Chapter II

OF THE DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA DURING THE ELEVENTH, FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH,
AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.

1000–1607.

America not discovered by Jason.—Lithographic Specimens attributed to
the Northmen in the Eleventh Century curious, but by Skalds more
Modern.—Bishop Berkeley’s Western Star not the First American
Constellation.—Columbus offers a Continent at Private Sale; Isabella,
a Spanish Lady, takes him up, and the Profits also.—Of Ferdinand’s
Necklace.—Price of Eggs advanced in Spain.—England finally sees
Something.—A Fish Story confirmed.—Discoveries which Columbus did not
make.—Ponce de Leon.—Mexico unfortunately discovered.—The Straits of
Magellan and other Straits.—De Soto at the Bottom of the
Mississippi.—Champlain, a wise Man, founds Quebec upon a Rock.—Sir
Walter Raleigh and him smoking.—The Mayflower anchored.—Hudson up
Stream.

America was not discovered by Jason while looking up the golden fleece, although the existence of many American habits point to an originator, whose name is lost, but whose Asiatic practices are not. It is supposed by some that the late war crops were the product of certain stray dragon’s teeth, possibly dropped by that wily Greek on our prolific soil. But these hypotheses, although as wise as many others connected with early maritime discoveries, are too learned to be useful. History declines to pull such wool over the eyes of its readers or to encourage traditions which flatter the pride of ancient nations, whose age is the only excuse for their fond, grandfatherly dotings. Nor is it any more true that the Northmen, in the eleventh century, fell upon this out-lying continent, when engaged in general lithography along our coasts,—the pictured rocks near Taunton, although a spirited illustration of one page of our chronicles, being now proved to be sketches by later Scandinavian Skalds, less than eight hundred years old. We also feel obliged to deny the merit accorded by some to Bishop Berkeley, of having made the first discovery of America. This notion of some rests all its weight on the strength of those lines, “Westward the star of empire takes its way.” But those were not the first lines that were carried ashore and made fast to our continent, nor this the earliest star which appeared over our American boards.

Much as we should love, in the interest of modern historical research, to invent a new discoverer for America, candor compels us to award the glory still to Christopher Columbus. Had he lived three hundred and seventy-seven years later, he would have advertised for a partner in some paper of wide circulation; but not having that advantage, he circulated himself, offering a continent at private sale to all European nations that fronted the sunset. But all declined with thanks, until at last, as is well known, one Isabella, a Spanish lady, taken with the speculation, became a silent partner in the business. She not only furnished the capital, and took a high interest in the result, but finally reaped nearly all the profits,—a pleasant example of woman’s rights thoroughly enforced. She even took a necklace from her neck to procure funds for the expedition; and with this example before him, her associate Ferdinand, after trying his hand on several Moors, thought that, after unclasping from the neck of Columbus “the gem of the Antilles,” he could substitute a chain less golden. Posterity, however, indignantly breaking the metallic hasp, has clapped the iron collar back on the neck of the selfish, cunning, and thankless Ferdinando.

THE PICTURED ROCKS AT TAUNTON ATTRIBUTED TO THE NORTHMEN, OR SKALDS,
OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.
(p. 66)
]

We must not forget to mention that before the old pilot could get his project to stand, he had raised the price of eggs throughout Spain by placing so many on their own poor broken heads. For this destruction, however, he consoled himself with the maxim, “all’s well that ends well.” He carried his eggs and hopes to England, France, Portugal, and Navarre; but both were kept so long that they became addled.

A heavy fog prevented England at first from seeing the enterprise; but after the discovery of real land was made, she lost no time in procuring the advantages of it, and endeavored to secure them to herself, by allowing several vessels to be outfitted at Bristol.

These vessels were not built by Laird; but, sailing away on the blind side of the island, succeeded at last in boarding the continent, and exchanging some unprinted religious tracks for certain other tracts, afterwards well stamped by royal authority.

On their return, the promoters of this missionary enterprise built a handsome church, where prayers were daily offered for many years, for past success, and intercessions made for the interposition of the same kind Providence for new exchanges of a similar kind. These expeditions, it may be remarked, have been and are the foundation of England’s greatness,—her church and her trade; or rather to name them in juster order and according to her own estimate, her trade and her church. The Cabots, father and son, will ever be remembered by their addition to the world’s wealth by the discovery, in 1497, of Newfoundland. At the time it was thought to be a story somewhat fishy, but it is now swallowed without any bones.

LANDING OF COLUMBUS.
(p. 68)
]

The Portuguese were less fortunate, their ships having got somehow entangled in the line in crossing it, they were obliged to cast anchor against a high wind, which as usual was not so ill as not to benefit their English rivals. What became of these ships is not positively known; a glimpse of only one of them having since been obtained in Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. The rest may have drifted northwards, and their masts made to serve to splice the north pole, the old one having become somewhat loose from being so much worked about by meddlesome navigators.

Among the discoveries in America which Columbus did not make we may enumerate the following:—

First, a name for the continent; an omission afterwards supplied by a shabby countryman of his, whose own name we will not perpetuate by mentioning in this history.

Second, iron-clads; although he did come across some very hard characters, whose scaly armor history has ever since been mercilessly denting and battering. Columbus himself, although at one time cased in iron, and sent home on a trial trip, while he learned the value and preciousness of metal at the Spanish court, failed to discover its property to float him across seas successfully. Nor do we find any warrant for believing that he was the discoverer of,

Third, balsam of liverwort, the extract of buchu, Peruvian hair-dye, or the sozodont, notwithstanding the strenuous assertions to the contrary of the candid proprietors of those invaluable preparations. The only extract he succeeded in making was a promise of honors, never performed, although highly labelled; and it is well known that the only color he succeeded in obtaining in America, for his own hair, was gray. From the ingredients of this blanching powder he ultimately died himself at Valladolid.

Fourth, nor is there any better foundation for the common error, that he was the discoverer of the Tammany Society, and furnished designs and colored drawings for the wigwam, in which the Democratic braves find so many original and aboriginal voters. Indian polls, from which the hair had been carefully removed, he did see, and even took a few back with him to Spain; but it is needless to say that these polling-places were not the exemplars of those which Tammany so often and so lovingly pats on the head.

Fifth, equally erroneous is the general belief that he discovered “Hail Columbia,” although it is true that he got enough of it, in the sense that some illy educated small boys now use that phrase.

DISCOVERY OF NEWFOUNDLAND.
(p. 71)
]

Ponce de Leon, following up the discoveries of Columbus, landed in Florida, in 1512, and endeavored to find there a fountain possessing the properties of giving to the imbiber perpetual youth. Although he did not succeed in this quest, it seems probable that some one else did, for it is well known that several Americans, such as Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and others, have lived quite too long, while other distinguished Americans, as Burr and others, have manifested in a very lively way a green old age, cutting up capers which none but very young people would have thought of. He also discovered the Dry Tortugas,—a temperance station of the first water, famous as the habitation of Dr. Mudd.

A few years later, A. D. 1517, Mexico was unfortunately discovered, and from that time to the present has been the scene of constant embroilments, beginning with the broiling of Montezuma, by Cortez, and ending with the unhappy stew made by Maximilian for himself. Mexico is the American _abattoir_,—the general slaughter-house of our continent. Ice for the preservation of the quarters of her victims, where no quarter was shown, is obtained from the elevated plains into which the country is as yet insufficiently broken up.

We ought to mention the voyage, in 1520, of a Portuguese, Magellan by name, who touched at the Canaries for yellow birds, coasted along the shores of Brazil in search of other golden products, but finally brought up in a very tight place, on the extreme southern tip of our western globe; calling the spot, under great pressure, the Straits of Magellan.

He became so exhilarated, however, at Cape Horn, that he kept on, like the man with the cork leg, and went all around the world, being its first circumventor, and giving the first proof of the gyrating effects of mixing liquors with water.

De Soto first chanced upon the Mississippi River, and, in 1542, was flung upon it with all his heavy armor on,—“a sink-or-swim” experiment, which resulted in his remaining down at the bottom.

Diving for wrecks has since become for divers and diverse reasons common in that turbulent stream; but he is honored as the great diver; the river not being strong enough to get him up. John Law afterwards tried a Mississippi venture; but, unlike De Soto, he went up, and never came down again. Both De Leon and De Soto showed true American enterprise and energy in the pursuit of gold. Like their countryman Cortez, in Mexico, they were, however, more desirous of discovering metallic placers, and extracting from them sudden riches, than of luring by patient industry from a jealous soil its hoarded secrets of cereal wealth.

On the north, Cartier, in 1534, became the unhappy discoverer of the Canadas, and other out-lying, uncovered, cold regions, afterwards parcelled out, not to ice companies like the Knickerbocker and others, but into viceroyalties. These freezing places, from the continual stirring about in them of such contrary elements for the succeeding century, might well be called the ice-creameries of England and France.

Champlain, in 1603, like a wise man, founded Quebec on a rock; for which he has been illy requited by being called the father of the French settlements in Canada.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH INTRODUCES SMOKING TO THE ENGLISH COURT.
(p. 74)
]

Sir Walter Raleigh’s name must always burn brightly in American history, for his discovery of a smoking material on the James River. But his fame needs no puffing here, although his reputation became somewhat blown before his death. Another important event soon after occurred in connection with American discoveries. A Mayflower drifted, in December, across seas, and floating against Plymouth Rock, struck its tiny anchors in it, and, with Yankee enterprise, climbed all over it, covering its rugged clefts and bare surface with a mass of luxuriant flowers, with which also sprang up tangling weed-growths, all of which have since been dried and attracted great attention, much sneezing, some sneering, and great use of handkerchiefs to preserve the odor of, or prevent the smell of, what has penetrated all departments of American history. The last discovery which we shall here mention was that of Hudson, who brought to light the benighted island of Manhattan, then, as since, infested by Woods and other poisonous growths. The natives, as now, were very free in their manners; staring at the newly arrived, and taking them in by the exhibition of trinkets and gilt ornaments. In spite of the sluggish airs from the shores of Westchester and Dutchess, the ships of Hudson succeeded in reaching Rhinebeck; a few of his men even penetrating to the dense regions of Albany.