Smith published his description of New England June 18, 1616, and it is in that we must follow his career.It is dedicated to the "high, hopeful Charles, Prince of Great Britain," and is prefaced by an address to the King's Council for all the plantations, and another to all the adventurers into New England.The addresses, as usual, call attention to his own merits."Little honey [he writes] hath that hive, where there are more drones than bees; and miserable is that land where more are idle than are well employed.If the endeavors of these vermin be acceptable, I hope mine may be excusable: though Iconfess it were more proper for me to be doing what I say than writing what I know.Had I returned rich I could not have erred; now having only such food as came to my net, I must be taxed.But, Iwould my taxers were as ready to adventure their purses as I, purse, life, and all I have; or as diligent to permit the charge, as I know they are vigilant to reap the fruits of my labors." The value of the fisheries he had demonstrated by his catch; and he says, looking, as usual, to large results, "but because I speak so much of fishing, if any mistake me for such a devote fisher, as I dream of nought else, they mistake me.I know a ring of gold from a grain of barley as well as a goldsmith; and nothing is there to be had which fishing doth hinder, but further us to obtain."John Smith first appears on the New England coast as a whale fisher.
The only reference to his being in America in Josselyn's "Chronological Observations of America " is under the wrong year, 1608: "Capt.John Smith fished now for whales at Monhiggen." He says: "Our plot there was to take whales, and made tryall of a Myne of gold and copper;" these failing they were to get fish and furs.
Of gold there had been little expectation, and (he goes on) "we found this whale fishing a costly conclusion; we saw many, and spent much time in chasing them; but could not kill any; they being a kind of Jubartes, and not the whale that yeeldes finnes and oyle as we expected." They then turned their attention to smaller fish, but owing to their late arrival and "long lingering about the whale"--chasing a whale that they could not kill because it was not the right kind--the best season for fishing was passed.Nevertheless, they secured some 40,000 cod--the figure is naturally raised to 6o,ooo when Smith retells the story fifteen years afterwards.
But our hero was a born explorer, and could not be content with not examining the strange coast upon which he found himself.Leaving his sailors to catch cod, he took eight or nine men in a small boat, and cruised along the coast, trading wherever he could for furs, of which he obtained above a thousand beaver skins; but his chance to trade was limited by the French settlements in the east, by the presence of one of Popham's ships opposite Monhegan, on the main, and by a couple of French vessels to the westward.Having examined the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, and gathered a profitable harvest from the sea, Smith returned in his vessel, reaching the Downs within six months after his departure.This was his whole experience in New England, which ever afterwards he regarded as particularly his discovery, and spoke of as one of his children, Virginia being the other.
With the other vessel Smith had trouble.He accuses its master, Thomas Hunt, of attempting to rob him of his plots and observations, and to leave him "alone on a desolate isle, to the fury of famine, And all other extremities." After Smith's departure the rascally Hunt decoyed twenty-seven unsuspecting savages on board his ship and carried them off to Spain, where he sold them as slaves.Hunt sold his furs at a great profit.Smith's cargo also paid well: in his letter to Lord Bacon in 1618 he says that with forty-five men he had cleared L 1,500 in less than three months on a cargo of dried fish and beaver skins--a pound at that date had five times the purchasing power of a pound now.
The explorer first landed on Monhegan, a small island in sight of which in the war of 1812 occurred the lively little seafight of the American Wasp and the British Frolic, in which the Wasp was the victor, but directly after, with her prize, fell into the hands of an English seventy-four.
He made certainly a most remarkable voyage in his open boat.Between Penobscot and Cape Cod (which he called Cape James) he says he saw forty several habitations, and sounded about twenty-five excellent harbors.Although Smith accepted the geographical notion of his time, and thought that Florida adjoined India, he declared that Virginia was not an island, but part of a great continent, and he comprehended something of the vastness of the country he was coasting along, "dominions which stretch themselves into the main, God doth know how many thousand miles, of which one could no more guess the extent and products than a stranger sailing betwixt England and France could tell what was in Spain, Italy, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and the rest." And he had the prophetic vision, which he more than once refers to, of one of the greatest empires of the world that would one day arise here.Contrary to the opinion that prevailed then and for years after, he declared also that New England was not an island.