Before Chief Miner Albrecht departed London with the miners from Siegen, Graffenried took his leave of them for his home in Switzerland. His troubles were not over yet. Out of fear that his American creditors would have agents (one of whom was in London) at the major ports, Graffenried planned on using one of the lesser traveled routes to cross the channel.
He arranged to travel under an assumed name. To make it more difficult to identify him, he did not carry his own passport. He boarded a ship in London but the captain let him off before the English customs inspection so Graffenried could go around the inspector by other ways, but the customs inspectors wanted to go through his chest which was still on the ship. So the captain sent a boy to tell Graffenried that he would have to open his chest. It worried Graffenried to do this but he put a good face on it and spoke French to the inspector. He gave the inspector a half sovereign and asked the inspector not to disturb the coats which were nicely folded. Fortunately, Graffenried says, this worked for had the inspector examined the contents in detail, he, Graffenried, would have been discovered. At one point in the story, he says he had contraband in the chest.
Crossing the English channel was a worse trip than crossing the ocean. Sailing delays meant an extended stay on shore and Graffenried was short of money for food and lodging. The French inspectors held Graffenried up because he had no passport. He showed them documents to prove that he was Swiss. At that time the Swiss and French were in an alliance and travel between the nations was allowed freely. So he was allowed to go on. He was stopped at other points but managed to talk his way around the obstacles. Eventually, he reached Bern on St. Martin's Day in 1714.
Graffenried's reception by his friends was cold. He had been hoping to find help to restore his ruined colony. But the Society left him in the lurch and he was forced to abandon the colony. At the time he was writing, he says conditions in North Carolina had improved tremendously and he grieves that he and the Society were not a part of it.
On reflecting upon the whole American adventure, he regretted that he had been detoured to North Carolina. It would have been better to concentrate on the colony in Virginia from the start. One of his reasons was that the government in Virginia was in much stronger hands than the government in North Carolina. And he said that the land in Virginia was in no way inferior to the land in Carolina.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.