SIXTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I909 2.0J 



foes and the most capable of organized and sustained warfare, 

 and of all the inhabitants north of Mexico they were the most 

 civilized and intelligent. 



The century which followed the voyages of Columbus had been 

 for the northern continent a period of exploration and discovery, 

 of search for gold and for fabulous cities and for a passage to the 

 Indies, of fugitive fur trade with the natives, of fisheries on the 

 banks and of feeble, disastrous attempts at occupation, but not of 

 permanent settlement. Ponce de Leon and De Soto and Verazzano, 

 Cartier and the Cabots and Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert and 

 Gosnold, had brought the western coast of the Atlantic out from 

 the mists of fable, but they had left no trace upon its shores. Jean 

 Ribaut and his French Huguenots had attempted to do for their 

 religion in Florida what the Pilgrims did in the following century 

 on the coast of Massachusetts, but their colony was destroyed with 

 incredible cruelty in the name of religion by the ferocious Spaniard, 

 Menendez, and the colony of Menendez was in turn destroyed by 

 the Gascon de Gourgues, save a feeble remnant on the site of St 

 Augustine. Raleigh with noble constancy and persistency had 

 wasted his fortune in repeated and vain attempts to establish a 

 colony in Virginia. On the sites of the modern Quebec and Mon- 

 treal, at Tadousac, at the mouth of the St Croix and at Port Royal, 

 Jacques Cartier and Roberval, Pontgrave and De Monts, Poutrin- 

 court and Lescarbot had seen their heroic and devoted efforts to 

 establish a new France brought to naught by cold and starvation 

 and disease. In that month of July 1609 in all the vast expanse 

 between Florida and Labrador no settlement of white men held its 

 place or presaged the coming of the future multitude save at James- 

 town behind the Capes of Virginia, where Christopher Newport's 

 handful of colonists had barely survived two years of privation, 

 and at Quebec, where the undaunted Pontgrave and Champlain only 

 one year before had again gained a foothold. At Jamestown the 

 mournful record of the winter of 1609 to 1610 shows us that in the 

 spring but sixty of the colonists were living. At Quebec twenty- 

 eight Frenchmen with Champlain had braved the rigors of a Can- 

 adian winter, and in the spring of 1609 but eight remained alive. 



In this same month July 1609 the Half Moon of Henry Hudson 

 was repairing damages in Penobscot bay after her voyage across 

 the Atlantic, and preparing to sail on to the noble river that still 

 bears her commander's name. 



The field was open ; the hands upon the margin that reached out 



