Between Two Worlds by Malcolm Gaskill

Author:Malcolm Gaskill [Gaskill, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465080861
Publisher: Basic Books

America personified in an engraving of 1658. Note the old colonial canard of cannibalism, together with depictions of native cruelty—for example, the row of impaled heads. The verse suggests the allure of the wilderness, with America as femme fatale tempting adventurers to their deaths.

Other colonies excited scientifically inclined visitors because of exports that might feed the motherland’s poor. A gentleman made the case for New World potatoes, arguing that Englishmen were happy enough to consume Indian tobacco, which, far from nourishing them, made “many a good Wit sottish and stupid.” England could learn from America, he said, for no nation was so barbarous that it had no good ideas. Another advocate of potatoes liked them mashed with butter; he declared them tasty, nourishing, and “provocative of bodily lust.” Thomas Trapham found chocolate refreshing and good for the kidneys. The ancients, had they known of it, would have made it “serve their Deities in both Capacities of Meat and Drink.”8

Besides explorer and naturalist, Englishmen had two other colonial archetypes in the 1670s: missionary and conqueror. Among the missionaries was the Quaker leader George Fox. His voyage across the Atlantic in 1671 was hot and cramped. The ship leaked and was chased by pirates; passengers had eaten dolphins; he was seasick; and his legs swelled. After Barbados and Jamaica, Fox and his followers braved storms to Virginia, where a drunken Bostonian shipmaster threatened to throw them overboard, unlike the Indian kings, who, Fox thought, “came very loveingly.” They proceeded north into New England on “a tedious Jorney . . . through the woods & rivers & creecks & wildernesses whence it is not knowne that ever any man Rode before.” Hiking by day, aching and drenched in sweat, by night they huddled by campfires, tormented by mosquitoes and terrified by the sound of wild beasts. They met fellow Quakers, English cynics, and Indians, and they held meetings in barns. The owner of some dogs that stopped barking in the travelers’ presence compared them to the children of Israel. After reaching Maryland, they sailed back to England through waves like roaring mountains.9

Quakers also went to Carolina, a territory south of Virginia named for the king. In 1664 colonists from Barbados had been recruited to settle the jutting headland known as Cape Fear. Captain William Hilton, son of New Hampshire’s founder, had explored the region and was impressed by the sweet air and the natives, who he said lacked only the “happy settlement of our English Nation.” Fox was a missionary, Hilton a conqueror. Spotting the canoe of an Indian who had sniped at them, Hilton’s men went ashore, smashed his belongings, and took his food. The chief abased himself, promising that the assailant would be beheaded. Hilton’s commission came from the Lords Proprietor, a group of eight royalists, including Sir William Berkeley, who had been gifted with Carolina for supporting Charles’s restoration. Their proprietary charter, the favored instrument of colonial control after 1660, was modeled on the medieval palatinate of Durham, creating a microcosm of devolved royal power complete with manors and baronies.

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