The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-12-18

| that the Carolina savage was a pleasant
er fellow to meet than his Irouuois
| cousin. John Lawson certainly justified
! his claim
| Another gent" Ebenezer Cook by
name, in 170S published ''The Sot Weed
Factor; or a Voyage to Maryland, a
Satyr," in burlesque verse. 1t Is another
impression which colonial life made upon
Englishmen, this time upon one who was
outwitted in tobacco bargain. Still
| these Hobidrastic lines must have been
! inspired by something more than the
| fancy of a man who could write such
| stuff. AS in Connecticut, so in Mary
| land. colonial modes Of living must have
been crude amidst great abundance, and
IN the latter providence amidst flood of
| strong waters. Justice, too. was on the
side of the home born. Therefore this
| satire was on the side of the swindled
stranger. who filings back to the eastern
shore the following adieu:
May cannibalS transported DER the sea
| Frey on these slaves, as they have done
on me;
May never merchants trading sails ex-
This cruel, inhospitable shore.
Bue left abandoned by the world to
Starye
May they sustain the fate they well de-
serve,
and other Calamities fit for Americans
who were already developing a CONNER
cial shrewdneSs which was to give the
British trader great uneasiness in the
immediate future.
1t was by the native traveller that the
colonies were coming to know each other
preparatory to federation and ultimate
union. And the foreign traveller by his
impressions" published in London was
contributing to the same result in an
other way. One such traveller became
fI.f1 ton
John OldmiXon, historian and pam
phleteer, was publishing his British
Empire in America when Robert BeVer-
ly, of Virginia. being in London in l7OS.
saw advance sheets containing an ac-
count of Virginia and Carolina. Reading
these, he discovered so many misstate-
ments that he undertook to write an ac-
count of his own country because it
had been so misrepresented to the COM
| mon people of England"
He then specifies wherein the English
author had Numbered. 1t is consoiing
to note that colonial geography was as
great a puzzle to the native Briton as
that of 1.-THE States" is today as when
OldmiXon remarks that the Indians at
the head of Chesapeake bay pass the
frontier of Virginia in going to New
York and that the James river lies south
ward of that bay; it is a source of Won
der to the Englishman-and of amuse-
ment to the Americans-"what became
Of the cameis brought, to Virginia by
Guinea ships" of which Beverly has
never heard? These and a score of sim
liar errors the American traveller sums
up with the remark: How unfathful
and fruitless must such a historian be
VINO can upon guesswork introduce such
falsities for truth and bottom them upon
such bold assertions" An exclamation
from the American reader OF English
notes of travel through the United
States-by way of the Canadian Pacific.
However, these ancient geographical
tta,. nj ha orHn no
sake of the history of Virginia, which
they provoked Beverly to write:
A hundred years had passed since John
Smith sent his advertisements of the
country and it's sources to the London
company. Beverly undertook to write
an account of the progress the colony
had made in the century. He becomes
the first writer of it's natural and polit-
ical history. He tells again the story
of its settlement, recounts the coming and
going of royal governors, the arrival. Of
Lord Baltimore in Maryland. the Berke-
ley and Bacon scrimmage, the spread
of religious sectaries, the restraint put
upon commerce and tobacco raising, the
taxing of lawyers and schoolmasters,
wine and liquors, the internal disorders,
the projecting Of a college to teach Ian
guage, divinity and natural philosophy
all seasoned with spicy details Of the
prolific fertility of the land, of concerning
pirates and of the natural conveniences
Of Virginia before the English went
thither," its waters and soils and their
products animals, mineral and vegetable
fish, fowl, and noble game. Finally, In
never-failing topic of the English colo
nists-the Indians their religion, laws
and customs. in war and peace, illustrat-
ed by rude cuts which leave nothing
for the imagination. because appended
explanations tell what each figure repre-
cents. For example: This Is man
and his wife at dinner. Figure / is pot
boiling with hominy and fish; Is a bowl
( 0f which thew gather In their
fingers to feed themselves is the tom
ahawk. which he lays by at qinner."
But this explfcitness If of a piece with (
all the book-the honest endeavor of a
yirginian in London to correct mfsap-
prehensions about his own country. His
book Is full of the subject like himself.
He knows what he is talking about; the y
other man did not Accordingly he win Z
set him and all England right on (
matter where there was great liability I
to be wrong. It was no fault Of his IL /
they continued to bIunder.
Copyright, 1909 "A