Potomac Landings

Primitive Nature?Birds, Beasts, and Fish?Indian Problems?Father White?Margaret Brent. CLOSE upon the explorers came the settlers. The first white colonization on the Potomac was made in 1634 on the arrival of Leonard Calvert and his company in two ships, the Ark and the Dove, sent from England by his brother, Cecelius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to settle on the north shore of the river, on lands for which he had a royal grant from Xing Charles I. During the interval of twenty-six years between the appearance of the first known white explorer and the first white colonist, the Indians remained in undisputed possession of their lands. If along the shores there were fishermen's huts or trappers' cabins the old chronicles do not report them. Production seems to have been left to the Indian, and the white engaged himself wholly in shipping and trade until the arrival of Lord Baltimore's adventurers. The waters were probably undisturbed by boats larger than the barks and shallops of the traders who tacked from creek to creek gathering corn and furs and returning to the lower bay to transfer their light cargoes to larger freighting ships which crossed the Atlantic. When the Ark of three hundred tons and the Dove of five hundred tons appeared in the river the natives were terrorized and flew to arms. On seeing the larger ship the scouts reported that the whites had come "in a canow as bigg as an Hand, with so many men as trees were in a wood." In spite of the limited siz...