15
John Smith
Introduction
John Smith (1580-1631) made one voyage to the coast of Massachusetts and Maine in 1614, and attempted a second one the following year, only to be captured by French pirates and detained for several months near the Azores before escaping and making his way back to England. This book is the story of these two voyages.
Smith went to the coast of America north of Virginia to explore the opportunities for fisheries, fur trading, and settlement. Smith was a veteran soldier, sailor, traveller, explorer, cartographer, and colonist: he had fought the Spanish in France and Italy, the Turks in Hungary and Transylvania, and the Algonkians in Virginia; he had sailed the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Caribbean; he had been a prisoner of the Ottomans and a slave in Constantinople, had journeyed through Russia, Europe, and North Africa; he had been both a president and a prisoner in the Jamestown colony, and had explored the Potomac River and mapped the Chesapeake Bay.
His Description of New England describes the fishing, soils, inhabitants, fauna, flora, and climate of the coastal region from Cape Cod to Penobscot. This work is the first to apply the term “New England” to that portion of the North America from Long Island Sound to Newfoundland. At that time it held a few trading and fishing stations, and French traders from the north and Dutch from the south carried on commerce in furs with the natives. There was a prosperous fishery to the north, where cod were taken by ships from Portugal, Holland, and Spain. To Smith, these were evidence of the richness of commodities to be had, and signs of the strategic importance to England of securing permanent settlements in the region. Smith had departed Virginia in 1609 under a cloud of accusations and had quarrelled with the leaders of the privately-held Virginia Company. Seeking a new arena for colonial opportunities in the new world, Smith saw New England as a place where English life could be transplanted to America, and this work is an extended advertisement and prospectus for investors and settlers, with Smith to provide the expertise and leadership.
John Smith, from A Description of New England[1]
Who can desire more content, that hath small means or but only his merit to advance his fortune, than to tread and plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind can be more pleasant than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God’s blessing and his own industry, without prejudice to any? If he have any grain of faith or zeal in religion, what can he do less hurtful to any, or more agreeable to God, than to seek to convert those poor savages to know Christ and humanity, whose labors with discretion will triple requite thy charge and pains? What so truly suits with honor and honesty as the discovering things unknown, erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue, and gain to our native mother country a kingdom to attend her; find employment for those that are idle, because they know not what to do; so far from wronging any as to cause posterity to remember thee, and remembering thee, ever honor that remembrance with praise?
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Then who would live at home idly, or think in himself any worth to live, only to eat, drink, and sleep, and so die? Or, by consuming that carelessly, his friends got worthily? Or, by using that miserably, that maintained virtue honestly? Or, for being descended nobly, pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred in penury? Or, to maintain a silly show of bravery, toil out thy heart, soul, and time, basely by shifts, tricks, cards, and dice? Or, by relating news of other actions, shark here or there for a dinner or supper, deceive thy friends by fair promises and dissimulation, in borrowing where thou never intendest to pay, offend the laws, surfeit with excess, burden thy country, abuse thyself, despair in want, and then cozen thy kindred, yea even thine own brother, and wish thy parents death (I will not say damnation) to have their estates? Though thou seest what honors and rewards the world yet hath for them will seek them and worthily deserve them.
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Let this move you to embrace employment for those whose educations, spirits, and judgments want but your purses, not only to prevent such accustomed dangers but also to gain more thereby than you have. And you fathers that are either so foolishly fond, or so miserably covetous, or so willfully ignorant, or so negligently careless as that you will rather maintain your children in idle wantonness till they grow your masters, or become so basely unkind as they wish nothing but your deaths, so that both sorts grow dissolute; and although you would wish them anywhere to escape the gallows, and ease your cares, though they spend you here one, two, or three hundred pounds a year, you would grudge to give half so much in adventure with them to obtain an estate, which in a small time, but with a little assistance of your providence, might be better than your own. But if an angel should tell you that any place yet unknown can afford such fortunes, you would not believe him no more than Columbus was believed there was any such land as is now the well known abounding America; much less such large regions as are yet unknown, as well in America, as in Africa and Asia, and Terra Incognita, where were courses for gentlemen ( and them that would be so reputed ) more suiting their qualities than begging from their princes ‘ generous disposition the labors of his subjects and the very marrow of his maintenance.
I have not been so ill bred but I have tasted of plenty and pleasure as well as want and misery, nor doth necessity yet, or occasion of discontent, force me to these endeavors; nor am I ignorant what small thanks I shall have for my pains, or that many would have the world imagine them to be of great judgment that can but blemish these my designs by their witty objections and detractions; yet I hope my reasons with my deeds will so prevail with some that I shall not want employment in these affairs to make the most blind see his own senselessness and incredulity, hoping that gain will make them effect that which religion, charity, and the common good cannot. It were but a poor device in me to deceive myself, much more the king and state, my friends and country, with these inducements; which, seeing his majesty hath given permission, I wish all sorts of worthy, honest, industrious spirits would understand, and if they desire any further satisfaction I will do my best to give it; not to persuade them to go only, but go with them; not leave them there, but live with them there. I will not say but by ill providing and undue managing, such courses may be taken may make us miserable enough, but if I may have the execution of what I have projected, if they want to eat let them eat or never digest. If I perform what I say I desire but that reward out of the gains may suit my pains, quality, and condition; and if I abuse you with my tongue, take my head for satisfaction. If any dislike at the year’s end defraying their charge, by my consent they should freely return. I fear not want of company sufficient were it but known what I know of those countries, and by the proof of that wealth I hope yearly to return, if God please to bless me from such accidents as are beyond my power in reason to prevent: For I am not so simple to think that ever any other motive than wealth will ever erect there a commonweal, or draw company from their ease and humors at home, to stay in New England to effect my purposes. And lest any should think the toil might be insupportable, though these things may be had by labor and diligence, I assure myself there are who delight extremely in vain pleasure that take much more pains in England to enjoy it than I should do here to gain wealth sufficient; and yet I think they should not have half such sweet content, for our pleasure here is still gains, in England, charges and loss. Here nature and liberty afford us that freely, which in England we want or it costeth us dearly.
What pleasure can be more than, being tired with any occasion ashore, in planting vines, fruits, or herbs; in contriving their own grounds to the pleasure of their own minds, their fields, gardens , orchards, buildings, ships, and other works, etc .; to recreate themselves before their own doors, in their own boats upon the sea, where man, woman, and child, with a small hook and line, by angling may take divers sorts of excellent fish at their pleasures? And is it not pretty sport to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence as fast as you can haul and veer a line? He is very bad fisher cannot kill in one day, with his hook and line, one, two, or three hundred cods; which, dressed and dried if they be sold there for ten shillings the hundred, though in England they will give more than twenty, may not both the servant, the master, and merchant be well content with this gain? If a man work but three days in seven he may get more than he can spend, unless he will be excessive. Now that carpenter, mason, gardener, tailor, smith, sailor, forger, or what other, may they not make this a pretty recreation , though they fish but an hour in a day, to take more than they eat in a week; or, if they will not eat it, because there is so much better choice, yet sell it, or change it with the fishermen or merchants for anything they want. And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content and less hurt or charge than angling with a hook and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle over the silent streams of a calm sea, wherein the most curious may find pleasure, profit, and content? Thus, though all men be not fishers, yet all men whatsoever may in other matters do as well. For necessity doth in these cases so rule a commonwealth, and each in their several functions, as their labors in their qualities may be as profitable, because there is a necessary mutual use of all.
For gentlemen, what exercise should more delight them than ranging daily those unknown parts, using fowling and fishing for hunting and hawking? And yet you shall see the wild hawks give you some pleasure in Employments seeing them stoop, six or seven after one another, an hour or two together at the schools of fish in the fair harbors, as those ashore at a fowl, and never trouble nor torment yourselves with watching, mewing, feeding, and attending them, nor kill horse and man with running and crying, ” see you not a hawk? ” For hunting also, the woods, lakes, and rivers afford not only chase sufficient for any that delights in that kind of toil or pleasure, but such beasts to hunt that, besides the delicacy of their bodies for food, their skins are so rich as may well recompense thy daily labor with a captain’s pay. For laborers, if those that sow hemp, rape, turnips, parsnips, carrots, cabbage, and such like give twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty shillings yearly for an acre of ground, and meat, drink, and wages to use it, and yet grow rich, when Employments better, or at least as good, ground may be had and cost nothing but labor, it seems strange to me any such should there grow poor.
My purpose is not to persuade children from their parents, men from their wives, nor servants from their masters – only such as with free consent may be spared – but that each parish or village in city or country that will but apparel their fatherless children of thirteen or fourteen years of age , or young married people that have small wealth to live on, here by their labor may live exceeding well, provided always that first there be a sufficient power to command them, houses to receive them, means to defend them, and meat provisions for them, for any place may be overlain; and it is most necessary to have a fortress ere this grow to practice, and sufficient masters (as carpenters, masons, fishers, fowlers, gardeners, husbandmen, sawyers, smiths, spinsters, tailors, weavers, and such like) to take ten, twelve, or twenty, or as there is occasion, for apprentices; the masters by this may quickly grow rich, these may learn their trades themselves to do the like, to a general and an incredible benefit for king and country, master and servant.
(1616)
Source:
[1] Text taken from American Colonial Tracts Monthly, No. One, May 1898, Published by George P. Humphrey, Rochester, New York.