Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (306 page)

CHAPTER IV
.

EARLY in August and at, or nearly, the fortieth parallel they came, as far south as they were bound, to the mouth of a great river.

All that month there had been many and great storms from the eastwards, though in two days of calm they met with French Newfoundland fishermen, and had from them meat and biscuits and some fresh fish and much dry. And when the east wind drove them towards the land they found a great sound, like a lake, where they ran for so many miles in an inland sea that at first the navigator nearly believed they had found their passage. But at last they came out, perilously, into the main sea once more and knew that they had been running behind the shelter of an island, that for its length they called Long Island.

The river that they found on the fortieth parallel was very big and ran into the land between two banks. And at first this too they began to believe was their strait. But Hudson observed that the water was fresh and sweet after twenty miles or so, and unless there fell great rivers into the strait the water could not be fresh. Nevertheless, they sailed up it for many miles, till they came to a place where it divided into two streams, a great and a little, tributary and parent, and then they knew that this was only a river.

And on this tongue of land, between the two rivers, Edward Colman landed with a boat’s crew, and he found that the land was level and wooded and covered with grass and flowers of a great size and of a great rankness and fertility. And here, it seemed to him, was one place where he might very well found a settlement, for it appeared to him that here was everything that the heart of a man could desire, and good navigation for ships up to the very foot of it and beyond. So he noted this place down in his note-books as a very good place, only that the air there was very clammy and hot in the August sun, and he would rather be farther to the northward.

For by now he had made a very definite plan, and had worked upon it to find the figures and the profits. It was in this way that, if he could send several of his roomiest ships with good settlers such as could be found in and near the town of Rye, he could send them, each with forty men, with tools, axes for hewing down trees, spades to dig with, ploughs, guns, arrows, ammunition, seeds for planting and traps for catching beasts — each ship provided with enough of these for thirty men not sailors. And this would cost him
£240
for each ship. But when the ships returned, each with ten men, they could catch fish enough and buy other fish from the Frenchmen of Newfoundland, enough to make a cargo of fish worth £520 or more in England. So that that voyage would yield him a good profit. And the Dutchmen were all for a commonwealth with stadtholders only and no kings; but Edward Colman was for a king and for bishops and archbishops too, much such as they had in England. For he said that the common people could not govern. Nay, he would have in the towns mayors and barons and jurats and a lord warden over them all, much such as the Cinque Ports had at home. But he would have only good kings and perfect laws — not such a law as that against the export of wool — the law that had sent him abroad. And when he argued with the Dutchmen he was inclined to relent in his other idea that all creeds should be free of his realm. For it was one thing as an Englishman alone to say that he would let all people — Anabaptists and Saints on Earth, and the rest of those in the Dutch settlement at Rye — worship as they would. But it was another to let stubborn and stiff-necked Dutchmen claim as their just right what he would only accord as an English favour.

For he remembered how at home these Dutchmen not only lived and worshipped, but they made converts among the common people, so that, at Rye, then, many ploughmen and poorer seamen an’d the keepers of small shops had become Puritans of one sort or another. Nay, one of his own canvas-makers had taken it upon himself to interpret the Scriptures to him, Edward Colman, his master and a Baron of the Ports.

And such things were a danger in a State where freedom must be tempered by a due respect of the fabric of the commonwealth that was knitted together of many estates and orders, rising from hind to king through the degrees of priests and bishops, and knights and jurats, and barons, as it should be always, and always had been. And he remembered that he was a member of the Church of England, and he decided that he would have a law that these Dutch Churches might worship as they would; but they should be prevented from making converts under great penalties. And so with the Huguenots and Lutherans and Calvinists and all the rest.

It was only the old Jan who derided without ceasing these New World schemes of theirs. He looked upon the dry and rocky shores that passed slowly before their eyes. And he said, Would there never be an end of this mad sailing? For he was wild to be back in Holland and draw his pay and take his ease and drink much liquor. For he came of an older generation that had held that only in the old world at home was there Christendom. And all the rest was a dark land peopled with beasts with black skins or yellow skins or copper skins. And such of these as had gold it was fitting to slay and take their gold from them, for they were devils; and such as had no gold they should slay at once. And leaning over the bulwarks he spat into the crawling waters, and pointed with gloomy derision at those shores. For, said he, farther south the Spanish conquistadores had had stores of gold from Montezuma’s men; and in the East, in the Moluccas and the Philippines and the Islands of Spice they had pepper and gold and nutmegs for the taking. All that had been in the good days of old. But here there was nothing. It was a land accursed of God; for here the Indians that they slew had no wealth but feathers. And that proved the accursed barrenness of the land. For these Indians were devils and sorcerers, and if they could wring from the earth no gold or spices it was a proof that the earth there was poor and useless.

“And aye me!” he said, “it is in the omens that I shall never go back to Amsterdam. Unlucky me that late in life have set out upon such a voyage that is weary and profitless to me. And we are beset with sorcery and have no rest.”

And he told how he had had it of a Spanish prisoner in Holland before they hanged him, in the centre of this God-accursed land there dwelt a sort of Pope, called a Grand Susham, who never died, but lived for ever and instructed all these brown fiends in their devilries. And they danced round fires and howled; and each time they howled the souls in hell had fresh tortures, below in the earth’s centre. So that even the Spaniards themselves, who were devils, had not taken this land of fear and horror.

“And never shall there arise out of it any good thing or republic. For it is for ever accursed. Nay,” he said, “some hold that it hath no corporeal existence, for all you could see it and tread upon it. But it was really only a solidified mist, set there in space to beguile good men into the hands of these brown spirits.”

Towards the middle of August there arose, coming from the east, the most huge storm they had ever yet encountered. It came very suddenly, and very suddenly it ended when they were within a cable-length of great rocks. And in the midst of it Edward Colman was again seized with his Dutch fever.

He sat, having tied himself under the bulwarks when it first began; and he could no more speak or hardly, for the huge seas fell all over him and he was nearly drowned with them; and in the cordage the wind made such a shrieking that of all that old Jan — who stayed near him between the lurchings and the waves — of all that old Jan shouted to encourage him, he heard only the words, in a little lull of the gale —

“Not death’s time yet!”

He was in great pain, so that he could not speak, and only dimly he could think.

“I believe it is death and am not very much afraid, for I have done what I might for my wife’s sake and my town’s.”

And when the storm went down he lay there very still, and Hudson came to howl and shed great tears above him, for he loved him better than his son. And the old Jan came and fell upon Hudson with his fists — for he said that Hudson was Edward Colman’s murderer for having brought him so far. And both men blubbered there on each other’s shoulders, and Edward Colman opened his eyes where they had laid him on the cabin light-hatch. The sun was shining again, though the sea was still very rough, and when they got farther out to sea they could see that the Waves had swept in upon the land very far, and the sea was full of the trunks of trees and dead beasts and networks of wild vines and flowers.

That night in the cabin Edward Colman told Hudson that whilst he had been in the faint his soul had gone upon a great journey. And he had seemed to pass over endless waters, till the sun grew dark and he had perceived lights and the outlines of the town of Rye, and he had been wafted into his own house and seen his own room, lit only by a fire — and so from the old world and darkness he had come back to this New World where it was still light.

But he did not tell the navigator the rest of his vision, since he was afraid that it would make Hudson afraid when nothing could be done. For in his own room he had seemed to see Anne Jeal before the fire. And in one hand, with the firelight shining upon her, she had held a sieve with peas that she twirled round and round and, in the other, a little image that she was melting. And he, appearing to be there in shadows and half amid the hangings, half in the wall of the room, had uttered these last words of his conscious thoughts—”I believe this is death coming to me!”

And at these words of his Anne Jeal had dropped alike the sieve and the image, and had looked round with staring eyes into the gloom. And so his soul had come back over the seas to the sunshine.

CHAPTER V
.

HUDSON set this new illness of Edward Colman’s down to a return of his Dutch fever; for three nights they had had the
Half Moon
grounded in a shallow lagoon to cleanse her bottom and to paint her with pitch, though they found her not very foul, since they had spent so many days in the fresh waters of rivers that most of the barnacles and seaweeds upon her were killed. But in this stagnant place the air at nights had been full of miasmas — nay, they had even seen pismires and marsh-lights, and Edward Colman was not the only man on the ship that fell sick, for it was very hot weather. And he explained to Edward Colman that he must expect returns of his complaint at intervals for many years, when he came near marshy places and at other times; for that was the nature of the Dutch fever, which was much like a tertian or a quartan ague.

And he said that it was a very common thing for men sick of this disease to see visions — and what more natural than that they should see what most they thought of? And assuredly Edward Colman thought most of his home and his young wife, and his little town of Rye upon its hill. For in that way the doctors accounted for the visions that Papists had of their saints — sickly maidens and men who had mused much on these illusions being very prone to see them when they were fevered.

To himself Edward Colman thought — privately and in his own mind — that there might be a great deal in these sayings. For if of late he had mused much on his home and his wife, he had not given one thought in ten days to Anne Jeal. But, on the other hand, if he had thought of Anne Jeal — and once or twice he had — it was to think that perhaps she was answerable for these storms and his illness. He had always heard her accounted a sorceress — and sorceresses played such tricks with peas in a sieve and waxen images. So that it might well be that these were only the creatures of his own imaginings and dreams. But he was certain that he had seen his town of Rye very clearly in the night, the lights climbing up the little hill in a triangle or pyramid, whilst he had seemed to rush through the air, high up. And the storm had struck them about four o’clock in the afternoon. And in Rye, as he saw it, it might well be about nine at night, as it would be, if this vision were real. For at nine at night there would still be lights in the windows, for it was yet early to be in bed.

And he had some pleasure to have seen his little town and his house again if — as he began to think — he was to die soon. And some mournful thoughts came over him, but he advised with himself to put his trust in God after he had read some prayers to himself. For if this were Anne Jeal’s sorcery he might well die — and yet he might well die without it. But if he died by Anne Jeal assuredly God would be pitiful to his soul. So he looked back upon his past life to think of his misdeeds.

Because of these illnesses Hudson put out to sea for three days. It was then the end of August, and on the second day of September, very near the foot of the island they had called Long Island, they came to the mouth of a large river. This was near the end of their searching of the coast; they had come north, right from the fortieth parallel, to near the place where they started, and they had already searched the sound that lay between Long Island and the mainland.

So, as they had nothing better to do, Hudson determined that they would ascend and explore thi9 river as high as it was navigable. And to it he gave the name of the Hudson River, to be a token to all time of this, his third great voyage; just as before he had given, on his first voyage, his name to Cape Hudson, and, on his second, to the islands in the Waigatz Sea the name of Hudson’s Touches.

He was very contented with himself after he had thus named the river — but there occurred very soon a thing that caused him no little discontent.

It was towards sunset of the 2nd of September that they came into this river, and lay in a great expanse of water like a millpond, with low, dark hills to their left and behind them a little spit of sand, and, a very long way before them, the sun going down beyond level land, as it seemed. And not very high above the sun was a little, silver new moon. —

There came out, as if to meet them, from the shores of the bay a large fleet of canoes, with many men to paddle them, each with a coronal of feathers. Three of them, that were so long as to carry thirty rowers, came the first. And in the bows of one sat a man holding a large wooden cross, and in another a man holding up a bough of a tree, and in the third a man with a large flag of white cloth. And from all these canoes, near each other in the sunset light, there went up a sound of singing.

The
Half Moon
had only a few of her sails taken off, yet the wind had fallen so much that they flapped idly in the evening air, and the ship was almost still in the stillness of the water. The canoes came to a stop maybe fifty yards from the ship and lay altogether in a flat group, keeping a little way on them with their paddles. And from the stern Hudson beckoned to them to approach. But from the bows the crew ran out their culverin, and at its sound in the stillness Hudson turned rigid, and said, “What is that? The anchor?”

And the culverin was fired, whilst the sound of laughter went up, and the stone ball did not even skip over the water, so close they were. But Hudson saw the Indians in one boat throw up their arms, and that canoe turned over, and another, and yet a third, so that there was a clear space of water in the midst of the flotilla. Then those soft songs were changed to horrible cries and calls; the canoes turned and fled, using their paddles furiously, back to the dark shores. The Dutchmen fired arrows and one or two shots from their stand-guns; and the sun went down very suddenly, and the red of the waters changed to grey, and silver, and green.

Then Hudson was very angry. For, said he, this was the first act of white men upon this stream that should bear his name. And it was a very shameful thing. For those men came out with the sign of the Cross — having learned, doubtless, Christianity from the French of Canada — and with green boughs, which were their tokens of peace, and with a flag all white, which was a token of peace to all that were civilized.

And he pointed to the moon and said, full surely, ere that little crescent had waxed and finished its waning, they should rue that day; and he said that the sun hid its face for shame of them. And he wept at last to think that his stream had so, at the offset of its naming, been so baptized with innocent blood.

Whilst he wept the Dutchmen jeered at him; for they said that that sign of the Cross was a Papist emblem, that it was fitting to fire always upon, and that the white flag was an emblem of the treacherous French, for most likely it had
fleur de lis
upon it, and the green boughs were an emblem of the leafage wherewith those devils were wont to hide their guile. And that flotilla, they said, was a very great menace to them; had they come closer the Indians would have shot arrows upon them, and sent their souls to hell. And Dutch, they said, were not come to a far haven to be shot with arrows for an Englishman’s whim. And they said that they were weary and needed entertainment; and that, compared with these beasts, they were as gods — and the gods slew whom they would, and there was an end of it.

But Edward Colman did not translate these words to the navigator, who went down to his cabin and covered his head with his cloak. And he did not speak to those Dutchmen any more that night. All through the dark hours they heard, coming from the distant shores, great cries and the groaning of drums. And they saw enormous fires lit in five places on the level beaches, and black figures leaping and roaring before them; and, in the darkness, all that blaze was doubled by the waters, so that it stood out like a fiery portent in the black night. And the Dutchmen said that these were the devils at their horrid antics.

In the morning, at dawn, there came the sea-breeze from the east. It drove them, when they quickly hoisted their sails, high up into the river, and it freshened towards noon, so that they ran very fast, and that night they lay close to a strip of land where the river forked on the right and not far from high rocks on the left.

Edward Colman went ashore with a few men next day upon this strip of land. But the men did not go ashore very willingly any more. For they had a certain anger with the navigator and with Edward Colman because of the affair with the Indians, and they said it was none of their duty to voyage on land, and they were tired of this continent that offered them little profit, and were fain to sail back to Holland and draw their wages and take their ease.

And old Jan was unceasing in his preaching to Edward Colman that he should not go ashore. For, said he, on the one hand, Edward Colman had against him a very powerful sorceress in the Old World, and here, in the New, there were always these copper-skinned fiends that spied upon men and led them astray to slay them, But Edward Colman answered —

“I shall die upon (God’s appointed day. As for the witch, if she will slay me, I shall die either here or elsewhere. There is no way to stay it. As for the Indians, I do not believe that they are devils, but rather, as the Frenchman, Jacques Cartier, said, that they are a simple and a good people. For in 1534 he brought ten of them from Canada to Paris, to teach the Frenchmen how to live godly lives.” And he said again —

“If I could save myself from Anne Jeal by staying aboard the ship I would do it. But that will not save me from her if she have any power, and it is more fearful to sit still and await disasters than to meet them on one’s feet. I came out here to spy out the goodness of this goodly land, and having come so far, I will not abandon it and my hopes.” So they landed upon the spit of land, having upon them their harness of steel, and bearing their swords and bows; but old Jan took a stand-gun. The under-master, Outreweltius, came with them, for his avidity to explore either land or sea never left him. And they saw no signs of Indians; and they made a compact with the crew of the boat that it should row up the stream parallel with the course they took for ten or fifteen miles, going slowly, so that if they came down to the water they should never be out of hearing of a gun-shot.

The outermost fringe of the land between the two rivers was a marshy spit, that they crossed quickly, for it was still the cool of the morning. It was dry enough then, for it was September after a droughty year, but there were many dead, swampy grasses and weeds. And a little farther on it was quite dry underfoot, but there was, beneath the sun, a hot entanglement of little bushes, of rushy sort of flowers with thick pods full of viscous fibres, of small bushes bearing red berries, sour, but pleasant to the taste, and of little trees that had very sweetsmelling flowers.

It was hot work pushing through this scrub, but it always mounted in a slow slope, with here and there rocky places where there were pine-trees, and, except for the heat, there came to them no dangers. They came, after an hour or so, to one rock that stood up high, and Edward Colman climbed upon it, and when he was up he cried out —

“Why, here I will set my town!”

Before him the land sloped down to the haven; upon the left there was one broad river, and upon the right the Hudson, where the
Half Moon,
little, and with her sails just unfurling, was preparing to go upwards with the tide. And to the right, across the Hudson, was to be seen a long row of reddish rocks, like a ribbon, or like a castle wall, crowned with dark trees, and creased and crumpled with a thousand shadows. The two rivers were all silver, the slopes between them were greenish and yellow, with many yellow flowers and weeds, and behind them the ground sloped up, with short and greenish grass, into the foot of dark woods of trees like pines or cedars. He had never been in such a clear air. “Why, here I will have my town!” he said.

For it lay deep in a noble haven; it had rocks for building-stone; it was between two rivers, and very easy to fortify with a palisade inland across the spit; it was near to Newfoundland; it had a good soil in the marshy parts, and there were the trees for building houses, and brushwood to make wattles, and earthy mud to daub on the sides, and clay and rushes for tiles or thatch. And looking down from there he seemed to see his little town that he would found, with the roofs of thatch and tile, the golden weathercock upon the church tower, the harbour, with its masts and spars, and cordage fringing it all, and, beyond, the great bay and the pale sea. He seemed to see it much as you see Rye, looking at it from the hills inland, little, old, and grey, with the sea-line beyond.

They rested there for a long time, because they were weary and the rock gave a shade; they saw the
Half Moon
hoist all her grey sails and swing, little and heavy, up the silver river. Towards afternoon they went up into the thick woods, where the going was so difficult that once or twice they lost each other, and must call out to once more find each other, and once or twice they seemed to see shadows flit between the tree-trunks. And once an arrow struck upon Edward Colman’s cuirass, and glanced and quivered in the pine-needles close to his feet. Old Jan fired off his great gun then, and they heard loud calls in the shadows. And they made as fast as they could, burdened with their armour, through, the trees to come down to the shore.