them back to their friends at home. Thus the island was abandoned and the Concord returned to England.

Although failure followed failure, the accounts which the sailors and colonists invariably gave of the American shores were filled with praises and notes of astonishment. Interest was thus kept alive in the mother country and one expedition quickly succeeded to another. The next squadron of discovery and settlement was fitted out for Martin Pring. Two vessels called the Speedwell and the Discoverer were loaded with merchandise suited to the tastes of the Indians, and in April of 1603, a few days after the death of Queen Elizabeth, the little fleet sailed for America. They came safely to Penobscot Bay and afterwards explored the harbors and shores of Maine. The coast of Massachusetts was traced southward to the sassafras region, where Pring loaded his ships at Martha's Vineyard and thence returned to England. The two vessels reached Bristol in safety after an absence of about six months.

It seems that at this time the idea of trade almost superseded the notion of colonization. The English voyagers came one after another, loaded their ships, and either left certain of their companions to perish or took the intended immigrants back to England. The purpose of planting was for a while feeble and uncertain. In 1605 George Way. mouth, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, made a voyage to America and came to anchorage among the islands of St. George on the coast of Maine. He explored the harbor and sailed up the outflowing river for a considerable distance, noting the fine forests of fir and the beauty of the scenery. He also opened a trade with the Indians, some of whom learned to speak a broken English, and were persuaded by him to visit England. The homebound voyage was safely made, the vessels reaching Plymouth about the middle of June. This was the last of the

trial voyages made by English navigators preparatory to the actual establishment of an American colony.

In these movements, extending from the middle of the sixteenth to the first decade of the seventeenth century, the reader may easily discover the prevailing and everrecurring features of English progress. It is the peculiarity of the race that it does everything by tentative stages. The epoch of which we speak was experimental. The English race seemed to touch and handle the coast of America as if to test its qualities and possibilities. The expeditions seemed to be characterized by timidity and caution. It were hard to discover any other reason than the fundamental character of English enterprise and method for the fact that the navigators of Britain were so long in getting a foothold in the New World. Spanish enterprise was marked with dash and boldness. True, there was in it much of the impractical, much of the Quixotical spirit. But the English mariners and first emigrants seemed afraid of the New World, though they longed to possess it. We shall see hereafter that when once the men who spoke English had obtained a footing in Virginia and New England they held it with a persistency equal to the caution which they had displayed in making their first settlements.

CHAPTER IV.

DIFFICULT is it to say precisely at what date the French sea captains first attempted to follow the pathway of Columbus and Cabot across the Atlantic. It is certain that the government of France was in a condition at the close of the fifteenth century to patronize and encourage such adventures as had given a New World to Castile and Leon. Certain it is also that not many years elapsed after the West Indies and mainland of the new continents were revealed to Europe before the French were abroad at sea, seeking to share in the treasures of discovery. France was very willing to profit by what the man of Genoa and the man of Venice had done for the world.

As early as 1504 the fishermen of Normandy and Brittany began to ply their craft on the banks of Newfoundland. A map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was drawn by a Frenchman in the year 1506. Two years afterwards a French ship carried home for the astonishment of the Court of Louis XII. some of the American Indians, and in 1518 the project of colonizing the New World was formally taken up by Francis I. In 1523 the first voyage of discovery and exploration was planned and Giovanni Verrazzano, a native of Florence, was appointed to conduct the expedition. The particular thing to be accomplished was the discovery of the supposed northwest passage to Asia.

It was near the end of 1523 that Verrazzano left Dieppe, on the frigate Dolphin, to begin his voyage. He reached the Madeira Islands, but did not depart thence until January

of the following year. The weather was unfavorable, the sailing difficult, and it required fifty-five days of hard struggle against wind and wave to bring him to the American coast. This he reached in the latitude of Wilmington. Coasting thence northward, he discovered New York and Narragansett Bays. At intervals he made landings and opened traffic with the natives. The Indians were found to be gentle and confiding. A Frenchman who was washed ashore by the surf was treated by them with great kindness and was permitted to return to the ship.

On the coast of Rhode Island, perhaps in the vicinity of Newport, Verrazzano anchored for fifteen days and there continued his trade with the natives. Before leaving the place, however, the French sailors repaid the confidence of the Indians by kidnapping a child and attempting to steal away one of the maidens of the tribe. After this the expedition was continued along the broken line of New England for a great distance. The Indians in this part of the country were wary and suspicious. They would buy neither ornaments nor toys, but were eager to purchase knives and weapons of iron. Passing to the east of Nova Scotia, the bold navigator reached Newfoundland in the latter part of May, taking possession in the name of his king. On his return to Dieppe, in July of 1524, he wrote for Francis I. a rather rambling account of his discoveries. His work, however, was recognized by the sovereign, and the name of NEW FRANCE was given to that part of our continent the coast line of which had been traced by the adventurous crew of the Dolphin.

The condition of affairs in Europe at the close of the first quarter of the sixteenth century was unfavorable in the last degree for carrying forward the work of discovery and colonization abroad. The Reformation had broken out in Germany. Three great monarchs, Francis I. of France,

Henry VIII. of England and Charles V. of Spain and Germany, loomed up to a kingly stature that had not been hitherto attained since the days of Charlemagne. Mutual jealousy supervened among them. Each watched the other two with ill-concealed animosity and dread. On the whole, Francis I. and his government suffered most in the contest of cross-purposes which held all things in its meshes. Ten years elapsed after the discoveries and explorations of Verrazzano before another expedition could be sent out from France. In 1534, however, Phillippe de Chabot, of Poitou, Admiral of the kingdom, selected Jacques, or James, Cartier, a sea captain of St. Malo, in Brittany, to make a new voyage to America. Two ships were equipped for the enter prise, and after no more than twenty days of sailing * under cloudless skies came to anchor on the 10th of May off the coast of Newfoundland. By the middle of July Cartier had circumnavigated the island, crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence and found the Bay of Chaleurs.

Like his predecessors, Cartier had expected to discover somewhere in those waters a passage westward to Asia. Disappointed in this hope, he changed his course to the north and followed the coast as far as Gaspé Bay. Here upon the point of land he set up the cross, bearing a shield with the lily of France, and proclaimed the French king monarch of the country. Following his explorations, he next entered the estuary and River St. Lawrence. Thinking it impracticable, however, to pass the winter in the New World, Cartier turned his prows toward France and in thirty days reached St. Malo in safety.

The news of this voyage and its results produced great

* So say all the authorities, but it is incredible that a rude ship of the early part of the sixteenth century should cross the Atlantic in twenty days. The Author suggests that the error in the calendar, then amounting to nine or ten days, should be added to the twenty of the books.