child, and his uncle Archihau held the regency, the English were gladly welcomed, and established a lasting friendship; and still further up the Potomac, at Piscataway, they had a somewhat similar, though more cautious reception. Here they found a Captain Henry Fleet, who had traded for some time among these Indians for furs, and used his influence over the chief to induce him to go on board the pinnace for an interview with Calvert. The friendliness of his bearing soon banished the suspicions of the chief and his followers, who had gathered on the shore fearing treachery; and the parley was highly successful. The definite question was put by the Governor, whether the chief "would be content that he and his people should set down in his country, in case he should find a place convenient for him;" the werowance gave the cautious but friendly answer that he "would not bid him go, neither would he bid him stay, but that he might use his own discretion."

The Anacos.

This Captain Fleet was familiar with the Potomac and the neighboring country, where he had long carried on a profitable trade in peltries. He had, at one time, been held as a prisoner for several years among the Nacostines or Anacostans, a tribe whose principal viltan Indians. lage was on the site of the present city of Washington, where their name is still preserved in a corrupted form in the island Analostan in the Potomac, and in a little post-office station, Anacostia, near the city limits. His relations with the neighboring Indians at the time of Calvert's arrival were friendly, and he was, at least, in no fear from his old enemies. He was a roving adventurer, sailing to New England, or to Jamestown, or returning to England, wherever a trade in corn or beaver offered the most inducement; but his long imprisonment among the Anacostans had made him most familiar with the resources along almost the whole course of the Potomac. He was not permitted, however, to enjoy the advantages of this trade undisputed. To conceal its source was impossible; others followed him from Jamestown, and he was at length arrested by order of the authorities there for trading without a license. Two years before he had been taken to Jamestown and put upon trial, but the difficulty seems to have been compounded by his admitting others to a share in his ventures, the profits probably being increased by the employment of larger capital.

Fleet was no doubt aware that a charter had been granted to Lord Baltimore, and may have seen something of the excitement caused at Jamestown when the news was received that a Catholic colony would soon be planted in such disagreeable proximity, and in a country which the Virginians believed was rightfully theirs. He either did not share the religious prejudices of the colonists, or was ready for

1634.]

CECIL CALVERT'S COLONY.

495

other reasons to welcome the new-comers. Welcome them, at any rate, he did; became afterward one of their number as a man of some mark and influence, and when finally the colony was established, was a member of its General Assembly.1

Under the guidance of the man thus fortunately met with, the Ark and the pinnace now dropped down the river to the mouth of a stream

flowing into the Potomac, Calvert deciding not to make his first settlement so far from the sea. This stream they named the St. George; one of the "two harbors" formed at its mouth 2 received the name St. Mary's, which has become the modern name of the whole river, though a wooded island near at hand still preserves the older title. Sandy points, doubtless higher then than now, and different in form from those left by the wearing tides of two centuries, marked the entrance through which Fleet guided them toward his favorite village of Yaocomico; but a little way back from the banks, the land rose in gentle undulations, and in the further distance into hills of moderate height.

The river itself was rather a series of broad bays or lakes than a stream of regular width and rapid current. Passing up through several of these, to one which they named "the bay of St. Ignatius," the settlers anchored and prepared to land. At the end of the broad harbor a low promontory extended from the eastern shore, ending in a sandy beach, the present Chancellor's Point; and on this, as we understand Father White's description, the Maryland colonists 1 A narrative of Fleet's voyages to the Potomac was first published in Neill's English Colonization.

2 Concerning the probable condition of these bays and their shores, and their difference from their present form, see the elaborate note K to White's Narrative, p. 107 of Dr. Dalrymple's edition.

3 The name Yaocomico is now given to a village on the Virginia side of the Potomac, nearly opposite St. Mary's River; but this is an entirely modern transfer of the title from the site to which it properly belonged, - the territory of King Yaocomico, on the St. Mary's.

first set foot. Walking on through the woods and along the bank for a mile or more, they came upon a region whose beauty and fitness satisfied them that here was a proper site for their future town. The river-bank was higher here than it was farther down the stream, while behind it, at a distance of about a half mile from the waterfor their side, lay a gently sloping valley, on the further side of which, again, was higher land gradually rising to the inland hills. In this valley springs were then as now abundant; and scattered through it were groves of nut trees and oaks. Here the Indians had

Site chosen

town.

their village; and where it approached the water's edge the bank rose into a bold bluff between two broad expanses of the river, similar to those below. The soil was fertile; the neighboring woods, Father White declares, were free from dangerous animals; the place seemed well-nigh perfect for their purpose.

On the highest part of the bluff stood a mulberry tree, large enough even then to throw a broad shade about it, and to be visible for a long distance up and down the river. For more than two hundred years afterward its mass of foliage still crowned the promontory; and its decayed and blackened trunk, lying where it fell but a few years ago, yet marks the place of its growth, but nearer to the edge of the bank than it was when the settlers first stood around it, for the river has changed and reduced the sandy cape. Under this tree, according to well-authenticated tradition, Leonard Calvert made a treaty with the

The purchase of the

Indians of the village. For a certain payment in cloth, tools, and trinkets the tribe of Yaocomico consented that the strangers should share their town with them through the harvest, and then should purchase all the site, while the easily-contented savages removed their dwelling elsewhere. The fre

Indian village and lands.