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NARRATIVES OF EARLY VIRGINIA

[1613

soldiers, without artillery. There is another1 smaller than either half a league inland from here for a defence against the Indians. This has fifteen more soldiers. Twenty leagues off is this colony with one hundred and fifty persons and six pieces; another twenty leagues further up is another colony strongly located - to which they will all betake themselves if occasion arises, because on this they place their hopes where are one hundred more persons and among them as here there are women, children and field laborers, which leaves not quite two hundred active men and those poorly disciplined.

Fort Henry, on the east side of Hampton River, a musket shot to the west of Fort Charles.

Jamestown.

• At Henrico, where Dutch Gap cuts the bend of the river. Some few scattered bricks still give evidence of this early settlement.

LETTER OF FATHER PIERRE BIARD, 16-4

INTRODUCTION

ALTHOUGH Spanish interference was greatly feared by the English colonists at Jamestown, Spain was much reduced from its former estate and in no condition to make war upon England. Danger from France, though more removed, was far more real. In 1604 the Sieur de Monts established a French colony on the island of St. Croix in the St. Croix River. The next year the colony was removed to Port Royal (Annapolis). After three years spent in the country, during which time the New England coast was explored as far as Martha's Vineyard, the colonists returned to France. The design, however, was not abandoned. Poutrincourt returned in 1610 and re-established his colony at Port Royal. In 1611 two Jesuit priests, Biard and Massé, came over under the patronage of Madame de Guercheville, and in 1613, being joined by two other Jesuit priests, Quentin and du Thet, they planted a Jesuit station on the island of Mount Desert. The English had not recognized the claims of the French to any part of North America, and Sir Thomas Dale sent Captain Samuel Argall twice from Virginia, and burned all their settlements, - at Mount Desert Island, Isle de Ste. Croix, and Port Royal. The vigorous action of Argall probably saved New England to English colonization. The letter below was first published in a French translation by Father Auguste Carayon, S.J., in a work entitled Première Mission des Jésuites Canada (Paris, 1864). The Latin original is preserved in the archives of the Society of Jesus. An English translation from the French was published by Dr. Alexander Brown in his Genesis of the United States, pp. 700-706. The translation printed below is however from the Latin and is taken, with permission, from Dr. R. G. Thwaites's Jesuit Relations, III. 5-19. L. G. T.

LETTER OF FATHER PIERRE BIARD, 1614

TO THE VERY REVEREND FATHER CLAUDE ACQUAVIVA, GENERAL OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS, AT ROME, MAY 26, 1614

Very Reverend Father in Christ:

The peace of Christ be with you.

Вотн affection and duty urge me, fresh from such multiplied and mighty perils, from which I have been rescued by the surpassing favor of the Lord and by the prayers of your Paternity, to send you my greetings; and, in so far as it is possible, I throw myself at your knees and embrace you, assuredly with the utmost gratitude and devotion. And indeed I am bound, as it were, to contemplate myself, both to do penance, as I hope, and to express my gratitude; so great are the perils out of which I now marvel to see myself delivered. But, as it may at this time be wearisome to weave a long story of all these things, and as it is probable that Your Paternity has already learned many of them from Father Enemond Massé, I shall pass over all the rest, and confine myself for the present to this one matter: in what manner, after our violent capture by the English in New France, we were taken from place to place, and at last restored to this our native land.

There were, as Your Paternity knows, only four of our society in New France in the last year, 1613. Then, too, we first began to build in a convenient place a new settlement, a new colony,1 etc. But most unexpectedly, by some hazard or other (for a hazard it certainly was, and not a premeditated plan), some English from Virginia were driven upon our shores, who attacked our ships with the utmost fury, at a time

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