attention to smaller fish, but owing to their late arrival and "long
lingering about the whale"--chasing a whale that they could not kill
because it was not the right kind--the best season for fishing was
passed. Nevertheless, they secured some 40,000 cod--the figure is
naturally raised to 60,000 when Smith retells the story fifteen years
afterwards.

But our hero was a born explorer, and could not be content with not
examining the strange coast upon which he found himself. Leaving his
sailors to catch cod, he took eight or nine men in a small boat, and
cruised along the coast, trading wherever he could for furs, of which
he obtained above a thousand beaver skins; but his chance to trade was
limited by the French settlements in the east, by the presence of one of
Popham's ships opposite Monhegan, on the main, and by a couple of French
vessels to the westward. Having examined the coast from Penobscot to
Cape Cod, and gathered a profitable harvest from the sea, Smith returned
in his vessel, reaching the Downs within six months after his departure.
This was his whole experience in New England, which ever afterwards
he regarded as particularly his discovery, and spoke of as one of his
children, Virginia being the other.

With the other vessel Smith had trouble. He accuses its master, Thomas
Hunt, of attempting to rob him of his plots and observations, and to
leave him "alone on a desolate isle, to the fury of famine, And all
other extremities." After Smith's departure the rascally Hunt decoyed
twenty-seven unsuspecting savages on board his ship and carried them off
to Spain, where he sold them as slaves. Hunt sold his furs at a great
profit. Smith's cargo also paid well: in his letter to Lord Bacon in
1618 he says that with forty-five men he had cleared L 1,500 in less
than three months on a cargo of dried fish and beaver skins--a pound at
that date had five times the purchasing power of a pound now.

The explorer first landed on Monhegan, a small island in sight of which
in the war of 1812 occurred the lively little seafight of the American
Wasp and the British Frolic, in which the Wasp was the victor, but
directly after, with her prize, fell into the hands of an English
seventy-four.

He made certainly a most remarkable voyage in his open boat. Between
Penobscot and Cape Cod (which he called Cape James) he says he saw forty
several habitations, and sounded about twenty-five excellent harbors.
Although Smith accepted t