Aristopia

Front matter

ARISTOPIA

By Castello N. Holford

BOSTON ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY Copley Square 1895

Introduction

Books giving us a history of the future—a future bright with the millennial dawn of the optimist or dark with the goblin-haunted night of the pessimist—books in French, with a future French and fantastic, and books in English, with a future Anglo-Saxon and matter-of-fact—are much in vogue. But of books giving a history of the past as it might have been if the current of events had been turned at a critical point by some man with sufficient virtue and mental power, combined with the power which some fortunate material circumstance might have given him, I know not one.

Alas for the world that the makers of history who have had the greatest powers combined with the greatest opportunities have been men whose selfish aims have made their utmost efforts recoil in ruin on their own heads!

Washington, indeed, had great virtues, a great opportunity, and good talents; but neither was his opportunity the greatest that history has furnished, nor his mental power so vast, nor his vision of the future so far-reaching and clairvoyant as that of many who have lived before him and since, nor was his devotion to the welfare of mankind so ardent and all-absorbing.

The "Fathers of the Constitution" have been much praised for their wisdom and foresight, and with justice; but there have been men with no opportunities like theirs who were able to look much farther into the future, and who were much more in advance of their age. There were evils which the leaders of the Revolution ought to have foreseen and probably did not, and others they may have foreseen but had no power to avert.

Their power was limited, and the materials with which they had to work were refractory. Old evils were so deeply imbedded in the customs, prejudices, and thoughts of men when our government was forming that the influence of a Washington, a Jefferson, and an Adams would have striven in vain to eradicate them. Then, too, there were evils of which they could have had no conception. They could not have foreseen the application of steam-power to transportation and manufacturing, making a few men of great wealth as much the lords of the great highways as were the robber barons of the Middle Ages, with their castles in every mountain pass and on every river ford, taking ruinous toll of every traveler; and the owners of vast "plants" of machinery as absolutely lords of the workmen who attend the machines and the greater number who are displaced by the machines as ever the feudal baron was lord of the serfs and villeins on his estates. Even if they had foreseen these evils it is hard to see how they could have prevented them; they came too late; their power was too small.

And from these evils it has come that this great republic of the new world, so long the hope of the poor and oppressed of the old world, is fast becoming like Europe socially, and threatens to become even worse than Europe. Now, when the bounties of nature, which a little while ago seemed exhaustless, have been all appropriated, this favored land presents the most violent contrasts of wealth with its pitiless power, and poverty with its abject weakness. The disinherited begin to feel their doom: their blind and hopeless but strong and desperate struggles against that doom have already begun in wasting strikes and bloody riots; and at every new outburst the wave of fire and blood spreads wider and rises higher.

We reproach the nations of Europe with their millions of armed men, but those millions are levied to repel the invasion of foreign foes. In our land it is hardly a secret that the millions of militia are mustering and drilling for the principal purpose of suppressing insurrection against the plutocracy by the "lower classes"—the laboring class of our own citizens. In every American city are rising the castles of the plutocracy in the shape of great armories for the militia.

But why, some may ask, should we turn from a future thus dark and threatening, to look vainly on a past which might have been, but which, alas! never was? Well, I could never quite agree with the philosophy of Whittier's oft-quoted couplet:

Of all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these: It might have been."

or Dante's despairing cry of a lost soul:

Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarse del tempo felice Nella miseria."

(There is no greater grief than memory of happy days in misery; or, as the hero of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" paraphrases it, "a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.") Not so. It is a relief and a solace, a pleasure, although a mournful one, in the misery that is, to contemplate the happiness that was or might have been. Then, too, the looking back upon the parting of the ways which led us from happiness to misery may teach us to look forward to the parting of the ways which may lead from misery to happiness. Studying the opportunities which we have lost may teach us to grasp the opportunities which are to come.

Let us, then, take what pleasure we may in figuring a man of great wisdom, foresight, and genius, with an unselfish devotion to the welfare of humanity, placed with immense power at the parting of the ways in the course of human events, seizing the opportunity to turn the march of bewildered and struggling humanity into the path leading up and away from the dangerous marshes over which dance the deluding ignes fatui of ancient errors, and under which lie the black quagmires of antique evils. Thus to contemplate the past which might have been may in some small measure teach us to discern in the future the opportunity, to seize which—if there be no one man with sufficient wisdom, power, and virtue—there may be found a combination of men whose aggregate wisdom, power, and virtue may be sufficient to turn the march of events out of the night of civilization's destruction which some prophets see close ahead, into the brighter day foreseen by the seers of the Millennium.

I cannot afford, as some greater story-tellers have calmly and confidently done, to ignore the possibilities, not to mention the probabilities. But, some may say, your story of the mass of gold is an utter impossibility. Not so. That such a mass of gold has never been found is true; that it does not exist and cannot be discovered by no means follows. If the theory is true that the surface of the earth was once molten and liquid, the gold, by its immense weight, must have sunk below the lighter elements so far that when the crust of the earth became solid it could have come to the surface only by means of an eruption from a great depth. That the amount of gold in the whole globe is so small, in comparison with the rest of the materials, as seems from the amount found upon the surface is not at all probable. In the depths of the earth are probably hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of gold. An eruption from so great a depth as to throw up a few hundred cubic feet of gold in a single mass would be by no means a marvel; and a few hundred cubic feet of gold, although of almost incalculable value, would be of trifling bulk compared with the mass of lighter materials thrown out at every volcanic eruption.

The region in which this narrative locates the mine contains numerous quartz dikes in which some gold has been found.

The world has had many men with even greater virtues, clearer foresight, and more entire devotion to the good of humanity than have been ascribed to Ralph Morton. That the opportunity of a new continent on which a new civilization could be wrought out existed three hundred years ago is a matter of history. Given then, the man, the means, and the opportunity, the natural result would be as follows:

Chapter 1

On a blustering December day in 1607 a ship was working its way up the James River in Virginia. It was the English ship Sea Gull, Captain Christopher Newport, bringing what was called the "First Supply" to the infant colony at Jamestown, planted seven months before.

Seventy new colonists swarmed the decks of the vessel, their gaze eagerly bent forward to discover their goal, the little cluster of cabins over which floated the red cross flag of England, now visible far away up the river.

A strong northerly wind was blowing, hurrying the broken cloud-rack across the sky. It was the remains of a gale which had swept the coast the day before, when the Sea Gull and her consort, the Phœnix, were striving to get between the capes of the Chesapeake. The Sea Gull succeeded, but the Phœnix was ill built to work to windward, the wind being somewhat westerly, and she was driven back and had to bear off to sea to escape the dangerous coast which stretches far southward from Cape Henry. But now the wind had veered to a few points east of north and the Sea Gull was making fair headway. Soon her passengers could see every detail of the little village: the twenty-five or thirty log cabins thatched with reeds; the stockade inclosing the village; the dark, leafless forest behind; the bare spots on the river bank white with snow (for it was an unprecedentedly severe winter), and the throng of people on the bank eagerly awaiting the arrival of the ship with every demonstration of joy.

Arrived in front of the village, the sails were reefed and the anchor was dropped. The ship swung in almost against the bank, so much deeper was the water then than now, when the mud from the plowed fields has been washing in for nearly three centuries. So near she lay that with her boats and some planks a bridge was formed from the ship to the shore and lines were run out from stem and stern, and fastened to trees on the bank as moorings for the vessel.

Captain Newport went ashore and was immediately shaking hands with his friends and members of the council. Before he set foot on the shore he became aware that some evil cloud was overshadowing the little colony which he had left in fair circumstances six months before. Although the men were shouting and tossing their hats with joy, it was rather the joy of prison-worn captives at the opening of their dungeon doors than anything else he could think of. Then, too, there were not half so many as he expected. He hoped the rest were away at work in the woods, but he feared not.

As soon as possible he sought out one of the council, a stalwart man with a rough, heavy beard and a face browned and seamed by a life of exposure and warfare in all four quarters of the globe—in short, Captain John Smith—to learn what had passed in the colony since his departure. Newport and Smith were both members of the council, and as such had never agreed; but, although Newport was vain and incompetent and jealous of Smith, he knew the latter was honest and competent and would tell him truly how things had gone in his absence. And the story came straight and blunt from the mouth of the old soldier:

When the ships had departed for England the colonists had been reduced to live on boiled wheat and barley, mouldy and wormy from "frying twenty-six weeks in the ship's hold," as Smith said; for the voyage out—of a piece with the folly of the whole enterprise—had been made by way of the Canaries and the West Indies, and they had loitered months in the tropical waters of those islands. No well had been dug, and the water of the river was warm, brackish, and impure with vegetable matter. The site of the settlement was a low bank, the highest part no more than twelve feet above the river, and surrounded with marshes, so that in warm weather the night air was always laden with deadly malaria. One of the council, Bartholomew Gosnold (the first English seacaptain who had sense enough to sail straight across the Atlantic from England to Virginia), had strongly opposed the chosen site, well knowing the danger of malaria, of which he was among the first to perish. He had favored a location on a high bank twenty miles below Jamestown. Smith, being under arrest at the time, could not aid Gosnold in his protest. Their president, the vain, foolish, cowardly, jealous, greedy, selfish, and otherwise contemptible Wingfield, had weighed like an incubus on the colony for months, as Smith then said and afterward wrote, "ingrossing to his private, Oatmeale, Sacke, Oyle, Aquavitæ, Beefe, Egges, or what not," leaving the others to starve. At last the endurance of the colonists was worn out, and they deposed Wingfield and elected John Ratcliffe president; but the latter was little better than King Log. They lived on fish and crabs until September, when they managed to get some corn from the Indians. Instead of arriving in time to clear fields and plant crops in the spring and raise some provisions as they had expected, by ill luck and folly combined they were five months upon the voyage, consuming their provisions. Nearly all the men were unused to labor, and the necessary work in building their houses and planting their stockade in such a burning sun as they had never seen in England had broken them down. Then chills and fever from malaria and bowel complaints from bad food and water seized upon them and carried off more than half their number. Death had been more certain because many of them had for years lived dissipated and reckless lives. From the incompetence of the rest of the council Smith had to bear the brunt of everything. When he was at the settlement he was constantly urging the lazy fellows, who had never before done a day's manual labor, to the rude toil, always taking the heavy end of every task himself. Much of the time he was away, striving to get corn from the Indians. Returning from one of these expeditions, he found Wingfield and Kendall, another of the council, with some others, about to desert with the pinnace, a little vessel of twenty tons which had been left for the use of the colonists. Smith promptly fired upon them with cannon and muskets, killing Kendall and forcing the others to return or be sunk in the river. With the approach of winter the rivers were swarming with wild geese and ducks, which, with the Indian corn, gave the colonists good fare. Not satisfied, the council began to tax Smith with being slow to discover the head of the Chickahominy River. What they wanted with the head of that river it is hard to tell; but Smith, to satisfy them, set out to find it. Venturing too far alone, he was captured by the Indians and held prisoner six or seven weeks. By his courage and address he not only saved his life, but was enabled to obtain his freedom and greatly enhance his reputation and influence among the savages, much to the advantage of the colony. He had just returned from this captivity when the ship returned from England. On his return he found that things had gone very badly in his absence.

"And now, Captain Newport," said Smith in conclusion, "what sort of fellows have you brought us this time? Good, stout, honest laborers and mechanics, or, like the first lot, jail-birds and gentlemen, most of the latter little more honest and a good deal more lazy than the former?"

"Not what I could wish, I must confess," said Newport. "I fear too many of them are unruly gallants packed off by their relatives to escape ill destinies at home."

And so, to the misfortune of the colony, they were.

Among the seventy passengers streaming across that improvised bridge from the ship to the shore, eager to press foot upon the soil of the new world, was one who will soon become the central figure of this narrative. His name was Ralph Morton. He was hardly twenty years old, of medium size but strongly built and, unlike too many of those immigrants, with a constitution not undermined by any vice.

He was the fourth son of a Kentish gentleman who had been killed in the war with Spain about the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. His home was near the mouth of the Thames. Having in early childhood shown a great aptitude for learning, it was intended that he should be a physician. He had learned all that could be taught in the village school and from such tutors as could be obtained in his native village. His father's death left his mother in such straitened circumstances that she could not send him to college, so he was sent to London to live with his brother-in-law and pick up what learning he could from the libraries to which he had access and from such occasional tutoring as he could get. This brother-in-law, a native of Ralph's village, had married Ralph's only sister (several years older than Ralph) before he had determined to convert his country property into money and abandon the dull and unprofitable life of a country gentleman for the career of a London merchant, although in that age a gentleman was considered as losing caste by "going into trade."

Ralph learned Latin quickly, but he had little taste for Greek and spent little time upon it. The education of that time in England consisted almost altogether of the languages and theology. To the latter Ralph had a great aversion, and avoided it entirely. Most of the books of that age in the English language were devoted to theological controversy. The bulk of what Ralph considered worth knowing was in Latin, French, and Italian. There were also many valuable books of travel in the Spanish language which Ralph desired to read. With a good knowledge of Latin, enough French, Spanish, and Italian to enable him to read fluently was quickly learned. He could find about London enough Huguenot refugees and Spanish sailors from whom to learn the spoken French and Spanish. Thus equipped, he read everything he could find in the way of history, travels and natural science The sciences, even mathematics, were then at a very low ebb in England, and little taught. Even the great Bacon was ignorant of geometry. But Ralph found a Genoese tutor in London, and made good progress in mathematics and astronomy.

Finally, being overcome with that irresistible desire for adventure which often seizes upon even the most studious of youths, he had become an emigrant to Virginia.

Chapter 2

Captain Newport was not only a member of the colonial council, but as the medium of communication between the Virginia Company in London and the council at Jamestown he enjoyed particular importance. Even Captain Smith, so imperious with the rest, deferred much more to Newport than to the president of the council, and represented him to the Indians as his "father."

Newport very much desired to conciliate the great chief of that region, whom the English called King Powhatan. By the way, the name Powhatan was not only the name of the chief, but the Indian name for the whole region and its inhabitants, and for the river which the English called the James.

Newport did not like Smith's masterful way of acquiring ascendency over the Indians, but thought liberal and ostentatious presents the best way. Immediately on his arrival he sent by messenger some presents to Powhatan, and as soon as the pinnace could be got ready in a style to suit his ideas he set out to visit the great chief, taking with him Captain Smith and Matthew Scrivener (who had just come over and had immediately been elected a member of the council), and a party of forty men, of whom Ralph Morton was one.

Powhatan's residence was at Werowocomoco, on the Pamunky River (since called the York), only twelve miles from Jamestown overland, but Newport concluded to go by water. Arrived near the Indian town, Newport's heart failed him as he thought of trusting himself among the warriors of the redoubtable chief. Smith, to reassure him, landed with twenty men (among them Morton) and proceeded to Powhatan's village, which was some distance from the river. There were some small but deep and miry creeks to cross, over which the Indians had made frail bridges composed of poles laid in crotches stuck in the mire. These Smith suspected to be traps, but was reassured by making some of his Indian guides go over them first.

Arrived at the village, two or three hundred savages conducted the Englishmen into Powhatan's presence. The chief had arranged his greatest pomp for the occasion. He was seated on a bed of mats with a leather pillow embroidered with pearls and heads made of bits of shell. He was attired in a robe of furs. At each side close by him sat one of the fairest of his harem, and farther away twenty of his women, their faces and arms stained red with pocone root, and about their necks great chains of shell beads. As an emblem of his hospitality, forty wooden platters, full of cornbread, were arranged in two rows, one on each side of the door. Powhatan caused a proclamation to be made that on pain of death none was to molest any of his guests. The acquaintance begun between Smith and the chief during the former's captivity was renewed in a long conversation. Then the chief entertained his guests with the dancing and barbarous dramatic performances of his women, and with a feast, and gave them lodging for the night.

The next day Newport, being informed that all was well, came ashore. The party spent three or four days at the place. Usually the Indian chiefs would not allow their men to trade with the whites until they, the chiefs, had done their trading, but this time Powhatan would not trade until the last. Then he said to Newport, through Smith as interpreter:

"It does not befit my greatness to haggle with you about each separate trifle. Lay all your goods in a heap, and I will take what pleases me and give you what I think it is worth."

"A right royal trader is this," said Smith, with a twinkle of the eye. "He will please himself, I assure you, but the trade he will make you will little pleasure or advantage you. Rather put the boot on the other leg. Tell the cunning old rascal to measure out twenty hogsheads of corn and you will give him such trinkets as you think is right."

"Nay, nay," said Newport. "Rather let us outbrave the barbarian with the greatness of our generosity, and so bewitch him with our bounty as we may have what we list of his."

"Not at all," said Smith. "You will find the savage's desire unsatiable. You will give him such a conceit of himself as will make him think himself everything and us nothing."

But Newport gave the chief his way, and the latter helped himself liberally to the English goods, and gave in return about four bushels of corn.

Newport, who had expected enough to supply his whole colony, looked aghast.

"Corn were better cheap in Spain," said Smith, dryly.

Then, as if carelessly, he let the chief see some bright blue beads, and in answer to the chief's inquiry informed him that such ornaments were only for great kings, and that he would not part with them, as he wanted to keep them for the kings of the Monacans and Massawomeks, mortal enemies of the Powhatans. In the end the old chief became so determined to have the beads that he gave about two hundred and fifty bushels of corn for them.

Leaving Powhatan, Newport's party visited Opechankanough, Powhatan's brother, who ruled over the Pamunkies, and supplied him and his harem with these royal blue beads for a large amount of corn, and then returned to Jamestown with their supply.

The new corners were quartered in the cabins with the first settlers, whose number had been so thinned by death. For a while they were quite comfortable, in spite of the extreme cold weather. But one night some of the roystering gallants got to throwing firebrands around, and set fire to one of the thatched roofs. In a few minutes the little village was in a raging conflagration. Every house was burned, and the stockade was destroyed in many places. Some even lost their bedding in the confusion. Ralph Morton was well supplied with blankets, and had presence of mind enough to get them out of the burning cabin, and to carry them and his little chest down to the water's edge to escape the intense heat. But his little shelf of books was destroyed. The chaplain of the colony, Mr. Robert Hunt, had a considerable library, which was destroyed, to his great grief, and not a little to Ralph's sorrow, as the good parson was almost as much pleased to loan the books to Ralph as to use them himself. Fortunately, most of the corn remained still in the pinnace, and most of the stores in the ship, or the colony would soon have starved outright.

Chapter 3

With as much promptness as possible Captain Smith (the rest of the council seeming paralyzed by the catastrophe) got the men at work to rebuild the houses and palisade. Chopping was new and at first very severe work for Ralph, but he was wise enough not to overwork till he was somewhat inured to the toil. His hands soon became so stiff and blistered that each morning when he grasped his axhandle anew it seemed that the torture was more than he could bear. There were two young gallants of the "first supply," whose jeweled fingers had never held anything rougher than a bridle-rein and were much more dexterous with cards than with any useful tool. Almost every blow these fellows dealt with their smarting hands was accompanied with an oath. Captain Smith, although bred in camps, being a man who had religion much at heart, was much offended at this profanity, and at last told the offenders that for every oath they should have a can of cold water poured down their sleeves. He carried out his threat, or at least a part of it, and the two gallants swore no more above their breath. In a few weeks, such was their spirit, they became pretty fair woodsmen, and loved almost as much to make the tall trees come thundering down as in England they had loved to ride to the death of the fox. But there were few of their spirit among that band. Ralph was industrious and determined, but he had not the high and reckless spirit of the two gallants.

At first the shelterless men suffered much at night from the cold. Ralph and a chosen comrade, out of work hours, soon constructed a shelter of brush, and provided a good bed of leaves gathered in the woods. They had to watch closely to keep their blankets from being stolen.

Toward spring a bed of sand heavily charged with powdered iron pyrites was discovered near the village. The glittering stuff was supposed to be gold, and immediately the little colony went wild. Fortunately their cabins had been rebuilt or they would have neglected that necessary task to gather gold. There were three or four of the "first supply" who had come out as refiners, and these were the craziest of the lot. There was no talk but of digging gold, washing gold, refining gold, and loading gold. There were only two men in the community whose heads were not turned. They were Smith and Morton. The latter had learned something about minerals, and pronounced the stuff sulphuret of iron, much to the disgust of the self-styled refiners.

Captain John Martin, one of the council, was the discoverer of the "mine," and the leader of the gold-liunters. One day Smith broke out upon him:

"I tell you, man, I am tormented as never before to see all necessary business neglected to load your crazy ship with this gilded dirt. I applaud not your golden inventions; not because you do not admit me to a sight of your trials and golden consultations,—you and these loud-mouthed refiners, who I doubt ever refined anything,—but because in all this time they have not been able to show me a more substantial token, and turn out something which looks as if it might make a sovereign or a golden ring, instead of mere dross. I am not enamored of such dirty skill."

At last the ship was laden with the glitter- ing dust, and fourteen weeks after her arrival she departed. With her departed two of the council, Wingfield and Archer, who had arrogated to themselves a number of pompous titles, but were despised by the colonists, who gladly saw them go.

Through Newport's sloth, the ship had lain so long that her crew had eaten up a large part of what was intended for the colonists. Smith had been a careful trader with the Indians, but Newport was a reckless prodigal, and loaded them with gifts until they scorned to give anything in trade. But before this the sailors and soldiers had been allowed to trade freely with the Indians, and they embezzled much of the stores in illicit traffic. Some favorite of the company had set up a tavern for the sale of victuals and drink, and, as one colonist wrote home: "Those that had either money, spare clothes, or credit to give bills of paiment, gold rings, furrs, or any such commodities were ever welcome to this removing tavern, and we might buy our owne provisions at 15 times the value." This tavern seems to have much resembled the sutler tent of a modern army.