ther and
out of proportion they do me as much good as so much waste paper--though
they cost me more," added the veteran grimly. "With a true map o' the
coast, we'd know whereabouts we were."

"No gold nor silver, I hear."

"Maybe not. But what commodity in England decays faster than wood? And
where will you find better forest than along that shore? Build shipyards
there, and our English folk would make a living off'n that and the
fisheries. I know how 't was in Boston--the Flemings would salt their
fish down right aboard the ships when the fleets came in. But men for
work like this must be men--not tyrants, nor slaves."

John Smith's eyes flashed, and his lips closed so tightly that his thick
mustaches and beard stuck straight out like a lion's. He had seen a
plenty of both slavery and tyranny in his life.

In fact there was a neck-and-neck race between the Plymouth Company and
the Dutch West India Company, for the control of the northern province.
Dutch fur traders were already on Manhattan Island living in makeshift
wooden huts, and Adrian Block was exploring Long Island Sound, when John
Smith went out to map the coast north of Cape Cod for Sir Ferdinando
Gorges of the Plymouth Company in 1614. The two little English ships
reached the part of the coast called by the Indians Monhegan in April of
that year. They had general instructions to meet the cost of the
expedition, if possible, by whaling, fishing and fur-trading. No true
whales were found, however, and by the time the ships reached the
fishing grounds the cod season was nearly past. Mullet and sturgeon were
plentiful in summer, and while the sailors fished, Smith took a few men
in a small boat and ranged the coast, trading for furs. Within a
distance of fifty or sixty miles they got in exchange for such trifles
as were prized by the Indians, more than a thousand beaver skins, a
hundred or more martens and as many otter-pelts. On a rocky island four
leagues from shore, in latitude 431/2, he made a garden in May which gave
them all salad vegetables through June and July. Not a man of the
twenty-five was ill even for a day. Cod, they learned, were abundant
from March to the middle of June, and again from September to November,
for cor-fish--salt fish or Poor John. The Indians said that the herring
were more than the hairs of the head. Sturgeon, mullet, salmon, halibut
and other fish were plentiful. Smith had a vision of comfortable
independent mariners settled