Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/100

 CHAPTER V.

EARLY SETTLEMENTS IN NEW ENGLAND, NEW NETHERLAND, AND NEW SWEDEN.

While the first germ of the now vast American organization was thus struggling into life in Virginia, the coasts of New England and of Maine were becoming dotted with settlements of different nationalities, and the resources of Canada and the districts bounding it on the north were gradually being revealed by the researches of French and Dutch explorers.

From the time of Jacques Cartier, the French had claimed possession of the Atlantic seaboard from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the south of the modern province of Maine; and as early as 1536, a certain André Thevet had discovered the mouth of the Penobscot river, and reported very favorably of the capabilities of the districts watered by it, and the friendly disposition of the Indians with whom he had come in contact. No real effort to turn these advantages to account was made, however, until the close of the sixteenth century, when Henri IV. of France sent out the Marquis de la Roche with orders to found a new French empire on the western coast of America. The noble leader of this expedition, charged with so grand a commission, found himself hampered in carrying it out by the fact that the followers who were to form the nucleus of the "empire" were all convicts from the overcrowded French prisons. He contented himself, therefore, with landing them on the desolate shores of Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, whence they returned home after twelve years of misery, having accomplished literally nothing.

In the following year (1599) a trip far richer in results was made to Canada by a merchant of St. Malo named Pontgravé, and a naval officer named De Chauvin, the latter of whom obtained a commission from Henri IV. similar to that given De la Roche. The sudden death of De Chauvin, after a preliminary trip, prevented him from himself reaping any benefit from the full powers conferred on him; but Pontgravé was so convinced by what he had seen on