the Island of Wocoken, since known in history as Roanoke Island. It was midsummer and the Englishmen were completely enraptured with the luxuriant and gorgeous vegetation, the excellent wild fruits,
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