Part 1

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Historical Tales

The Romance of Reality

CHARLES MORRIS

Author of "Half-Hours with the Best American Authors," "Tales from the Dramatists," etc.

IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES

Volume I

American

J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

Copyright, 1893, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. Copyright, 1904, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. Copyright, 1908, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.

PREFACE.

It has become a commonplace remark that fact is often stranger than fiction. It may be said, as a variant of this, that history is often more romantic than romance. The pages of the record of man's doings are frequently illustrated by entertaining and striking incidents, relief points in the dull monotony of every-day events, stories fitted to rouse the reader from languid weariness and stir anew in his veins the pulse of interest in human life. There are many such,--dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. Incidents of this kind have proved as attractive to writers as to readers. They have dwelt upon them lovingly, embellished them with the charms of rhetoric and occasionally with the inventions of fancy, until what began as fact has often entered far into the domains of legend and fiction. It may well be that some of the narratives in the present work have gone through this process. If so, it is simply indicative of the interest they have awakened in generations of readers and writers. But the bulk of them are fact, so far as history in general can be called fact, it having been our design to cull from the annals of the nations some of their more stirring and romantic incidents, and present them as a gallery of pictures that might serve to adorn the entrance to the temple of history, of which this work is offered as in some sense an illuminated ante-chamber. As such, it is hoped that some pilgrims from the world of readers may find it a pleasant halting-place on their way into the far-extending aisles of the great temple beyond.

CONTENTS

VINELAND AND THE VIKINGS 9 FROBISHER AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 26 CHAMPLAIN AND THE IROQUOIS 34 SIR WILLIAM PHIPS AND THE SILVER-SHIP 53 THE STORY OF THE REGICIDES 69 HOW THE CHARTER WAS SAVED 80 HOW FRANKLIN CAME TO PHILADELPHIA 90 THE PERILS OF THE WILDERNESS 98 SOME ADVENTURES OF MAJOR PUTNAM 111 A GALLANT DEFENCE 128 DANIEL BOONE, THE PIONEER OF KENTUCKY 138 PAUL'S REVERE'S RIDE 157 THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS 172 THE BRITISH AT NEW YORK 180 A QUAKERESS PATRIOT 189 THE SIEGE OF FORT SCHUYLER 195 ON THE TRACK OF A TRAITOR 211 MARION, THE SWAMP-FOX 223 THE FATE OF THE PHILADELPHIA 237 THE VICTIM OF A TRAITOR 249 HOW THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH WAS INVENTED 259 THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC 275 STEALING A LOCOMOTIVE 285 AN ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 298 THE SINKING OF THE ALBEMARLE 314 ALASKA, A TREASURE HOUSE OF GOLD, FURS, AND FISHES 327 HOW HAWAII LOST ITS QUEEN AND ENTERED THE UNITED STATES 338

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

AMERICAN. VOLUME I.

WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. Frontispiece. VIKING SHIPS AT SEA. 11 LAKE CHAMPLAIN AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 41 POND ISLAND, MOUTH OF THE KENNEBEC. 54 THE CAVE OF THE REGICIDES. 76 THE CHARTER OAK, HARTFORD. 85 PRINTING-PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORKED WHEN A BOY. 90 WASHINGTON'S HOME AT MT. VERNON. 98 SHORE OF LAKE GEORGE. 118 INDIAN ATTACK AND GALLANT DEFENCE. 128 THE OLD NORTH CHURCH, BOSTON. 158 THE SPIRIT OF '76. 166 ETHAN ALLEN'S ENTRANCE, TICONDEROGA. 172 THE OLD STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA. 191 THE BENEDICT ARNOLD MANSION. 220 THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC. 280 LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND. 298 SINKING OF THE ALBEMARLE. 319 MUIR GLACIER IN ALASKA. 328 A NATIVE GRASS HUT, HAWAII. 340

VINELAND AND THE VIKINGS.

The year 1000 A.D. was one of strange history. Its advent threw the people of Europe into a state of mortal terror. Ten centuries had passed since the birth of Christ. The world was about to come to an end. Such was the general belief. How it was to reach its end,--whether by fire, water, or some other agent of ruin,--the prophets of disaster did not say, nor did people trouble themselves to learn. Destruction was coming upon them, that was enough to know; how to provide against it was the one thing to be considered.

Some hastened to the churches; others to the taverns. Here prayers went up; there wine went down. The petitions of the pious were matched by the ribaldry of the profligate. Some made their wills; others wasted their wealth in revelry, eager to get all the pleasure out of life that remained for them. Many freely gave away their property, hoping, by ridding themselves of the goods of this earth, to establish a claim to the goods of Heaven, with little regard to the fate of those whom they loaded with their discarded wealth.

It was an era of ignorance and superstition. Christendom went insane over an idea. When the year ended, and the world rolled on, none the worse for conflagration or deluge, green with the spring leafage and ripe with the works of man, dismay gave way to hope, mirth took the place of prayer, man regained their flown wits, and those who had so recklessly given away their wealth bethought themselves of taking legal measures for its recovery.

Such was one of the events that made that year memorable. There was another of a highly different character. Instead of a world being lost, a world was found. The Old World not only remained unharmed, but a New World was added to it, a world beyond the seas, for this was the year in which the foot of the European was first set upon the shores of the trans-Atlantic continent. It is the story of this first discovery of America that we have now to tell.

In the autumn of the year 1000, in a region far away from fear-haunted Europe, a scene was being enacted of a very different character from that just described. Over the waters of unknown seas a small, strange craft boldly made its way, manned by a crew of the hardiest and most vigorous men, driven by a single square sail, whose coarse woollen texture bellied deeply before the fierce ocean winds, which seemed at times as if they would drive that deckless vessel bodily beneath the waves.

This crew was of men to whom fear was almost unknown, the stalwart Vikings of the North, whose oar-and sail-driven barks now set out from the coasts of Norway and Denmark to ravage the shores of southern Europe, now turned their prows boldly to the west in search of unknown lands afar.

Shall we describe this craft? It was a tiny one in which to venture upon an untravelled ocean in search of an unknown continent,--a vessel shaped somewhat like a strung bow, scarcely fifty feet in length, low amidships and curving upwards to high peaks at stem and stern, both of which converged to sharp edges. It resembled an enormous canoe rather than aught else to which we can compare it. On the stem was a carved and gilt dragon, the figurehead of the ship, which glittered in the bright rays of the sun. Along the bulwarks of the ship, fore and aft, hung rows of large painted wooden shields, which gave an Argus-eyed aspect to the craft. Between them was a double row of thole-pins for the great oars, which now lay at rest in the bottom of the boat, but by which, in calm weather, this "walker of the seas" could be forced swiftly through the yielding element.

Near the stern, on an elevated platform, stood the commander, a man of large and powerful frame and imposing aspect, one whose commands not the fiercest of his crew would lightly venture to disobey. A coat of ring-mail encircled his stalwart frame; by his side, in a richly-embossed scabbard, hung a long sword, with hilt of gilded bronze; on his head was a helmet that shone like pure gold, shaped like a wolf's head, with gaping jaws and threatening teeth. Land was in sight, an unknown coast, peopled perhaps by warlike men. The cautious Viking leader deemed it wise to be prepared for danger, and was armed for possible combat.

Below him, on the rowing-benches, sat his hardy crew, their arms--spears, axes, bows, and slings--beside them, ready for any deed of daring they might be called upon to perform. Their dress consisted of trousers of coarse stuff, belted at the waist; thick woollen shirts, blue, red, or brown in color; iron helmets, beneath which their long hair streamed down to their shoulders; and a shoulder belt descending to the waist and supporting their leather-covered sword-scabbards. Heavy whiskers and moustaches added to the fierceness of their stern faces, and many of them wore as ornament on the forehead a band of gold.