Comic History of the United States | Page 6

the time when settlements were made as
follows:
The French at Port Royal, N.S., 1605. The English at Jamestown 1607.
The French at Quebec 1608. The Dutch at New York 1613. The
English at Plymouth 1620.
* * * * *
The author's thanks are due to the following books of reference, which,
added to his retentive memory, have made the foregoing statements
accurate yet pleasing:
A Summer in England with H. W. Beecher. By J. B. Reed.
Russell's Digest of the Laws of Minnesota, with Price-List of Members.

Out-Door and Bug Life in America. By Chilblainy, Chief of the
Umatilla.
Why I am an Indian. By S. Bull. With Notes by Ole Bull and
Introduction by John Bull.

[Illustration: BONA FIDE PICTURE OF THE MAYFLOWER.]
CHAPTER III.
THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL COLONIES.
This chapter is given up almost wholly to facts. It deals largely with the
beginning of the thirteen original colonies from which sprang the
Republic, the operation of which now gives so many thousands of men
in-door employment four years at a time, thus relieving the
penitentiaries and throwing more kindergarten statesmen to the front.
[Illustration: SAMPLE PURITAN.]
It was during this epoch that the Cavaliers landed in Virginia and the
Puritans in Massachusetts; the latter lived on maple sugar and armed
prayer, while the former saluted his cow, and, with bared head, milked
her with his hat in one hand and his life in the other.
Immigration now began to increase along the coast. The Mayflower
began to bring over vast quantities of antique furniture, mostly
hall-clocks for future sales. Hanging them on spars and masts during
rough weather easily accounts for the fact that none of them have ever
been known to go.
[Illustration]
The Puritans now began to barter with the Indians, swapping square
black bottles of liquid hell for farms in Massachusetts and additions to
log towns. Dried apples and schools began to make their appearance.
The low retreating forehead of the codfish began to be seen at the stores,

and virtue began to break out among the Indians after death.
Virginia, however, deserves mention here on the start. This colony was
poorly prepared to tote wood and sleep out-of-doors, as the people were
all gents by birth. They had no families, but came to Virginia to obtain
fortunes and return to the city of New York in September. The climate
was unhealthy, and before the first autumn, says Sir William Kronk,
from whom I quote, "ye greater numberr of them hade perished of a
great Miserrie in the Side and for lacke of Food, for at thatte time the
Crosse betweene the wilde hyena and the common hogge of the Holy
Lande, and since called the Razor Backe Hogge, had not been made,
and so many of the courtiers dyede."
John Smith saved the colony. He was one of the best Smiths that ever
came to this country, which is as large an encomium as a man cares to
travel with. He would have saved the life of Pocahontas, an Indian girl
who also belonged to the gentry of their tribe, but she saw at once that
it would be a point for her to save him, so after a month's rehearsal with
her father as villain, with Smith's part taken by a chunk of blue-gum
wood, they succeeded in getting this little curtain-raiser to perfection.
Pocahontas was afterwards married, if the author's memory does not
fail him, to John Rolfe. Pocahontas was not beautiful, but many good
people sprang from her. She never touched them. Her husband sprang
from her also just in time. The way she jumped from a clay-eating
crowd into the bosom of the English aristocracy by this dramatic ruse
was worthy of a greater recognition than merely to figure among the
makers of smoking-tobacco with fancy wrappers, when she never had a
fancy wrapper in her life.
Smith was captured once by the Indians, and, instead of telling them
that he was by birth a gent, he gave them a course of lectures on the use
of the compass and how to learn where one is at. Thus one after another
the Indians went away. I often wonder why the lecture is not used more
as a means of escape from hostile people.
[Illustration: THE REHEARSAL.]

By writing a letter and getting a reply to it, he made another hit. He
now became a great man among the Indians; and to kill a dog and fail
to invite Smith to the symposium was considered as vulgar as it is now
to rest the arctic overshoe on the corner of the dining-table while
buckling or unbuckling it.
Afterward Smith fell into the hands of Powhatan, the Croker of his time,
and narrowly saved his life, as we have seen, through the