The Comic History of the United States, from a period prior to the discovery of America ... With original illustrations by H. Scratchly

Front matter

CON-FRONT-US PIECE. THE C0MP4NT OF DISTINGUISHED COMEDIANS EXPRESSIY ENGAGED FOR THIS PERFORMANCE. THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM A PERIOD PRIOR TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA TO TIMES LONG SUBSEQUENT TO THE PRESENT. By JOHN D. SHERWOOD. ** Quamquam ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat ? " Horace, Satire I. "A man may say a Wise thing though he say it with a Laugh." Old Song WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY SCRATCHLY. BOSTON: FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 1870. Entered according to Act os Congress, in the year 1869, by FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., in the Clerk's OfBce of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. DEDICATION. ♦ TO MY WIFE. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. SUBJECTS. The Company of Distinguished Comedians expressly engaged for this Performance .... con-front-m Piece. Columbus Discovers America Page 39 The Reader scrapes Acquaintance with the Author . 41 External View of the Author's Head .... 48 Internal View of the Same 49 America before its Discovery 55 Time stocking America 69 The Pictured Rocks at Taunton attributed to the Northmen, or Skalds, of the Eleventh Century ... 66 Landing of Columbus 68 Discovery of Newfoundland 71 Sir Walter Raleigh introduces Smoking to the English Court 74 An Indian Reservation 81 The First Year's Crop in the New Settlements ... 87 Drake with his Fleet sails round the World . . 94 Map of Maryland 105 Original full-length Portrait of John Smith . . . 110 Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers . . .

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Spirits of the Age laying the Foundations of New- York 128 Dutch Gentleman trading with the Indians . . - 13i New Jersey settled ... .... . ... . 142 Full-length Portrait of Penn "« The City of Brotherly Love in 1681 and 1869 ... 147 Temptation ; or, the first American "Ring" . . . 153 Woman's Rights in 1637 1°8 The Penalties of Witchcraft in 1692 and 1869 . . .171 Cotton Mather exorcising a Witch 176 Expressing a Colonial Governor from London . . .189 The Schoolmaster abroad 201 Joliet and Marquette down the Mississippi .... 216 The "Petticoat Insurrection" in Mobile in 1706 . . 221 The Championship for the American Belt .... 227 Britannia forces Tea on her troublesome Child . . 236 The Surprise Party to Fort Ticonderoga ... . . 247 Washington reviews the troops at Cambridge . . 251 A Puritan Breakfast 259 English poor Relations eating Colonists out of House and Home . . ... . 276 Putnam's Home-Stretch down Horse-Neck .... 293 New York evacuated, November 25, 1783 . . . . 304 The State takes leave of the Colony 314 The Irrepressible Negro '■•''. . 323 The Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 338 Courtship in the Olden Time ...... 853 School-Days in 1769 and 1869 . . . . ... 8«6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 9 The American Joss ... 872 Looking for a Scout 390 The Romance of Indian Warfare 407 Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty .... 421 The Progress of Fashion 432 A Mormon Family out for a Walk 451 The Skedaddle of John B. Floyd 461 An Intelligent Jury 468 Cotton supreme 483 The Coroner's Inquest 6(Jb Cotton down 512 Members of Congress in A. D. 1900 620 The Irish Republic in America 529 Getting Mudd out of the Dry Tortugas .... 533 School-Teaching from 1S69 onwards 642 The American LaocoOn 547 The End Page 41 55 CONTENTS.

PREFATORY. TREATING THE READER TO AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR, AND OF THE PLAN, OBJECT, AND PRIN- CIPLES OF THIS HISTORY The Author, proposing to be intimate with the Reader, deems an Introduction desirable. — Born Early and Poor. — How the Two Facts were managed and overcome. — School Days and Nights. — College Lines, crooked and straight. — Father's Face against his. — A New American Decalogue. — Into the Married and other States and Territories. — Settling down. — Advantages of a Sub-urban Residence. — Outside and Inside Views of the Author's Head. — Plans and Pur poses of the Work. — Laughing Facts. — Roman Precedents. — Impartiality holding the Shears and Tape. — Sources of our Information. — Acknowledgments to Smith and Brown. Our Illustrations. BOOK FIRST. DISCOVERIES. B. C. TO 1607 A. D. Cnip.

Chapter II. Of The Discoveries In America During The Eleventh, Fifteenth, Sixteenth

AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 1000-1607. America not discovered by Jason. - Lithographic Specimens attributed to the Northmen in the Eleventh Century curious, but by Skalds more Modern. — Bishop Berkeley's Western Star not the First American Constellation. — Columbus offers a Continent at Private Sale; Isabella, a Spanish Lady, takes him up, and the Profits also.— Of Ferdinand's Necklace. — Price of Eggs advanced in Spain. — England finally sees Something— A Fish Story confirmed. — Discoveries which Columbus did not make. — Ponce de Leon. — Mexico unfortunately discovered. — The Straits of Magellan and other Straits. — De Soto at the Bottom of the Mississippi. — Champlain, a wise Man, founds Quebec upon a Rock. — Sir Walter Raleigh and him smoking. The Mayflower anchored. — Hudson up Stream. AMERICA was not discovered by Jason while looking up the golden fleece, although the ex istence of many American habits point to an origi nator, whose name is lost, but whose Asiatic practices are not.

It is supposed by some that the late war crops were the product of certain stray dragon's teeth, possibly dropped by that wily Greek on our prolific soil. But these hypotheses, although as wise as many others connected with early maritime discoveries, are too learned to be useful. History declines to pull such wool over the eyes of its readers or to encourage traditions which flatter the pride of ancient nations, whose age is the only excuse for their fond, grandfatherly dotings. Nor is it any more true that the Northmen, in the eleventh century, fell upon this out lying continent, when engaged in general hthography along our coasts, — the pictured rocks near Taunton, although a spirited illustration of one page of our chronicles, being now proved to be sketches by later Scandinavian Skalds, less than eight hundred years old.

We also feel obliged to deny the merit accorded by some to Bishop Berkeley, of having made the first discovery of America. This notion of some rests all its weight on the strength of those bnes, " Westward the star of empire takes its way." But those were not the first lines that were carried ashore and made fast to our continent, nor this the earliest star which appeared over our American boards. Much as we should love, in the interest of modern historical research, to invent a new discoverer for America, candor compels us to award the glory stiU to Christopher Columbus. Had he lived three hundred and seventy-seven years later, he would have adver tised for a partner in some paper of wide circulation ; but not having that advantage, he circulated himself, offering a continent at private sale to all European nations that fronted the sunset.

But all declined with thanks, until at last, as is well known, one Isabella, a Spanish lady, taken with the speculation, became a silent partner in the business. She not only furnished the capital, and took a high interest in the result, but finally reaped nearly all the profits, — a pleasant example of woman's rights thoroughly enforced. She even took a necklace from her neck to procure funds for the expedition ; and with this ex- E The Pictured Rocks at Taunton attributed to the Northmen, or Skalds, of the Eleventh Century. ample before him, her associate Ferdinand, after trying his hand on several Moors, thought that, after unclasp ing from the neck of Columbus "the gem of the Antdles," he could substitute a chain less golden. Posterity, however, indignantly breaking the metallic hasp, has clapped the iron collar back on the neck of the selfish, cunning, and thankless Ferdinando.

We must not forget to mention that before the old pilot could get his project to stand, he had raised the price of eggs throughout Spain by placing so many on their own poor broken heads. For this destruction, however, he consoled himself with the maxim, " all 's well that ends well." He carried his eggs and hopes to England, France, Portugal, and Navarre ; but both were kept so long that they became addled. A heavy fog prevented England at first from seeing the enterprise ; but after the discovery of real laud was made, she lost no time in procuring the advan tages of it, and endeavored to secure them to herself, by allowing several vessels to be outfitted at Bristol. These vessels were not built by Laird ; but, sailing away on the blind side of the island, succeeded at last in boarding the continent, and exchanging some un printed religious tracks for certain other tracts, after wards weU stamped by royal authority.

On their return, the promoters of this missionary enterprise built a handsome church, where prayers were dady offered for many years, for past success, and intercessions made for the interposition of the same kind Providence for new exchanges of a simdar kind. These expeditions, it may be remarked, have been and are the foundation of England's greatness, Landing of Columbus. — her church and her trade; or rather to name them in juster order and according to her own estimate, her trade and her church. The Cabots, father and son, wdl ever be remembered by their addition to the world's wealth by the discovery, in 1497, of New foundland. At the time it was thought to be a story somewhat fishy, but it is now swallowed without any bones. The Portuguese were less fortunate, their ships having got somehow entangled in the bne in crossing it, they were obhged to cast anchor against a high wind, which as usual was not so ill as not to benefit their English rivals.

What became of these ships is not positively known ; a glimpse of only one of them having since been obtained in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. The rest may have drifted northwards, and their masts made to serve to splice the north pole, the old one having become somewhat loose from being so much worked about by meddlesome navigators. Among the discoveries in America which Columbus did not make we may enumerate the following : — First, a name for the continent ; an omission after wards supplied by a shabby countryman of his, whose own name we will not perpetuate by mentioning in this history. Second, iron-clads ; although he did come across some very hard characters, whose scaly armor history has ever since been mercdessly denting and battering. Columbus himself, although at one time cased in iron, and sent home on a trial trip, while he learned the value and preciousness of metal at the Spanish court, faded to discover its property to float him across seas successfully.

Nor do we find any warrant for believ ing that he was the discoverer of, Third, balsam of liverwort, the extract of buchu, Peruvian hair-dye, or the sozodont, notwithstanding the strenuous assertions to the contrary of the candid proprietors of those invaluable preparations. The only extract he succeeded in making was a promise of honors, never performed, although highly labeUed ; and it is well known that the only color he succeeded in obtaining in America, for his own hair, was gray. From the ingredients of this blanching powder he ultimately died himself at Valladolid. Fourth, nor is there any better foundation for the common error, that he was the discoverer of the Tammany Society, and furnished designs and colored drawings for the wigwam, in which the Democratic braves find so many original and aboriginal voters.

Indian polls, from which the hair had been carefully removed, he did see, and even took a few back with him to Spain ; but it is needless to say that these polling-places were not the exemplars of those which Tammany so often and so lovingly pats on the head. Fifth, equally erroneous is the general belief that he discovered "Hail Columbia," although it is true that he got enough of it, in the sense that some iUy educated small boys now use that phrase. Ponce de Leon, following up the discoveries of Columbus, landed in Florida, in 1512, and endeavored to find there a fountain possessing the properties ot giving to the imbiber perpetual youth. Althou-h he did not succeed in this quest, it seems probable that some one else did, for it is weU known that sev- Discovery of Newfoundland. eral Americans, such as Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and others, have lived quite too long, while other distinguished Americans, as Burr and others, have manifested in a very lively way a green old age, cutting up capers which none but very young people would have thought of.

He also discovered the Dry Tortugas, — a temperance station of the first water, famous as the habitation of Dr. Mudd. A few years later, A. D. 1517, Mexico was unfor tunately discovered, and from that time to the present has been the scene of constant embroilments, beginning with the broiling of Montezuma, by Cortez, and ending with the unhappy stew made by Maxi milian for himself. Mexico is the American abattoir, — the general slaughter-house of our continent. Ice for the preservation of the quarters of her victims. where no quarter was shown, is obtained from the ele vated plains into which the country is as yet insuf ficiently broken up. We ought to mention the voyage, in 1520, of a Portuguese, Magellan by name, who touched at the Canaries for yellow birds, coasted along the shores of Brazil in search of other golden products, but finally brought up in a very tight place, on the ex treme southern tip of our western globe ; calling the spot, under great pressure, the Straits of Magellan.

He became so exhilarated, however, at Cape Horn, that he kept on, like the man with the cork leg, and went all around the world, being its first circumventor, and giving the first proof of the gyrating effects of mix ing liquors with water. De Soto first chanced upon the Mississippi River, and, in 1542, was flung upon it with all his heavy armor on, — "a sink-or-swim " experiment, which re sulted in his remaining down at the bottom. Diving for wrecks has since become for divers and diverse reasons common in that turbulent stream ; but he is honored as the great diver ; the river not being strong enough to get him up. John Law afterwards tried a Mississippi venture ; but, unlike De Soto, he went up, and never came down again. Both De Leon and De Soto showed true American enterprise and energy in the pursuit of gold.

Like their coun tryman Cortez, in Mexico, they were, however, more desirous of discovering metallic placers,, and extract ing from them sudden riches, than of luring by patient industry from a jealous sod its hoarded secrets of cereal wealth. On the north, Cartier, in 1534, became the unhappy discoverer of the Canadas, and other out-lying, uncov ered, cold regions, afterwards parcelled out, not to ice companies like the Knickerbocker and others, but into viceroyalties. These freezing places, from the con tinual stirring about in them of such contrary ele ments for the succeeding century, might weU be called the ice-creameries of England and France. Champlain, in 1603, bke a wise man, founded Que bec on a rock ; for which he has been illy requited by being caUed the father of the French settlements in Canada.

Sir Walter Raleigh's name must always burn bright ly in American history, for his discovery of a smoking material on the James River. But his fame needs no puffing here, although his reputation became some- Sir Walter Raleigh introduces Smoking to the English Court. what blown before his death. Another important event soon after occurred in connection with American discoveries. A Mayflower drifted, in December, across seas, and floating against Plymouth Rock, struck its tiny anchors in it, and, with Yankee enterprise, climbed all over it, covering its rugged clefts and bare surface with a mass of luxuriant flowers, with which also sprang up tangbng weed-growths, all of which have since been dried and attracted great attention, much sneezing, some sneering, and great use of handkerchiefs to preserve the odor of, or prevent the smell of, what has penetrated all departments of American history.

The last discovery which we shall here mention was that of Hudson, who brought to bght the benighted island of Manhattan, then, as since, infested by Woods and other poisonous growths. The natives, as now, were very free in their manners ; staring at the newly arrived, and taking them in by the exhibition of trin kets and gilt ornaments. In spite of the sluggish airs from the shores of Westchester and Dutchess, the ships of Hudson succeeded in reaching Rhinebeck ; a few of his men even penetrating to the dense regions of Albany.

Chapter III

- ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. Survey of Indian Character and Lands. - Our Pacific Intentions towards the Indians. — The Whites better read than the Red Men, and the Effects of Learning. — The Pale Complexion of their Affairs.— Wet Blankets thrown over their other Habits. - Different Traits discovered by School-Girls and through official Spectacles. — Meaning of Indian Reservations. — Indian Style of Dress and its Conveniences. — Indian ■ Names. — Examples of their Happy Application. NO history of the United States would be complete without a survey of the character of the Indian ; as no State of the Union is acceptable to its inhabitants without a survey and appropriation of his lands. Various as are the lights in which the former may be regarded, there is but one bght, that of an en light-ened self-interest, with which the latter have been treated.

The speed with which we have hurried the brick-colored races towards the sun's setting is conclusive proof of our Pacific intentions, and of our dislike to unsettled titles. Red as is the color of the Indian, to this complexion do all his tribes come at last, — a pale conviction that the white man is better read than they. The chapter of our discoveries on this continent opens with the Indian in the foreground ; and the historian, like the earliest explorer, is brought imme- ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. 77 diately face to face with him. Unlike the explorer, however, we wdl pause long enough to bury the pro prietor of the estate which he seized and we occupy. Blankets, often very wet, have been thrown over the Indian ; whde as often he has been painted so thickly, and feathered so profusely, as to become a bird of quite another color from that of our North American vulture.

Slow in learning the geography of the race that rides him down as on a pale horse evermore, he has acquired the name of but one of our streams, that of the Firewater, a river whose dry banks seem always to divide his retreating from our pursuing frontier boundaries. Perhaps we cannot give a more variegated notion of the different aspects under which the Indian character is viewed, than by putting it in an American kaleidoscope, and there giving it a few turns, certain that these turns will not be more curious or numerous than their owners' fortunes. 1. The Indian character as viewed in schools and colleges. Listen to an average specimen from the pen of Miss Jemima Letitia Youngfancy, — her most pronounced effort before the trustees and patrons of Rising HiU Seminary. Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind.' Lamentations or Shakespeare.

" No subject is of greater importance to the well being of our race than a proper estimate of the character of the red man. Injustice here is more deplor able, since it involves the historic position of a race once lords of all this continent, now fast dwindling away, not only out of physical existence, but from the realms of discriminating praise. His has been the misfortune to be despoiled, not simply of the bosky inheritance of fair fields and boundless domains, where his ancestors roamed as free as the winds that sweep over the breezy sierras of the Rocky Mountains, but of the justice which pleads before the tribunal of posterity for rights withheld and wrongs inflicted.

Not content to pursue his retreating and emaciated foot steps into the tomb, where his poor body is scarcely allowed to moulder away in peace, amid the implements and trophies of the chase, the white man, as voracious as the prairie wolves, which whet their sharp fangs against the rocky bases that prop up the giant Cordilleras of our beloved land, has denied to him those monumental rights with which even savages adorn the last re.sting-places of their braves,- — the trophied inscriptions carved in the enduring language in which Virgil sang and TuHy burned, and in which Menander, prophetic of our Transatlantic greatness, babbled to the dull ears of a Roman race, which recked not of that ' proud stoic of the woods,' who, in life a victim of wrong, at death folds himself to his solemn sleep, in the language of the greatest of our bving poets, ' Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams,' but who, also, in the apt words of the same rapt min strel, ' Like Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, — The eternal years of God are theirs.' " ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. 79 While the waves of applause which ripple around this popular and characteristic rhapsody, grow calm against the solid shores of historic truth, we turn to another American view equally characteristic. 2.

The Indian character as seen through official spec tacles. Extract from the Report of the Secretary of the Interior : — " The beneficent pobey of repression, steadily pur sued by our government towards the Indian tribes still surviving, cannot fail to strike every one but themselves. While sentimental Christianity continues to dwell upon the rapid extinguishment of their tribes, the archives of this department bear gratifying wit ness to the more rapid extinguishment of their titles. " There now remain in our borders — which were, it must be admitted, for the sake of argument, once theirs — but about three hundred thousand of these nomad wanderers. Our people must feel an especial gratification in the proud reflection, that it is their bounty which, now reaching forth the comforts of our abundance to these remnants of tribes, supplies at the reasonable rate of some $ 10.15 per caput, the wants of such as are spared by our efficient and active army corps of Indian destructives.

" Tins bounty is distributed by honest agents, who never fad, while dispensing it, to impress upon the recipients a proper regard for the moral suasion of our well-mounted rifles. The small commissions reserved from these treaty-stipulated funds, by these agents, is too American not to be recognized with patriotic pride ; and the especial thanks of Congress are due to these self-denying distributers for the amount which they kindly leave to be disseminated among the in tended beneficiaries. "There is a natural jealousy among our people in those States and Territories where former laws inju diciously, but, as it fortunately proves, unsuccessfully located these Indian remnants, against the continuous occupation of tracts of lands called reservations, to which they have been from time to time removed.

I cannot too strongly recommend that this jealousy and acquisitiveness be duly respected, and new reservations somewhere be speedily provided. Both Provi dence and our need of their territory plainly mark the Indians as the American Ishmaelites, against whom everybody's hand is raised, and whose shifting tent can only be steadied up permanently against the sun set on the Pacific Ocean." Some people seem to think that the Indian was created to keep before us a defcollete' style of dress, adapted to the freedom of our institutions, — a traveller's costume, most convenient for the administration of medical assistance, in case of such railroad divertisements and steamboat pyrotechnic displays as often enliven our journeyings. Others look upon the preservation of these remnants as providential fields for the employment of the pa tience of domestic missionaries.

Young ladies con template them as the only bving representatives of mythological Loves, the sole heirs to the bow and arrow. Others still admire them as our only legend ary and poetic creations ; the only ghostly figures that creep weirdly through our sharp-set American qua driUes. ON THE INDIAN CHARAC1EK. An Indian Reservation. But while such discordant notions rasp the Ameri can ear and conscience about their predecessors, there is a mode of hushing up all these family jars ; one which seems to have been adopted in all ages, from the time of Joshua the son of Nun, down to the Irish wakes of our time, namely, to drown them all in the jubdant music procured and paid for at the expense of the estate to be divided up. A few words in regard to Indian names. An affectionate and grateful regard for the painted races, which wdl soon be seen only in the picture-galleries and books of colored engravings, has sought to sow a crop of Indian names over our lakes, rivers, mountains, and towns.

Unfortunately we have succeeded in keeping scarcely enough for seed. But one State has borrowed the name of the Indian himself, — Indian-ah ? — she speUing it, however, in an un-Engbsh way, without a h, as if she had said, " 0, breathe not his name."

The application of some of these names has been singularly febcitous, as Sing-Sing, where the State guests attempt no musical nights, but are made to hum quite another tune, if not to hush up altogether ; Miss-ouri, whose ill-fated union in our Federal family has been attended with such left-handed rio-hts — State rights, Fanny Wrights, and, for a long time' in Kansas, conflicting rights ; Minnehaha, whose ringino laugh is during so long a portion of the year frozen in her soft throat; Kan-sas, suggestive of her capacity for bdlmgsgate and free use of abusive language ■ Ore gon, and yet inviting emigrants to her valuable mines ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. while she laughs a cunning laugh under the protect ing cap of Mount Hood ; Wy-an-dot River, as if it had come to a sort of rocky comma, or interrupting ledge, over which it was pausing a moment for breath to take a hop-and-skip-and-carry-one overy leap ; Pot-to wat-o-my River, seeming like a whole famdy councd around a skillet steaming over a fire, whde the car rotty-headed mother was slightly waUopmg the young est of the party for asking some improper question; Pawn-ee Fork, reminding one of those old-clothes shops kept by U. S., where the unsuspecting and improvi dent Indian, always in want, might be tempted to pledge his wdd lands for a little ready cash, or a sdver fork, or blue trinket ; Man-hat-tan, as if to perpetuate the fact of the great head quality of the white man in deabng with the dusky ones for the purchase of the bttle island that carries as its name, a cover for the bttle transaction which transferred twenty four dodars to the one, for the fourteen miles of real estate sandwiched between the North and East Rivers ; Winne-bago, which sets one sneezing a coltish sneeze even at the head-waters of the Missis-sippi, and in her matronly presence ; and a thousand other spicy abo riginal condiments, sprinkled, bke pepper and salt over a luscious ham, over our continent, to make it more piquant and rebshable in the taking.

BOOK SECOND. SETTLEMENTS AND COLONIES. 1(507 TO 1775. " And vaguely here, Through the dim mists that crowd the atmosphere, We draw the outlines of weird figures cast In shadows on the background of the past." Longfellow's " New England Tragedies." " 'T is pleasant through the loopholes of retreat To peep at such a world." COWPEK.

Chapter I. Of American Settlements Generally

Some American Grounds, like Coffee, unsettled. — Some Settlements pulled up by the Roots ; others chilled by Fever and Ague. — Moist Soils objected to except by Doctors. — Unexpected Crops of Tomahawks from Wheat sown. — Settlements in America because of the Impracticability of making any at Home with Creditors. — Wild Oats sown between thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth Parallels. — Frequent Settlements make long Friends. — Settlements of Old Tavern Scores in Chalky Districts. — Religious Squalls prostrate some Plantations. — Indian Tempests uproot others. — Growth of Virginia, although Queen Elizabeth a femme sole. — Clergymen's Settlements. — Brides unsettled. — Drake around the World. CLERGYMEN'S discourses, bke grape clusters, usually show two sides, — a positive or sunny one and a negative or shady one.

Desirous of bring ing out the native bunches of our his tory more roundly against the leafy back ground of its verdant youth, we begin by showing alternating The First Year's Crop in the New Settlements. merits and demerits. And first the negative, or shady side. The first damp observation shows that many parts of America have never been settled at aU. In certain districts, grounds are found, as in coffee, unsettled ; and good grounds exist for this, and, contradictory as it may seem, these are generally discovered in poor water. In some cases, like those of Gosnold, Raleigh, De La Roche, and others, attempts were made, and settle ments actually planted, which seemed for a time to thrive ; but the impatient planters, bke curious boys, were so desirous of ascertaining how much their plants had grown, that they pulled them up to look at the roots, — an inspection which the plants re sented by sulking and dying out.