Argall and the French in Maine
In Dale's years there rises above the English
horizon the cloud of New France.
The old, disaster-haunted Huguenot colony in Florida was a thing of
the past, to be mourned for when the Spaniard wiped it out--for at
that time England herself was not in America. But now that she was
established there, with some hundreds of men in a Virginia that
stretched from Spanish Florida to Nova Scotia, the French shadow
seemed ominous. And just in this farther region, amid fir-trees and
snow, upon the desolate Bay of Fundy, the French for some years had
been keeping the breath of life in a huddle of cabins named Port
Royal. More than this, and later than the Port Royal building,
Frenchmen--Jesuits that!--were trying a settlement on an island now
called Mount Desert, off a coast now named Maine. The Virginia
Company-doubtless with some reference back to the King and Privy
Council--De La Warr, Gates, the deputy governor, and Dale, the High
Marshal, appear to have been of one mind as to these French
settlements. Up north there was still Virginia--in effect, England!
Hands off, therefore, all European peoples speaking with an
un-English tongue!
Now it happened about this time that Captain Samuel Argall received
a commission "to go fishing," and that he fished off that coast that
is now the coast of Maine, and brought his ship to anchor by Mount
Desert. Argall, a swift and high-handed person, fished on dry land.
He swept into his net the Jesuits on Mount Desert, set half of them
in an open boat to meet with what ship they might, and brought the
other half captive to Jamestown. Later, he appeared before Port
Royal, where he burned the cabins, slew the cattle, and drove into
the forest the settler Frenchmen. But Port Royal and the land about
it called Acadia, though much hurt, survived Argall's fishing.
(Argall, on his fishing trip, has been credited with attacking not
only the French in Acadia but the Dutch traders on Manhattan. But
there are grounds for doubt if he did the latter.)
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