1630.] SETTLEMENTS IN MAINE. 335 the wet ground, he was filled with content at getting dried grass for his bed; and recounts with much merriment the story of the beggar, who said if he were rich he would have every day a breast of mutton with a pudding in it, and sleep up to his neck in dry straw. Levett finally built a house at a place he called York, somewhere near the present site of that town, in Maine, and then returned to England, where he printed an account of all that he had seen and done, and specially commended to the attention of merchants the rich products of the country and sea-coasts, in timber, furs, and codfish, ending with the wholesome advice that no man go to the country unless he was willing to work. He declares that a man with a family who were unfit to labor would do better to stay at home with them; but he that could work and had not too many hostages to fortune in the shape of wife and children, if he went out properly equipped with tools, and enough provisions to last till he was prosperously established, was certain to get rich in New England. Settlements Maine. In all these attempts no permanent plantation which could fairly be called a settlement had been made on the coast of Maine. Although a large part of the Laconia grant was within in limits of the present limits of that State, yet the first expedition sent by Mason and Gorges had established itself on the other side of the river, which was to form the boundary of New Hampshire. As Levett explored the coast, although he found many fishing stations, and mentions several large tracts that had been granted to English owners, he speaks of no settlements west of the Piscataqua after he left the hospitality of Mr. Thompson's plantation. There were some scattered beginnings on Monhegan Island, and several fishing stages for the cure of the fish, some of which afterward formed the nucleus of a town; and it is not unlikely that solitary plantations may have been begun, of which we have no record, along that coast which furnished resting places and harbors for so many fishing vessels, and from whence so much tall timber had already been carried away. In 1625, two wealthy merchants of Bristol, Robert Aldworth and Giles Eldridge, bought Monhegan Island, and sent over an agent to settle there; a year later they bought the point of Pemaquid, which had already been sold by Samoset, the friend of the New Plymouth colonists, to an English purchaser, and there they established a flourishing colony, which in 1630 numbered eighty-four families. Settlements of Oldham and Vines, In this same year 1630, the Plymouth Council gave Richard Vines and John Oldham, each a tract of land on the Saco River, four miles broad on the sea, and extending eight miles up into the land. Oldham had been six years in the on the Saco country, and Vines's coming must certainly date thirteen or fourteen years earlier.1 These two men founded the towns of Biddeford and Saco, on their tract, which faced each other on opposite sides of the river. These were the most decided beginnings of settlements in Maine. No such well-defined towns were built in this as in the other colonies, and to this want of centralization and concentration Maine owed in part its relation afterwards as a dependency of Massachusetts. Its scattered settlements were unable to preserve for it a separate existence when its stronger neighbor prepared to include it in her more powerful organization. Gorges and Mason divide their grant. In 1629, when the settlements in Laconia on the Piscataqua were six years old, Mason and Gorges divided their grants into two parts, the former taking all west of the Piscataqua, and naming it New Hampshire, Mason being then governor of the County of Hampshire, England, and the latter all east of that stream, to the River Sagadahoc, the eastern boundary of Laconia. Gorges named his part of the territory New Somersetshire, from the county which had been his early home. For this new tract, now solely his, he sent his nephew William Gorges and others," with craftsmen, for the building of houses, and erecting of saw-mills," also cattle, laborers, and servants, and the foundation of a plantation was laid. This was the town of York, on which a planter named Edward Godfrey was the first settler. On this, Gorges had set aside an inheritance for his grandson Ferdinando, of 12,000 acres, and it seems to have been his favorite point for the establishment of a proprietary interest for his family in New England. The Plym outh Com their patent. But already bitter complaints were made in England, that discontented spirits full of disaffection to the king, and hostile to pany resign the government o' the established church, were settling on 1635. the grants made by the Plymouth Company. Gorges, in New England, was looked up on with jealousy and dislike by many of the Puritans, because of his large territorial claims in their vicinity, as well as on account of his opinions as a loyalist and member of the English Church; on the other hand he was attacked in England as an upholder and author of the reputed license of laws and opinions among the new colonies in Massachusetts. He seems to have been deeply hurt at this, after his long and arduous work in forwarding the plantation of English colonies in New England, and he "therefore was moved to desire the rest of the lords, that were the principal actors in this business, that we should resign our grand patent to the king, and pass particular patents to ourselves, of such parts of the 1 There is a doubt about the exact time of Vines's first coming. Prince, in his Chronol ogy, says it was the winter of 1616-17, but Gorges, in his narrative, puts it after the attempt at settlement by the Popham Colony, and just before one of the voyages of 1614. 1635.] DIVISION OF THE COMPANY'S LANDS. 337 country about the sea-coast as might be sufficient to our own uses, and such of our private friends as had affections to works of that nature.” 1 This was done in 1635, and the lands of the Company, lying between the forty-eighth and thirty-sixth degree of latitude, were parcelled out among its members.2 The terri Gorges. This new division confirmed the right of Gorges to the tract lying between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec, with a sea-coast of sixty miles, and an extent of one hundred and twenty tory of miles inland. And now for the first time, he called this his province of Maine, and he drew up for it a code of laws, dividing the land first into counties, subdividing these into hundreds, and again into parishes or tithings, as fast as population flowed in to fill up the vacant places. He offered also to transport planters to his domain, promising to assign them a certain portion of land at the low rate of two or three shillings for a hundred acres, and if any would found a town or city, he would endow it with such liberties and immunties as they would have in England. Others of poorer condition, who would go as laborers, should have as much land as they could till, at the rent of four or six pence an acre, according to the situation. The laws and government were a return to Saxon simplicity, the lord proprietary retaining ownership of the soil. In 1637, the king gave Gorges a commission as governor of New England, to compensate him for his strenuous efforts in colonization, and the many losses he had suffered in these endeavors. He made preparations to go to Maine, to assume the duties of this office, and see a country in which he had so great an interest, but some accident prevented his departure, and he never came to America. Three years later, he sent 1 Gorges's "Brief Narration," Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii, part 2, pp. 5, 7. 2 The divisions were: (1.) Between the St. Croix and Pemaquid, to William Alexander. (2.) From Pemaquid to Sagadahoc, in part to the Marquis of Hamilton. (3.) Between the Kennebec and Androscoggin; and (4.) From Sagadahoc to Piscataqua, to Sir F. Gorges. (5.) From Piscataqua to the Naumkeag, to Mason. (6.) From the Naumkeag round the sea-coast, by Cape Cod to Narragansett, to the Marquis of Hamilton. (7.) From Narragansett to the half-way bound, between that and the Connecticut River, and fifty miles up into the country, to Lord Edward Gorges. (8.) From this midway point to the Connecticut River, to Earl of Carlisle. (9 and 10.) From the Connecticut to the Hudson, to Duke of Lennox. (11 and 12.) From the Hudson to the limits of the Plymouth Company's territory, to Lord Mulgrave. See Hubbard's Hist. N. E., Mass. Hist. Coll., Series 2, vol. v., p. 228. Williamson's Hist. Maine, vol. i., p. 256. Gorges's "Brief Narration," Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 54. 8 Sullivan in Hist. of Maine, and others, say that the territory was called the Province of Maine, in compliment to Queen Henrietta, who had that province in France for dowry. But Folsom," Discourse on Maine," Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 38, says that that province in France did not belong to Henrietta. Maine, like all the rest of the coast, was known as the "Maine," the mainland, and it is not unlikely that the word so much used by the early fishers on the coast, may thus have been permanently given to this part of it. over his kinsman Thomas Gorges, who came first to Boston, and after a courteous reception by the governor there, went to take up his abode at Agamenticus. The services ter of Gorges. To Ferdinando Gorges more credit is due than has been always acknowledged, for his persistent efforts to settle New Engand charac- land, and for his unswerving belief in the value of such a colony to the mother country. In the conflict of patents and titles between him and the Virginia Company, and between him and the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, his real and essential services as the friend of colonization have been in some degree lost sight of. As a staunch adherent to the Established Church, he undoubtedly wished that those who should find homes in the lands under his jurisdiction in the New World should be of the faith of that Church in which he believed. But the jealousy with which, for this reason, he was regarded, seems to have had no sufficient ground; for no sectarian narrowness prevented his being the earnest friend of the Puritans of New Plymouth, and always desirous of their success and welfare. If, indeed, the fear of him as a zealous Churchman was quite sincere, it was, at least, no doubt increased by a covetous jealousy of him as a patentee. As so often happens, the contemporary estimate of his character, taking its form from the convictions and interests of those who made it, has survived, and is often accepted as just by those who do not in the least sympathize with the partial and narrow views which led to that judgment. Losing sight of these, or taking them at their real value as the result of local and temporary influences, the true place of Gorges is found among those Englishmen whose far-sighted wisdom, zeal, and energies were devoted earnestly and unselfishly to the permanent settlement of his countrymen upon this continent. He builded, perhaps, better than he knew; but, so far as he did know, he built with no narrow purpose. CHAPTER XIII. DUTCH EXPEDITIONS TO NORTH AMERICA. AMSTERDAM. SETTLEMENT OF NEW COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE AND PROSPERITY OF THE DUTCH. — THEIR INTEREST IN A SHORT ROUTE TO INDIA. EARLY NORTHEAST VOYAGES. HENRY HUDSON EMPLOYED BY EAST INDIA COMPANY. - HIS FIRST VOYAGE TO AMERICA.- ENTRANCE INTO NEW YORK BAY AND DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER. HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND. VOYAGE TO HUDSON'S BAY. THE DUTCH ESTABLISH TRADING-POSTS AT MANHATTAN ISLAND.-DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY CHARTERED. - EMIGRATION OF WALLOONS. SETTLEMENTS ON SITES OF ALBANY AND NEW YORK CITY. ALONG the whole Atlantic coast of North America, there were, in the early years of the seventeenth century, only three feeble European colonies established, that of the Spanish at St. Augustine, of the English on the James River, and of the French in Acadia on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. Yet more than a hundred years had passed away since it was claimed that Cabot had run along this coast for a thousand miles in an English ship; and that only a few years later Verrazano for the French, and Gomez for the Spanish, had visited and named some of the most distinctive of its rivers, bays, and capes. Of all the states of Europe, Spain alone had increased in wealth and power from the discovery of the New World. Into her coffers, both public and private, gold had poured in such enormous quantities from the ravishment of Mexico and Peru, as to affect the relative value of everything that was bought and sold among civilized people; but otherwise no other nation shared in this sudden wealth except as their ships could spoil the Spaniards on the high seas. The Emperor Charles V. stamped upon his gold coin the device of the Pillars of Hercules and the legend Plus Ultra; but other powers saw as yet little reason to boast that there was much for them beyond the western boundary of Europe. That Spain had gained so much and other nations seemingly so little, was owing partly to the poverty in gold and silver of the northern regions; partly to the failure to find the northwest passage to the South Sea; and partly to the absorbing interest of great political and religious complications which agitated all Europe during much of the sixteenth century. But there were secondary results of American |