Part 2 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Notions about animals.]

[Sidenote: Note 9.]

[Sidenote: Evelyn's Diary, i, 277.]

The animals of the new continent excited the wonder of the people of Europe and increased the interest in America. Regarding them, also, the most extravagant stories were easily credited. It was recorded in the sober Latin of Peter Martyr that the advance of Cabot's s.h.i.+ps was r.e.t.a.r.ded by the mult.i.tude of codfish on the Newfoundland coast, and that the bears were accustomed to catch these fish in their claws. It is hard to recognize the familiar opossum in the description by Purchas: ”A monstrous deformed beast, whose fore part resembleth a fox, the hinder part an ape, excepting the feet, which are like a man's; beneath her belly she hath a receptacle like a purse, where she bestows her young until they can s.h.i.+ft for themselves.” The humming bird was believed to be a cross between a fly and a bird. The Hudson River Dutch settlers went further, and named it simply ”the West Indian bee.” These dainty creatures were prepared for exportation to Europe in New Amsterdam by drying them, in Barbadoes by filling them with sand. They were accounted ”pretty delicacies for ladies, who wore them at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and girdles.” Evelyn saw two preserved as great rarities at Oxford, in 1564. A New England versifier extols

The humbird for some queen's rich cage more fit Than in the vacant wilderness to sit.

[Sidenote: Wood's New Eng. Prospect, p. 23.]

[Sidenote: De Bry's Hariot, p. 10.]

Flying squirrels, when brought into English parks in 1608, were the occasion of much wondering excitement. King James begged for one of them, like a spoiled child. The skins of muskrats were esteemed for their odor and were brought to England ”as rich presents.” It was thought that musk might be extracted from this animal. Hariot, the learned man of Ralegh's first colony, fancied that the civet cat would prove profitable to settlers in America, but his words indicate that he had been misled by traces of the skunk, whose perfume has never yet come into request. Speaking of the ”civet catte,” he says, ”in our travails there was found one to have been killed by a salvage or inhabitant; and in many places the smell where one had lately beene before.”

[Sidenote: Note 10.]

The racc.o.o.n, the ”aroughcun” of the Virginia Indians, being a plantigrade, was esteemed a monkey; the peccaries were called the wild hogs of America, and were thought to have ”their navels on the ridge of their backs.” Somewhere in the region of the Hudson River a beast is described as having a horn in the middle of his forehead, from which it would appear that the unicorn on the royal coat of arms may have been found running at large. It is not easy to account for the ”camel mare,” reported to have been seen about three hundred miles west from the coast of New Jersey, unless it belonged to the genus _Incubus_. The bewildering number of new creatures found in America troubled the European scholars of that day, who were ever theological.

They were puzzled to get so many four-footed beasts and creeping things into the compa.s.s of Noah's ark. Mercator, the Flemish geographer, avoided this difficult embarkation by concluding that America had been excepted from the Deluge.

VIII.

[Sidenote: An age of romance and adventure.]

Thus grotesque and misleading were many of the glimpses that Europe got of the New World as the mists of ignorance slowly lifted from it.

These erratic notions regarding America give one an insight into the character of the English people at the period of discovery and colony-planting. Credulity and the romantic spirit dwell together. The imagination in such an age usurped the place of discrimination, and the wonderful became the probable. The appet.i.te for the marvelous fostered exaggeration; every man who had sailed in foreign seas thought it shame not to tell of wonders. The seventeenth century indeed betrayed a consciousness of its own weakness in a current proverb, ”Travelers lie by license.” History and fiction had not yet been separated. Like every other romantic age, the period of Elizabeth and James was prodigal of daring adventure; every notable man aspired to be the hero of a tale. English beginnings in America were thus made in a time abounding in bold enterprises--enterprises brilliant in conception, but in the execution of which there was often a lack of foresight and practical wisdom.

ELUCIDATIONS.

[Sidenote: Note 1, page 3.]

See the careful and learned discussion of the Voyages of Cabot by the late Charles Deane, in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. iii. Mr. Deane effectually destroys the delusion which so long gave the credit of this discovery, or a part of it, to Sebastian Cabot, the son of the real discoverer. Mr. Henry Harrisse, in John Cabot, the Discoverer of America, and in an earlier work, Jean et Sebastien Cabot, etc., reaches the same conclusion. He even doubts Sebastian's presence in the expeditions of his father, John Cabot, etc., p. 48.

[Sidenote: Note 2, page 4.]

Yet George Beste, who sailed with Frobisher, says: ”Now men neede no more contentiously strive for roume to build an house on, or for a little turffe of ground, ... when great countreys and whole worldes offer and reache out themselves to them that will first voutsafe to possesse, inhabite, and till them.” These countries, he says, ”are fertile to bring forth all manner of corne and grayne, infinite sortes of land cattell, as horse, elephantes, kine, sheepe, great varietie of flying fowles of the ayre, as phesants, partridge, quayle, popingeys, ostridges, etc., infinite kinds of fruits, as almonds, dates, quinces, pomegranats, oringes, etc., holesome, medicinable, and delectable”

(Frobisher's Voyages, Hakluyt Society, p. 38).

[Sidenote: Note 3, page 8.]

Ralegh, in his History of the World, book i, chap, viii, sec. xv, has an interesting digression on the danger of trusting such communications, and he relates an anecdote of misapprehension by this very party sent under Grenville and Lane: ”The same happened among the English, which I sent under Sir Richard Greeneville to inhabit Virginia. For when some of my people asked the name of that country, one of the savages answered, '_Wingandacon_,' which is as much as to say, as, _'You wear good cloaths,' or gay cloaths_.” From this answer it came that the coast of North Carolina was called ”Wingandacon,” or, in its Latinized form, Wingindacoa, while the chief, or ”king,” of the country appears in the narratives of the time as Wingina. Ralegh says that Yucatan means merely ”What say you?” and that Peru got its name from a similar mistake.