arly in the year 1614 Sir Thomas Gates returned again to England, and
Sir Thomas Dale reassumed the government of the colony. The French
settlers of Acadia had, as early as 1605, built the town of Port Royal,
on the Bay of Fundy; St. Croix was afterwards erected on the other side
of the bay. Dale, looking upon these settlements as an encroachment upon
the territory of Virginia, which extended to the forty-fifth degree of
latitude, dispatched his kinsman, Argall, an enterprising and
unscrupulous man, with a small force, to dislodge the intruders. The
French colony was found situated on Mount Desert Island, near the
Penobscot River, and within the bounds of the present State of Maine.
The French, surprised while dispersed in the woods, soon yielded to
superior force, and Argall, as some accounts say, furnished the
prisoners with a fishing vessel, in which they returned to France,
except fifteen, including a Jesuit missionary, who were brought to
Jamestown. According to other accounts, their vessels were captured, but
the colonists escaped, and went to live among the Indians. On his
return, Argall visited the Dutch settlement near the site of Albany, on
the Hudson, and compelled the governor there to surrender the place; but
it was reclaimed by the Dutch not long afterwards, and during the next
year they erected a fort on Manhattan Island, on which is now seated the
commercial metropolis of the United States.

FOOTNOTES:

[92:A] The colony was provided with fishing-nets, working tools,
apparel, six mares and a horse, five or six hundred swine, with some
goats and sheep. Jamestown was strongly fortified with palisades, and
contained fifty or sixty houses. There were, besides, five or six other
forts and plantations. There was only one carpenter in the colony; three
others were learning that trade. There were two blacksmiths and two
sailors.

[92:B] Bacon's Essays, 123.

[97:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 232.

[98:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 263.

[99:A] The wreck of the Sea-Venture appears to have suggested to
Shakespeare the groundwork for the plot of "The Tempest," several
incidents and passages being evidently taken from the contemporary
accounts of that disaster, as narrated by Jordan and the Council of the
Virginia Company.

"Boatswain, down with the top-mast, yare
Lower, lower; bring her to try with the main course."

Captain Smith, in his Sea-Grammar, published 1627, under t