Transcriber's Notes

The following changes have been made to the text as printed:

  1. Marked footnotes have been located immediately below the stanza, heading or paragraph to which they refer.
  2. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
  3. [Page 161] (Canto 8), heading to final stanza: "LXII" changed to "LXXII".
  4. Notes, [Page 185] (Canto 2): word "STANZA" prepended to heading "XXVIII".
  5. Notes, [Page 186] (Canto 2): heading "STANZA XXXVII" corrected to "STANZA XXXVIII".
  6. Notes, [Page 201] (Canto 5, Stanza 11, second note): reference to "stanza xxii" corrected to "stanza xxxiii".
  7. Notes, [Page 202] (Canto 5): heading "STANZA LXII" corrected to "STANZA LXIII".

The following anomalies in the printed text are noted, but no change has been made:

  1. Spelling and hyphenation within the poem have been left unchanged, aside from obvious typographical errors.
  2. Some compass directions are hyphenated within the poem, but unhyphenated in the Notes.
  3. Within the Notes, the quotes from Williams' writings retain the archaic and sometimes variable spelling of his day.
  4. Variant spellings of Native American names have not been amended.
  5. [Page 158] (Canto 8, Stanza 63), "And in all perils was there sure defence": "there" in the original is a possible reading; "their" a more likely one.
  6. "Calendar" ([Page 188]), "Callender" ([Page 196]) and "Calender" ([Page 203]) all appear to refer to John Callender, who wrote "An Historical Discourse ... of the Colony of Rhode-Island", first published 1739.