Aristopia/Chapter 11
Houses had been provided for the shelter of the new-comers, and were ready for them on their arrival. A schoolhouse, by far the largest and best house in the colony, was immediately built. The walls were of hewn logs, chinked with stones and mortar instead of sticks and clay; and an abundance of glass windows were provided.
Those who wished to go to farming on their own account immediately had land allotted to them, ten acres to each man. It was so arranged that even those who had no means could go to work on their fields and find support until they could raise a crop. As making the land ready for cultivation would add considerably to its value, it was arranged that the farmer should be allowed a certain amount per acre, to be paid by the Commonwealth, for the land he cleared. Then, he could sell to the Commonwealth for shipment to England all the stave-bolts and charcoal he could make and all the sassafras and cedar timber lie could cut oil his land and bring to the river's edge. Thus, while clearing his field he could be earning a living. If this should not he sufficient, he was to have some credit at the commonwealth store. This store was stocked by the governor as a gift to the commonwealth to begin with.
In the last cargo, no horses, but ten yoke of oxen had been brought over, oxen being better adapted for rough work in a new country than horses, as well as being cheaper in price and less expensive to feed. Six yoke were sold, one to each farmer who was able to buy, and the rest were kept to be hired to those who needed to use them, and for public use.
Half a dozen goats were brought over. It was not deemed advisable to try sheep-raising until larger clearings should be made, but the bold and active goats could avoid and beat off the wolves. Some young pigs and some geese and ducks were also brought on the last voyage.
As it was observed that crops did not grow at the extreme edge of a clearing, Morton persuaded the farmers to make their clearings four together, each four at the place where the corners of their four lots joined, so that the open spaces would be larger than if each farmer made a separate clearing. Thus also four men could work near each other with more security against savages.
Charcoal has been mentioned as one of the products of the colonists. Though at this time pit coal (or sea coal, as it was then called) was considerably used in London, it was unpopular, and its use had been prohibited by parliament. Charcoal was then and for a generation later universally used for smelting iron. Wood was becoming scarce in England, and timber for shipbuilding was in great demand. The use of any wood fit for shipbuilding in making charcoal was prohibited. Under these circumstances charcoal could he profitably made for export by the colonists of Mortonia, where wood was a thing to be gotten rid of in clearing fields. Some men skilled in making charcoal came in the "last supply," and the art was easily learned by all.
The colonists learned from the Indians to expedite the clearing of land by girdling the large trees: that is, cutting off a wide ring of bark around the trunks. A well-girdled tree would never leaf again, and in a few years would decay. Through its bare branches the sunlight and air could come to the growing crops below. But the colonists saved the best of the large trees for lumber, girdling only the gnarly, twisted, and unsound ones.
Within two weeks of her arrival in September the Flora sailed again for Europe. Henry Morton with a thousand pounds avoirdupois of gold went in her. To make it appear that the gold came from Spanish America, the Flora took only part of a cargo of timber and some furs, and sailed to Cuba, where she completed her cargo with sugar and sailed for Amsterdam. Ralph Morton sent instructions to his agents to buy immediately four more ships of not less than two hundred tons each, or, if they could not be bought promptly, to charter them until that number could be bought. Five more of three hundred tons each were to be built on a model furnished by Ralph Morton himself. They were to be considerably longer and lower than the model then in vogue. Thus they would have increased capacity, would pitch less, and drift less to seaward during contrary winds. English shipbuilders were then the best in the world, and they were rapidly improving both in the workmanship and size of their vessels.
James Morton was to make his headquarters in Bristol, then the second city in England. Edward Morton was to go to Holland, with headquarters at Amsterdam. Numerous agents were to be appointed to procure emigrants in Holland, Denmark, and Germany. The agents were to receive a premium for each desirable emigrant furnished, and suffer a penalty for each emigrant they sent of a prohibited class. No criminals, beggars, or habitual paupers were to be sent, no cripples nor permanent invalids unless they belonged to the family of some emigrant to Mortonia, bound for their support. No person over fifty years old would be accepted unless such person was the parent of some emigrant to Mortonia bound to the parent's support. No person suffering from, or known or suspected to be infected with, smallpox or other plague was to be shipped.
There were at that time in Holland a number of English emigrants called Brownists, who had left their native land because they could not make all England adopt their religous notions, and had been roughly used for their sublime efforts to do so. Not understanding the Dutch language, they could not hope to bring the Dutch nation into their narrow theological path, so they lived quietly in Holland, a little theocratic community, ruled absolutely by their preachers in all such minor matters as the rather liberal Dutch government did not meddle with. Morton's agents in Holland were instructed not to send any of these men to Mortonia, as the governor knew well what firebrands they would be in his colony.
The Indians still supplied the colonists of Mortonia with most of their meat. It was strictly forbidden to private members of the commonwealth to trade with the Indians. Such trading was to be done by the officials and public storekeepers as public business. Morton adopted the close dealing of Captain Smith rather than the lavish prodigality of Newport. He did not think equity required him to give an Indian beads which cost ten shillings in London for a pelt worth ten shillings in London, or anything on that basis. It was sufficient if he gave the Indian for the skin what the savage thought the skin worth, in beads of a value estimated by the savage rather than by the white man. It may be thought that the Indian was like a child or a weak-minded person, incapable of estimating values, and not to be allowed to cheat himself; but Morton found him quite shrewd enough in his own sphere, and knowing quite well what a thing was worth to himself, if he did not know what it was worth to the white man.
At the approach of winter great numbers of wild geese and ducks came down from the north, and the colonists were able to kill a great many of these fowls. They found also in this new world great quantities of wild fruits, which added much zest to their fare. Beginning about the end of May, there were strawberries, then, in succession, dewberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, grapes, and, lastly, persimmons (or putchimins, as they were then called), lasting until far into the winter. Nuts in variety were also plentiful.
When the Flora sailed she took back letters from most of the colonists to their relatives and friends in England. Few, if any, failed to extol the conditions of life in Mortonia and urge others to come.
As soon as possible, the governor set a number of men at work to build a mill. It was found that Bock Creek had sufficient volume and fall for an ordinary mill, and that one could be built more easily here than on the river. But Morton intended to build much greater mills, to be run with the great power which the falls in the river could furnish. The mill was made both for grinding grain and sawing lumber. Saw-mills were then unknown in England. One which was built near London in 1633 was torn down by a mob of workmen, who feared that the innovation would deprive them of work. The people of Mortonia, however, saw such a vast amount of work before them waiting to be done, that they welcomed any help from water-power. Morton had carefully designed the machinery of the sawmill, and had it made in England. Soon the rocky hills of the lonely creek resounded with the hum of machinery and the growling of the great saw tearing its way through the logs, doing the work of many men in the old way. The contemplation of this work afforded the liveliest pleasure to Ralph Morton.
In March, 1611, the Flora arrived for the third time at Mortonia. A majority of the immigrants she brought this time were women and children. All the colonists who had come on the other two trips leaving families in England had them brought out on the third voyage. Also some unmarried women came, some of them as dependent relatives of the other immigrants, others induced to come with the understood if not avowed object of finding husbands in America.
Soon the newly-acquired ships of the governor began to arrive, bringing a great many immigrants. With increased force, men were set at work to dig a long mill-race, bringing water from above the "Little Falls" of the Potomac to the head of tide water, where, with a great volume and ample fall of water, large saw-mills were built. Logs could then he run down the river from above by the current, brought from below on the river by towing or the incoming tide, and floated out of Rock Creek. Lumber then became an important article of export, selling at a good profit in the English markets in competition with handsawn lumber. It was more than thirty years before the colonists of Mortonia had any competition in mill-sawn lumber, and then it came from the shrewd Puritans of New England.
With abundance of mill-sawn lumber, a new style of architecture replaced the log cabins chinked with sticks and clay. Frame houses, much better looking and more cleanly than the cabins, became the ordinary dwellings. An improvement in dwellings is certain to improve the character of a people. The inside walls of these houses were of lath and plaster, the laths fastened to the frame with pegs, nails being then hand-made and expensive, a small size costing in London five-pence a hundred, and five-pence was about half a day's wages of the workman who made them. Nails were mostly made, however, by women and children.
In Mortonia, as in every community not purely communistic, a currency was necessary, although a less amount was necessary in Mortonia than in other communities of its population, owing to the traffic being conducted by the public agency. The colonists could take their produce to the stores and in exchange get credit on the store books, on which they could purchase goods; but still some money was necessary. Morton had no authority to coin money. Partly for this reason and partly because he had some ideas of his own, centuries ahead of his age, on the subject of currency, he determined to make money of paper bills. He saw that in civilized commerce money is only a set of counters with which an instantaneous, authentic, and indisputable account of exchanges is kept, and as such the intrinsic value of the material is of no consequence whatever, except as a guaranty of the authenticity of the counters. If such authenticity could be attained by any other means than the intrinsic value of the materials, the object of these counters would be equally well attained. The use of mere lumps of gold and silver, in whatever shape, in exchange for other commodities, is simply barbarous barter, not civilized commerce. The use of a well-authenticated paper currency would render possible a much needed increase in the volume of the world's currency. The great amelioration in the condition of the people of Europe which took place in the sixteenth, and was still taking place in the seventeenth, century, was attributed by every philosophical man to the increase of the volume of currency by the influx of gold and silver from America. Buyers, whether of merchandise or human labor, grumbled at the rising prices, but a gleam of prosperity was taking the place of the night of abject poverty among the common people. It was not the natural utility of gold and silver that did the good work, for as metals they minister little to man's needs. It was their artificial value as counters in a game which could not well or briskly go on without counters. But men were in danger of overlooking—and did overlook—the fact that this value was artificial, and deluded themselves with the idea that it was natural. They made a fetich of gold—a master, not a servant, of society.
Morton decided to make a radical change in the denominations of the currency. He had often noted the cumbrousness of accounts in English currency, and the labor of making calculations in it, owing to the irregular ratio of the denominations to each other. He conceived that a currency in which the denominations bore a decimal ratio to each other would render calculations in money infinitely easier. Then, too, the English pound was too large for a unit, and the shilling was too small. There was in circulation in European commerce a silver coin called in Dutch and Spanish daler, in English dollar. Its value was somewhat less than that of the English crown or five-shilling piece. This was a convenient size for a unit, and Morton adopted it as such. The tenth of it he called dima, from the Latin decima, and the hundredth part cent, from centum.
Morton thought pieces of paper currency of less than half a dollar would be inconvenient, while, as the monetary transactions of the colony were not large, a five-dollar bill would be the largest needed, with one dollar and two-dollar pieces between the extremes. Before leaving Europe for the last time he had made arrangements to have plates engraved for printing bills of these four denominations. The plates for the backs were engraved in Amsterdam, and those for the faces in Antwerp, as a precaution against a spurious issue. The bills, in numbers as needed, were printed in Mortonia under the supervision of the governor, and signed by him and countersigned by the treasurer.
Until authority was obtained to coin money, English shillings, sixpences, and copper coins were imported and used for change. The two kinds of currency could be used together by counting the penny as two cents, and twenty-four pennies, four sixpences, or two shillings as half a dollar.
Among the importations in the spring of 1611 were several swarms of bees. These multiplied rapidly, and repaid a small amount of labor with a large amount of luxury. Many of the swarms escaped into the woods, and in after years the frontiersmen of Virginia were surprised to find stores of honey in the hollow trees of the forest solitudes.
It was somewhat difficult for ships to ascend the Potomac to Mortonia, although the river had no perceptible current, because, if the wind was not quite favorable, very short tacks had to be made. To remedy this evil Ralph Morton invented a vessel propelled by horse-power. The hull was narrow and the bows were sharp. The lower deck projected several feet beyond the hull on both sides and only about two feet above the water, as it was not expected to encounter large waves. Ten horses hitched to the outer ends of long sweeps supplied the power. The inner ends of the sweeps were attached to a cog-wheel about ten feet in diameter, turning horizontally. This wheel worked in small cog-wheels which turned two shafts attached to a large paddlewheel on each side of the vessel. These small cog-wheels could be put in or out of gear so that one paddle wheel could be stopped while the other was turning, thus facilitating the turning of the vessel. One of these boats would not only run at a rapid rate, but would tow a ship up or down the river against wind and tide at a fair rate.[1]
What gold Ralph Morton needed to pay the expenses of his enterprise was taken out of the mine by his own labor and that of his brothers. To lessen this labor a horse-power was set up outside of the building which enclosed the mouth of the mine. By this power were run drills to cut holes for blasting, winches to raise the rock and metal to the surface, and saws to cut the metal up into pieces small enough to be melted in crucibles. In the quartz contiguous to the mass of gold were pieces of gold so small that Morton did not consider it worth while to extract them, but so large as to be readily discerned. If these pieces were thrown to public view, public discovery of the mine would ensue. So a building was constructed in which to lock the telltale pieces, while the barren pieces of quartz were rolled down into the ravine.
- ↑ I have seen a ferryboat which ran diagonally across the Mississippi, a distance of five miles, driven by the power of two horses in a tread-mill, make good speed against the current. Ten horses on sweeps would furnish six or seven times the power of two horses on a tread-mill, or sufficient to run a large boat against a current of four or five miles an hour at a fair speed.