WESTWARD HO 



to discover a route to China by way of the North Pole. Considering 

 his material it is wonderful what he did on this voyage, among other 

 things discovering Jan Mayen Island. On his report was founded the 

 English whale fisheries round Spitzbergen. Next year he set out again 

 to attempt the North-East Passage but failed to get through the ice. He 

 then resolved to sail to the North-West but was compelled by contrary 

 winds to return. In 1609 he sailed for the Dutch East India Company 

 in the Half Moon, being given a free hand as to whether he tried the 

 North-East or North-West passage. After being bailed at the first and 

 having a very mutinous crew he turned back and tried for a mysterious 

 passage that was reputed to exist in about forty degrees latitude. It was 

 while groping along the American coast for this that he entered New 

 York Harbour on September 3rd, 1609, and went 150 miles up the 

 river that is named after him. Putting into Dartmouth at the end of 

 this voyage his ship was seized by the Government and he and the 

 other Englishman on board were forbidden to leave the country. He 

 was not disheartened in his belief in a North-West passage, however, 

 and sailed from London in 1610 in the 55-ton ship Discovery- He 

 sailed along v^^hat is now Hudson Strait into Hudson Bay and went into 

 winter quarters there. Here he suffered the ingratitude of a man named 

 Henry Greene whom he had taken on board out of sympathy to avoid 

 his creditors and who incited the crew to put the leader and eight others 

 into a boat on June 26th, 1611, and left them to their fate. Greene was 

 killed in a fight with the Esquimaux while the small remnants of the 

 crew who finally reached England were promptly clapped into gaol. 



John Smith and Massachusetts. 



The coast of Massachusetts had been visited by Bartholomew 

 Gosnold in 1602 and by De Champlain two years later, but the founder 

 of French Canada did not care for the look of the land and made his 

 colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence further North. It was Captain 

 John Smith in 1614 who was the first Englishman to visit the coast and 

 who surveyed it thoroughly and christened it. He dried his iish there 

 and sent away two shiploads, one to England and the other to Spain, 

 on which he made an immense profit. When he got back he wrote a 

 book entitled " A Description of New England," and it is this book that 

 has given the group of States their name. As soon as it got to be dis- 

 cussed a number of English and Irish fishermen crowded to the coast 

 and in 1623 a syndicate of fishermen from Dorsetshire set out with a 

 certain amount of capital and founded a colony with the idea of working 

 from the coast itself and sending their catch back to Europe instead of 

 wasting time and money crossing and recrossing the Atlantic. This 

 colony is now Dorchester and the promoters came to be recognised as 

 the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. 



The Pilgrim Fathers. 



Separatists from the Church of England with a leaning towards 

 Puritanism as a natural reaction from the slackness of the time, the body 

 which was afterwards to be known throughout the world as the Pilgrim 



271 



