Aristopia/Chapter 12
With ten good ships bringing over immigrants who, as the passage was free, were readily obtained by Ralph Morton's active agents, it may be readily seen that the forty square miles or less of Morton's grant would in a very few years overflow with inhabitants, most of whom must be agriculturists. The land between Rock Creek and the Eastern Branch is mostly level and arable, but above Rock Creek much of the surface is hilly and stony. Morton intended to obtain from King James a charter to a considerable territory, buying out the Virginia Company's claim, but was waiting for a favorable time. While waiting, events entirely changed the direction in which he intended to acquire territory.
Learning from a Massawomek whom the whites had taken prisoner while he, with a war party, was on a raid against the Nacotchtanks, that beyond the mountains to the west was a fair country with a very large, deep river flowing for an unknown distance westward, Ralph Morton determined to learn something about the region and the river. In the latter part of the summer of 1614 Henry Morton was sent with an exploring party to find the great river.
In about two months he returned and reported that he had followed up the Potomac to where it forked, the main branch coming from the south.
Following up this main branch for a day's march, and finding that it still led him southward, and that as far as he could see from a high hill the valley trended southward, he returned to the forks of the river and followed the northern fork almost to its source. Then striking westward, he passed over a high plateau. The river valley had made for the party a gateway through the loftiest ranges of mountains. He crossed three streams, of considerable size but not navigable, flowing northward, with ranges of high hills between them. At last he came to the great river. It was several hundred yards wide, and deep enough for large vessels. It flowed towards the southwest. From what he could gather from the Indians (he had picked up considerable of the language of the Massawomeks) the name of the river was Ohio. He had seen a good deal of fine agricultural country, but more that was hilly or mountainous.
From this account, Ralph Morton determined to explore the great river himself. In the latter part of March, 1615, Henry Morton was again sent out with a party, including some boat-builders. They took a number of pack-mules loaded with provisions and tools. Henry Morton was instructed to build on the banks of the Ohio a strong log-house as a defense against Indians, saw lumber, and build two flat boats.
About a month after Henry's departure, Ralph set out with another party, following the well-marked trail of the first party after leaving the Potomac. Arriving at the Ohio, Ralph found the house built and the boats nearing completion. When the boats were finished, he selected a party of twelve men, and embarked, taking along three pack-mules, and leaving several men at the block-house commanded by Henry Morton.
The little party descended the great river with the current, using their oars only to keep in the current. They kept to the river every night, except when it was foggy, taking turns on the watch. They landed, when practicable, on islands, to cook their meals, allow the mules to graze, and gather some grass for them. Some bales of husks had been brought along for fodder. For the food of the men they had a supply of corn-meal and sea-biscuit, using the meal first, and saving the biscuit for their land journey. They managed to kill a fair supply of game, which they found very tame in these green solitudes.
Ralph Morton had with him instruments for taking observations, and had sufficient skill in mathematics to determine latitude and longitude. The latitude and longitude of principal points and of the mouths of all large tributaries of the Ohio were determined.
Floating thus down the smooth current along a broad and beautiful valley for two weeks, the party came to where the clear waters of the Ohio flowed out into a mighty stream whose waters were turbid with yellow mud. It was not so broad as the Potomac in its lower course, but the strong current told that the volume of water was vastly greater than that of the Potomac. Morton had no doubt that this vast river was the Mesashapi (which he afterwards spelled Misisipi) which De Soto had explored, and beneath whose waters he had been laid seventy-three years before. The account of the expedition of De Soto had thrilled Ralph when, as a schoolboy, he had first read it in learning Spanish.
Morton thought it not best to descend the Misisipi. The land at the junction of the two rivers was too swampy for a landing, so the party pulled the boats up the Misisipi till they found high grounds on the eastern bank, where they disembarked. The boats were sunk in the mouth of a small creek to preserve them for possible further need. Then the pack-mules were loaded and the party set out by land due northward.
For a day or two they traveled through a rolling: region with considerable timber. Then they came out upon vast, grassy, treeless plains the like of which they had never seen nor heard of. The party traveled northward about a hundred and fifty miles, and then turned eastward. Traveling about eighty miles, they came to a considerable river flowing-southward. From its position Morton judged it to be one whose mouth he had noted while descending the Ohio—the Wabash. The valley of this river was considerably timbered. Some distance eastward of this river they entered a forest region again.
On this journey they saw immense herds of bison or buffalo—a constant wonder to them. They killed as many of the beasts as they wished. They met a few parties of Indians, but with such tact did Morton treat them—a mingled firmness and friendliness, and an overawing air of superiority—that not once did the savages venture to attack them. Some light tents were brought along on the pack-mules, constructed of thin cloth made waterproof, for shelter on rainy nights. Such careful provision had been made that for these strong and hardy men the journey presented hardly a discomfort.
When the party had proceeded eastward until Morton, from his observations, deemed they were not far west of their station on the Ohio, they turned southward until they struck the river. Ascending it, they soon saw, as they came around a bend, the red-cross flag floating over the block-house on the opposite shore far up the river. It was a sight which made the blood dance in their veins and their hats go up with huzzas. It was like getting home again. Arriving opposite the house, the party was soon discovered by their comrades at the station, and a small boat was sent to ferry them across. It took several trips to bring them over. The mules swam with their heads supported in the boat.
Ralph Morton found that the party at the house had been carefully managed in his absence. No collisions with the Indians had occurred, and a considerable quantity of furs had been collected by trade. Loading these furs on the animals, several of which had been left at the station, the tools were left in the house, which was locked up and then abandoned; and the united party, about twenty-five strong, set out for Mortonia, which they reached without the loss of a man in the whole expedition.
From the time Henry Morton returned from his first expedition beyond the mountains, the governor began to change his plans as to the territory he should acquire by charter, and his determination was fixed by what he saw on his long journey. At first he intended to obtain a charter for the territory bounded on the east by the Chesapeake Bay, on the north by the fortieth parallel, and on the south and west by the Potomac. But he reflected that this region was too much exposed to observation from England. He wished to make radical changes in government, and needed a degree of independence he could not have under the eye of king and parliament and exposed to their interference. He thought it quite probable that some time he might have to make forcible resistance to royal or parliamentary interference, and he did not wish for his theater a region exposed to the broadsides of the royal navy. He determined at last that the bulk of his new nation should lie beyond the mountains, where he could veil his operations from the jealous powers of England. One port he wanted, accessible from the ocean. Mortonia was just the place. The water was deep enough, but the channel so narrow that batteries on the shore could defend the place against a navy. He would acquire a narrow belt of land along the Potomac from Mortonia to the river's source, which would afford a pathway from the port to his transmontane realm. There was something in the idea of establishing this empire in the heart of the great virgin continent which appealed so strongly to the ardent imagination of Ralph Morton that he did not want to spend his life waiting for the peopling of the Atlantic coast before seeing the tide of empire pouring over the mountains and down the great river of the interior.