late August 1609

I fear ambush, although better judgment tells me Juet has gotten under my skin, into my head.  Day after day, and night after night he urges me to set more men on watch, expecting the people of the country to come over the bulwarks.

I see nothing by night, and by day my eyes detect shoals at every turn.  Juet, in the attracting pull of the new continent, has been so thoroughly transformed that I suspect he’s no longer the same man.  Days before, we caught a most extraordinary fish. As Juet struggled to bring the fish in, he spoke of dominating this new people. He’s a new soul, his old soul having been banished back to England by the spirits of these waters.

Cathay, the ship’s cat, knows it.  As captain, I’m resisting it, denying  any distraction.

Bend on more sail, tomorrow I’ll tell the men.  Full speed ahead;  drive us northward and then on to Cathay, ye zephyrs of August.

(Painting: retouched image of Frederic Edwin Church’s Grand Manan Island, Bay of Fundy, 1852)

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late July 1609

Now I have seen the savages.  Ship’s mate Juet calls them that:  savages, uncivilized people of the woods, fierce.  In my journeys now I’ve seen icebears and walrus and maybe mermaids … although reports of these always follow extra grog rations for the crew.  On the docks I’ve seen men like Pernomo—very gentle souls—from the warm Spice Indies.  But now I’ve seen savages. Real ones . . . of the woodlands.  Self-assured, fearless outlandish men in their own camps, sailing and paddling their own waters in vessels of their hands and design.

A few speak French. Francais!  But that makes them no more French than they would be if they spoke English . . . or Dutch.   I’m glad some speak French, for otherwise we’d have no idea what they want; no one of our crew speak their tongue.

What they want is clear–

—trade . . . their beaver pelts and info about gold, silver, and copper to trade for our beads, metal knives and hatchets, and red gowns.  Of this latter, we carried none and had to use force to stop them from climbing our rigging to take our VOC flag.  Juet says we must not trust them and keeps his knife always in his hand.

But Juet trusts no one and never has.  In fact, I know he mistrusts me.

I watch these woodlands men eat from our table, drink our grog.  I’ve shared finfish and shellfish with them and watched their group rules.  I study how they watch us, study us.  I suspect they have their own civilization and language—confound us that no one speaks it!.  Of course, I write that here never to share with Juet, who even now is scheming treacherous business with the savages.

(Painting: retouched image of George Caleb Bingham’s The Storm, 1850)

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early July 1609

Sail away to the west!!   Twice now in the past fortnight our watch has spotted sail.  First on 25th of June a sail we spied and gave chase, thinking only to discover local knowledge from and compare position plotting with this vessel.  For whatever reason, they sped away and were more expeditious than we.

This morning as dawn broke we saw three vessels a few leagues to west southwest and two other to the south.  At first I suspected they might be Basque, but through the glass, we see by the vessels’ design, they likely are French.  The bottom when we sounded was at 30 fathoms;  these must be the Grand Banks.  Previously when we sounded, we found no bottom.  The men wanted to strike sail for a few hours and fish;  they are happier now that they’ve eaten fat fresh bacalao from the famed Banks.  The fish was so agreeable to Cathay, our fine ship’s feline,  that she’s purring, curled up on the capstan, happy we’ve left the cold, wet storms, ecstatic we’re no longer plumbing the icy NorthEast Passage.

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