“colour yellowish.” [Footnote: Hakluyt,
III. 248.] Captain John Smith, speaking of those of
the Chesapeake, remarks, that they “are of a
color brown when they are of age, but they are born
white.” [Footnote: Smith, Map of Virginia,
1612, p. 19.] On the other hand the natives of Massachusetts
and Rhode Island in latitude 4l Degrees 40’
are described by the first explorers of that region
in substantially the same terms. Brereton, who
accompanied Gosnold in his first voyage to the Elisabeth
islands and the main land opposite, in 1602, mentions
the natives there, as being of a complexion or color
“much like a dark olive.” [Footnote:
Purchas,
iv. 1652.] Martin Fringe who visited
Martha’s Vineyard the next year and constructed
there a barricade where the “people of the country
came sometimes, ten, twentie, fortie or three score,
and at one time one hundred and twentie at once,”
says, “these people are inclined to a swart,
tawnie or chesnut colour, not by nature but accidentally.”
[Footnote: Ibid,
iv, 1655.] And Roger Williams,
partaking of the same idea as Pringe, that the swarthy
color was accidental, testifies, almost in the same
language as Captain Smith, that the Narragansets and
others within a region of two hundred miles of them,
were “tawnie by the sunne and their annoyntings,
yet they were born white.” [Footnote: Roger
Williams’s Key, 52.] Thus the authorities flatly
contradict the statement of black Indians existing
in North Carolina, and a difference of color between
the people of the two sections claimed to have been
visited in this voyage.
Of an equally absurd and preposterous character is
the statement made in reference to the condition in
which the plants and vegetation were found. The
grape particularly is mentioned in a manner which
proves, beyond question, that the writer could not
have been in the country. The dates which are
given for the exploration are positive; and are conclusive
in this respect. The Dauphiny is represented
as having left Madeira on the 17th of January, and
arrived on the coast on the 7th of March, that is,
the 17th of that month, new style. [Footnote:
See ante, page 4, note.] They left the harbor of the
great bay, where they had remained for fifteen days
on the 6th of May, which makes their arrival there
to have been on the 21st of April, or first of May,
N. S. They were thus during the months of March and
April, engaged in coasting from the landfall to the
great bay in latitude 41 Degrees 40’, during
which period the observations relating to the intermediate
country, consequently, must have been made. They
left the coast, finally, in latitude 50 Degrees N.,
for the purpose of returning to France, in time to
reach there and have the letter written announcing
their arrival at Dieppe on the 8th of July, and therefore
it must have been some time in June, at the latest;
so that very little if any portion of the summer season
was passed upon the coast of America.