Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

“What good do mosquitoes do?” Pentaquod asked, whereupon the old man raised his eyes to heaven and replied, “On that first day Scar-chin here told you of how Manitou gave this river everything, and then one thing more, the crab. Well, when that was done He said, ‘Now I will keep men from becoming arrogant,’ and He threw in the mosquito.”

Essential question: What good do mosquitos do?

Captain John Smith, a short, choleric, opinionated little man with a beard and a fiery temper,

John Smith - 5 feet tall

He was twenty-six that winter—difficult, vain, unbearably ambitious. He had, by his account, already survived dangers that would have destroyed an ordinary man: mercenary in the most brutal years of the German wars, heroic defender of Christianity when the Muhammadans invaded Hungary, captured slave immured in a Turkish dungeon, foot-traveler to Muscovy and Madrid.

Winter of 1606

King Henry VII, having wrested his throne from the infamous Richard III, ruled with the blessing of the Pope, to whom he willingly accorded both spiritual and temporal allegiance. After years of disturbance the country was at peace, the great monasteries housed clerics of power, and good Englishmen were content to be good Catholics.

15th century England was Catholic.

in 1489 King Henry announced the formal engagement of his three-year-old son Arthur to the four-year-old Catherine of Spain, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the most Catholic of majesties. This promised union of insignificant England with powerful Spain was a joyous occasion promising many benefits to the smaller island kingdom.

Aligning to Spain by marriage

the Pope had officially proclaimed Henry “Defender of the Faith,”

Henry refuted Martin Luther

Edmund Campion,

Captured by priest hunters and put to death - martyred

the custom arose of referring to the Eastern Shore with capital letters, as if it were a special place; this tribute was never paid the western shore.

The Eastern Shore

the ancient theory of sanctuary, whereby a man running from justice might run so adeptly that ultimately he entered into the place of refuge from which he could not be extracted.

Sanctuary

Within recent years the governor had ordered the hanging of three Quakers

Quakers killed as heretics in Massachusetts .

contumacious

Marigot.

the remnant of a river which had once drained a major portion of an ice-laden continent, a majestic river which in the end had seen itself overcome by the ever-encroaching sea.

The Susquehanna

boy of eight. He stared at the shadowy forms and listened to their distant conversation. As a consequence of this one experience he would become attached to birds, would study all things about them, and in his adult life would paint them and write about them and take the first steps in providing sanctuaries for them,

Audubon

“Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.” Mrs. Paxmore had informed him that this sentence was unusual in that it contained every letter of the alphabet;

The sentence contains every letter in the alphabet.

From Rousseau he derived his passionate love of human freedom and his determination to protect it in both the South and the North.

Irony - slaveholder esteems freedom

Guy Mannering, a local Quentin Durward.

Deuteronomy 23:15: “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee:… thou shalt not oppress him.”

The Bible also says this.

“The patron birds of Ireland,”

Osprey

the sovereign remedy, penicillin, was found in the earth. The Antaeus factor.

Antaeus

descent into Avernus,

Volcanic crater