Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

There seems to be, however, another curious piece of confirmation, which comes from the writings of the celebrated Father Isaac Jogues, who was in New Amsterdam during the year 1646. In a letter written on August 3d of that year, he says that the Dutch were here, “about fifty years” before, while they began to settle permanently only about “twenty years” since. The latter statement is sufficiently correct, as 1623 was the year when a permanent colony was established by the Dutch. The former statement carries us back to the date of the “Greenland Company.”

So far as present evidence goes, it is perhaps unnecessary to say anything more in vindication of the statement of the Dutch Committee of 1644, claiming that representatives of the Greenland Company wintered here in 1598. Nevertheless, as a matter of interest, and to show how well the Hudson was known at this time by both Dutch and English, we may quote from the English translation of the Dutch narrative of Linschoten, which clearly describes the coast. He says: “There is a countrey under 44 degrees and a halfe, called Baccalaos.” This country of Baccalaos reached nine hundred miles, that is, from the Cape de Baccalaos [Cape Race] to Florida.

The distances are given approximately, of course, by Linschoten, being on the decimal system, but they distinctly mark the principal divisions of the coast and fix the fact beyond question that the Hudson was perfectly well known.

On the general subject it may be said, that the record of the “Greenland Company” is not satisfactory, yet the word “Greenland” at that time had a very general use, and all that the Committee of Accounts may have meant by the phrase was, that a company or association engaged in the fur and fish trade, which for centuries, even, had been prosecuted at the north, had sent some ships to this region in 1598. There is certainly nothing unreasonable in this supposition, the coast being so well known. Various adventurers of whom we know nothing doubtless came and went unobserved, being in no haste to publish the source from which they derived such a profitable trade in peltries. The Committee of Accounts either falsified deliberately or followed some old tradition. Why may not a tradition be true?

We turn next to examine a map recently brought to notice and which is of unique value. Formerly the map usually pointed out as the oldest seventeenth century map of this region was the Dutch “Figurative” Map, which was found by Mr. Brodhead in the Dutch archives. We have now, however, an earlier map of 1610, which was prepared from English data for James I., a copy finding its way to Philip III., by Velasco, March 22, 1611. Sandy Hook, though without name, is delineated about as it appears in later maps, while Long Island is shown as a part of the main, with no indication of the Sound, though Cape Cod and the neighboring islands are well delineated, and Verrazano’s Island of “Luisa” appears as “Cla[u]dia,” the mother of Francis I. Clearly at this time neither Block nor any other Dutch navigator had passed through Hell Gate into Long Island Sound.

There is nothing whatever in this map relating to explorations by any nation later than 1607. Jamestown appears on the Virginia portion, and Sagadehoc in Maine. It was simply a copy of a map made soon after the voyage to New England and Virginia in 1607. The compiler had not heard of Hudson’s voyage, as that navigator did not reach England until November 7, 1609. If he had received any information from Hudson, he would have shown the river terminating in a shallow, innavigable brook, whereas the river is indicated, in accordance with Captain John Smith’s idea, as a strait, leading to a large body of water. Further, the map contradicts Hudson, who represents the Hoboken side of the river as “Manhatta,” while this map puts the name on both sides, “Manahata,” on the west and “Manahatin” on the east. It is not unlikely that Hudson had with him a copy of the map, for his guidance on the voyage in the Half-Moon.

Though this map bears a date subsequent to Hudson’s voyage, the contents prove that the original could not have been drawn later than 1608. It was evidently one of the various maps of which Smith spoke and which he underrated. Its substance indicates that it was drawn from a source independent of the Dutch and French, showing that the English knew of the Bay of New York and its relation to Sandy Hook, and that they supposed the great river delineated was a broad stream which, in someway, communicated with the Pacific. On the original map of which Velasco’s example was a copy, the land west of the river was colored blue, and the legend says that it is described by information drawn from the Indians. What we need now is the original map, which may still exist in some obscure collection in England or Holland, and quite as likely in the archives of Spain, sent thither by jealous Spanish spies, who lingered, like Velasco, at the court of James I., to learn what they could with respect to English enterprise in America. At all events we have in this English map the first seventeenth century delineation of this region, and one showing that the English knew the form and general character of the country which the crown conveyed to the colonists of North and South Virginia in 1606. So far as now known, it was clearly the English who first became acquainted with the name that the Aborigines applied to the island upon which our great metropolitan city stands. Whether or not this was an aboriginal word or a corruption of a Castilian term future investigators may decide. The unexpected finding of this old English map in the Spanish archives revives our hopes relating to the discovery of new sources of information concerning early voyages to this coast. English enterprise and adventure on the Virginia coast, extending from Raleigh’s expedition, 1584, to Gosnold’s fatal quest, 1603, must have brought Englishmen into the Bay of New York, unless miracle was balanced against curiosity and chance. There are archives yet to be opened that may give the origin of the delineations of this region found in the remarkable map from Samancas, and we need to be cautious in making claims even for the priority of the Dutch in 1598.

The period under consideration was a period of reconnoissance, one that offered some romantic incident, but more of disappointment and mortification. Here was a site for one of the noblest cities in the world, but the voyager was blind. The river offered no route to the gorgeous Indies, and Verrazano had little inclination to test its swift tide. Gomez, in the short January days of 1525, had no desire to ascend, for when his ship met the drift ice tossing on the cold, swirling stream, he thought of Anthony in his desolate retreat on the Red Sea, put the river under his charge, and sailed away in search of happier shores. Sailors of other nationalities, doubtless, ascended the river; but, finding it simply a river, they took what peltries they could get, and, like Gomez, turned the whole region over to the care of the solitary Saint, who for nearly a century stood connected with its neglect. Much remained to be done before steps could be taken with regard to colonization. The initial work, however, was inaugurated by the sturdy Englishman, Henry Hudson, and the proud Spanish caravel disappears, while the curtain rises upon the memorable voyage of the quaint Dutch fly-boat, the Half-Moon.

FOOTNOTES

[2] Letter addressed to the writer in 1890.

[3] The vignette on proceeding page is a faithful representation of the Florentine portrait.

[4] The usual course was to sail southward and reach Florida coasting north, or to sail to Newfoundland and coast southward. It required especial boldness to take the direct course, and, in 1562, when Ribault followed this course, he was proud of the achievement. The fact that Verrazano sailed the direct course at that time proves the authenticity of his voyage, as a forger would not have invented the story.

[5] On the Map of Verrazano, to which attention will be directed, this triangular island is delineated. The voyager approaching the island from the west comes to a point of the triangle where he can look away in the easterly direction, and at a glance take in two sides; while on reaching the eastern limit the third side plainly appears. In sailing past Block Island, as Verrazano did, from west to east, the navigator could not fail to discover its triangular shape. Indeed it is so marked that one is struck by the fact.

[6] The story of this map is curious. The American contents were first given to the public by the writer in the “Magazine of American History,” and afterward reprinted in “Verrazano the Explorer.”

[7] In “Cabo de Arenas,” the coast names taken from a large collection of maps are arranged in parallel columns, illustrating three main divisions of the coast, showing that Cabo de Baxos was the name applied to Cape Cod, and Cabo de Arenas to Sandy Hook. Capo Cod in the early times was not a sandy cape, but a beautiful and well-wooded cape. Sandy Hook ever since it was known has borne its present character.

[8] Those who have fancied that Cape Arenas was Cape Cod, and that the bay behind it was Massachusetts Bay, have the same difficulty as regards dimensions. Students of American cartography understand perfectly well that latitudes in the old maps were often more than two degrees out of the way, the instruments of that period being so defective.

[9] To convince himself of this fact the reader may compare the reconstructed Map of Chaves with the coast surveys, when the main difference will be found to consist in the exaggeration of Sandy Hook. The “Narrative and Critical History of America,” dealing with this point, suppresses all allusion to the fact that Kohl recognizes the cape on the Map of Chaves with the names “Santiago” and “Arenas” as Sandy Hook, which follows, as the river inside of the Hook he identifies with the Hudson. Dr. Kohl, though generally very acute, failed to see that Oviedo’s description of the Map of Chaves was, substantially, the description of Ribeiro, and that in identifying, as he chanced to, the “Arenas” of Ribeiro with Cape Cod, he stultified his own reasoning. Nor did he consider this, that if the great Cape “Arenas” was intended for Cape Cod, there is no representation whatever of Sandy Hook and the Hudson in the old cartography and that all the voyages to this region geographically went for nothing. _Credat Judaeus Appellus!_ This exaggeration of Sandy Hook is conceded, yet the inlets along the New Jersey shore may have been viewed as connected by Gomez; and indeed, so great have been the changes along the coast that no one can well deny that they were connected in 1525, and formed a long bay running down behind Sandy Hook. It will prove more historic to follow the writer, who says, “that the coast of New York and the neighboring district were known to Europeans almost a century before Hudson ascended the ‘Great River of the North,’ and that this knowledge is proved by various maps made in the course of the sixteenth century. Nearly all of them place the mouth of a river between the fortieth and forty-first degrees of latitude, or what should be this latitude, but which imperfect instruments have placed farther north.”—Nar. and Crit. His. of Amer., 4: 432.

EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE.

Seventy-odd years ago the Rev. Sydney Smith wrote in the Edinburg Review as follows: “Literature, the Americans have none—no native literature, we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed, and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. There is, or was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems, and his baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a small account of Virginia, by Jefferson, an epic by Joel Barlow, and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should the Americans write books, when a six weeks’ passage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, science and genius in bales and hogsheads?”

Times have changed since Mr. Smith wrote this somewhat sarcastic summary of our native literature; for, while it is true that we still import British “sense, science, and genius in bales and hogsheads,” it is done now on principles of reciprocity, and we return quite as good and perhaps nearly as much as we receive.

Americans do not instance Mr. Dwight, whose “baptismal name was Timothy,” or Mr. Barlow, the author of the epic so sneeringly referred to, as the chiefs of American poesy; yet we need not blush for either of them; for the first was a distinguished scholar the President of Yale College, and the author of the hymn so dear to many pious hearts:

“I love thy kingdom, Lord!
The house of Thine abode;
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.”

The other, Mr. Barlow, was a well-known man of letters and politician in his day, author of the “Columbiad,” the epic referred to by Mr. Smith, and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the coast of France at a critical period of our history. As to the “Columbiad,” it has been pronounced by competent critics to be equal in merit to Addison’s “Campaign,” and surely it is no disgrace to have equalled Addison.

It was the fashion in those days for Englishmen to sneer at Americans; and so we find in another review, written by the same gentleman in 1820, this language: “During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature, or even for the statesmanlike studies of politics or political economy.... In the four quarters of the globe who reads an American book? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they done in mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from American plates? or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets?” In the very same year that this array of rather insolent queries was propounded by Sydney Smith, the genial Washington Irving, in the advertisement to the first English edition of his Sketch Book, remarks: “The author is aware of the austerity with which the writings of his countrymen have been treated by British critics.” We have not a particle of doubt as to the “austerity” in question. The salvos of Old Ironsides and the roar of Jackson’s guns at New Orleans, were unpleasant facts not yet forgotten by Englishmen.

But Sydney Smith was not quite fair towards our countrymen. It was “during the thirty or forty years of their independence” referred to that Fulton’s steamboat revolutionized navigation, that Rittenhouse developed a mathematical skill second only to that of Newton; that West delighted even royalty itself with the creations of his pencil; while in “the statesmanlike studies of politics or political economy,” it was during this very period that Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and their coadjutors did more to develop the true principles of government and politics than had ever been done before in the history of the world. True, we had not much to boast of, but it would have been only just to give us credit for what we were worth. Moreover, in a small way, but to the extent it was possible under the circumstances, the English colonists in America had cultivated letters from the beginning. In 1685, Cotton Mather wrote his Memorable Providences; in 1732, Franklin began to issue his Poor Richard’s Almanac; in 1749, Jonathan Edwards published his Life of David Brainerd, and in 1754, his famous treatise on The Freedom of the Will and Moral Agency. Besides these, which perhaps stand out most conspicuously, there were many minor works of more or less excellence, over most of which the iniquity of oblivion, to use the fine phrase of Sir Thomas Browne, hath scattered her poppy.

The moment that the Edinburg Review was thus dealing our fathers these heavy blows seemed to be the real starting point in our career of literary greatness. William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, James K. Paulding, Richard H. Dana, James Fenimore Cooper, Mrs. Sigourney and a host of others were giving direction to that stream of literature that has since flowed broad and free over our land, imparting life and vigor and beauty to our society and institutions. It is, however, anterior to the year 1820, the thirty or forty years of our national independence, during which Mr. Smith says we have done “absolutely nothing” in literature, science or art, to which we must more particularly advert. The literary product of those years was scanty enough, it is true. The student of this period will not find much, and not all of that of the first order, to reward his labor—not much, at least, as compared with other nations at the same time. But may there not have been some sufficient reason for this, outside of any downright intellectual deficiencies on the part of our fathers? Let us for a moment consider the condition of things at that time in this country.

In the first place, at the time referred to, the citizens of the United States were in a daily struggle with the material difficulties of their situation. The country was new. The region west and north of the Ohio and Mississippi was yet an almost unbroken wilderness, while the country east and south of those rivers was but sparsely populated. At the same time the tide of immigration was sweeping into the country, and with it all the rush and turmoil incident to life in a new country was going on. Forests were to be cut down; farms were to be cleared up; houses were to be built; roads were to be made; bridges were to be thrown across the rivers; while a livelihood was to be compelled from the forests, the streams, and the fields. The conditions of a new country are not favorable to the cultivation of the arts, of sciences, or of literature. Why do not Englishmen twit the people of Australia because during the past forty or fifty years in which they have prospered so greatly in material things, they have not produced a Macaulay, a Tennyson, a Gladstone, a Tyndall, or a Huxley? It would be just as fair to do it.

Not only was there this hand to hand contest with their physical environment, but the political conditions were also unfavorable to any general dalliance with the Muses. Only in times of tranquility and ease is it possible.

“To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair.”

The country at the period referred to, had just emerged from a long and exhausting war. Society was almost broken up; the arts of peace were well nigh forgotten; the finances were in almost hopeless confusion; the form of government was unsettled, and scarcely yet determined upon. The first thing to do was to evolve some system and some security out of this chaos. Politics alone occupied the moments of leisure. When, finally, authority had crystallized into definite government the people were not allowed to be at rest. Murderous wars with the Indians on the frontiers; the machinations of French emissaries; British oppression of American commerce, and at length another long and bloody war with England, harassed the minds of the people, and prevented them from giving themselves up more generally to the kindly and refining influences of literature and art. When we consider all the circumstances in the case, there seems a degree of severity in Sydney Smith’s sneers and taunts.

But though circumstances were thus unfavorable to the cultivation of letters, yet something was done in this direction nevertheless. Smith refers flippantly enough to Dwight, Jefferson, Barlow and Irving. But besides these there were others, not brilliant luminaries perhaps, yet stars shining in the darkness according to their orders and degrees. We do not design here to enter upon any discussion of their respective merits, but we may mention as a writer of that period no less a character than George Washington, whose greatness in other spheres of life has entirely eclipsed any fame of which he may be worthy as an author, yet whose Farewell Address alone would entitle him to a place among the most accurate writers of English. Among others we may name John Adams, whose pen was scarcely less eloquent than his tongue; Francis Hopkinson, author of The Battle of the Kegs and many other pieces, of which it has been said, that “while they are fully equal to any of Swift’s writings for wit, they have nothing at all in them of Swift’s vulgarity;” Dr. Benjamin Rush, a distinguished writer on medical and social topics; John Trumbull, the author of McFingal and The Progress of Dullness; James Madison, afterward President of the United States, one of the ablest writers in The Federalist; Philip Freneau, a poet of the Revolution and the period immediately following; Alexander Hamilton, a contributor to The Federalist, and one of the clearest of political writers; Joseph Dennie, the author of The Lay Preacher, and editor of The Portfolio; Joseph Hopkinson, author of Hail, Columbia; Charles Brockden Brown, author of Wieland, Arthur Mervyn, and other works, and who was perhaps the first American who wholly devoted his life to literary pursuits; William Wirt, author of the British Spy, the Life of Patrick Henry, and other works; and Lyman Beecher, the author of a work on Political Atheism, anti several volumes of sermons and public addresses. This list might easily be extended, but its length as it now stands, as well as the merits of the writers adduced, is sufficient to contradict effectually the statement that America had “no native literature,” and that during the thirty or forty years immediately subsequent to the Revolution she had done “absolutely nothing” for polite letters. Much of this early literature still remains, and is read; many of these authors are still familiar to this generation, and it is generally admitted that the writer whose fame survives a century is assured of a literary immortality. Sydney Smith was an acute man, a learned man, a great wit, a ready and elegant writer, a trenchant critic, but the names of some of these humble Americans whom he did not deign to mention, or mentioned only to scoff, bid fair to stand as long in the annals of literature as his own.

On the eastern slope of the Andes are a thousand springs from which the slender rills, half hidden at times by the grass, scarcely at any time seen or heard, trickle down the side of the immense mountain range, here and there falling into each other and swelling in volume as they flow, until at length is formed the mighty Amazon, that drains the plateaus and valleys of half a continent. So the beginnings of our literature, like the beginnings of every literature, are small, indistinct, half hidden; but as they proceed, these little rills of thought and expression grow and expand, until the mighty stream is formed that irrigates the whole world of intellectual activity.

This stream, as we have said, first began to assume definite form and direction about the time that Sydney Smith was uttering his tirades against the genius and achievements of our countrymen. In 1817, appeared in the North American Review a remarkable poem called “Thanatopsis.” The author was a young man named William Cullen Bryant, only twenty-three years of age; yet the poem had been written four years before. The annals of literature do not furnish another example of such excellence at so early an age. The poem yet stands as one of the most exquisite in the language. A recent critic has characterized it as “lofty in conception, beautiful in execution, full of chaste language and delicate and striking imagery, and, above all, pervaded by a noble and cheerful religious philosophy.” This first effort on the part of Bryant was succeeded by a long career of eminence in the field of literature. In 1818 appeared a volume of miscellanies called “The Sketch Book,” by Washington Irving, a young man who had already acquired some slight reputation as a dabbler in literature of a trifling or humorous kind. The Sketch Book was almost immediately honored by republication in England. This initial volume was followed by a second series of miscellanies called “Bracebridge Hall,” which was published in London in 1822. In the preliminary chapter the author pleasantly adverts to the general feeling with which American authorship was regarded in England. “It has been a matter of marvel to my European readers,” says he, “that a man from the wilds of America should express himself in tolerable English. I was looked upon as something new and strange in literature; a kind of demi-savage, with a feather in his hand instead of on his head; and there was a curiosity to hear what such a being had to say about civilized society.” In the same year with Irving’s Sketch Book appeared Drake’s Culprit Fay, a poem that has not been surpassed in its kind since Milton’s Comus. In 1821 Percival issued his first volume of poems, Dana his Idle Man, and Cooper, his Precaution. His last named volume was at once followed by a long list of works including such famous titles as The Spy, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer. It marked the advent of our most distinguished novelist—a man who has been styled the Walter Scott of America. He justly stands in the same rank with the mighty Wizard of the North, and has no other equal. Thus the stream of American literature rolled on its course, and was swelled as it flowed by the contributions of Everett, Prescott, Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Willis, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, and a host of others, whose names the world will not willingly let die.

America has not yet produced a Shakespere or a Milton; but it must be remembered that England has produced but one, each of these in a period of a thousand years. Anywhere below these two great names, American literature of the last seventy years is able to parallel the best work that has been produced by our kinsmen on the other side of the Atlantic. In wealth and elegance of diction, in depth of thought or feeling, in brightness and grace of expression, in any of the thousand forms and flights in which genius seeks to express himself, the current literature of America stands on a level with the current literature of England; and Sydney Smith’s sneers, which must have touched our fathers to the quick, find no response now except the smile of contempt which alone they ever deserved.

T. J. CHAPMAN.

THE OHIO SOCIETY, AND OHIO IN NEW YORK.