FOOTNOTES
[1] Bradford, pp. 235-6.
[2] A Captain Wolliston is mentioned by Smith (Description of New England, III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 136) as the lieutenant of “one Captain Barra, an English pirate, in a small ship, with some twelve pieces of ordnance, about thirty men and near all starved,” whom Smith encountered in 1615, while a captive in the hands of the French freebooters. Though it has found a place in biographical dictionaries on account of two eminent men of one family from Staffordshire who bore it, the name of Wollaston is rarely met with. It is not found, for instance, in the present directories of either Boston or New York, and but twice in that of Philadelphia. It has been given to islands in both the Arctic and the Antarctic oceans, but the family to which it belonged seems to have originated in an inland English county. (Lower’s Patronymica Britannica). The Captain, or Lieutenant, Wolliston, therefore, whom Smith fell in with in 1615 may have been, and probably was, the same who ten years later gave his name to the hill on Quincy Bay. It is not likely that two Captain Wollastons were sea-adventurers at the same time. That it actually was the same man is, however, matter of pure surmise.
[3] Bradford, p. 154.
[4] Infra, [*44], [*124-127], [*138].
[5] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321.
[6] N. E. Memorial, p. 160.
[7] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 323.
[8] Infra, [*13], [*71], [343], note.
[9] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 401, n.
[10] Bradford, p. 236.
[11] Infra, [*17], [130], note 2, [*59].
[12] Bradford, p. 118.
[13] Bradford, p. 120.
[14] Young’s Chron. of Pl., p. 299.
[16] Infra, [*113-118].
[17] Palfrey, vol. i. p 397.
[18] Lowell Inst. Lectures of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1869, p. 147. Samuel Maverick, however, writing to Lord Clarendon in the year 1661, asserts that Morton had a patent. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1869, p. 40.
[19] Palfrey (vol. i. p. 222) speaks of it as “a bluff.” This is an error. The slope from where Morton’s house stood to the water is very gradual.
[20] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 395.
[22] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 305.
[23] This View of Mount Wollaston is taken from Rev. Dr. William P. Lunt’s Two Discourses on Occasion of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Gathering of the First Congregational Church, Quincy, (p. 37). It represents the place very accurately as it appeared in 1840, and as it is supposed to have appeared from the time of the first settlement until recently. The single tree was a lofty red-cedar, which must have been there when Wollaston landed, as it was a large tree of a long-lived species, and died from age about 1850. The trunk is still (1882) standing; and, though all the bark has dropped off, it measures some 66 inches in circumference. The central part of the above cut, including the tree, has been adopted as a seal for the town of Quincy, with the motto “Manet.”
[27] Bradford, pp. 236-7.
[30] Morton uniformly speaks of the place as Ma-re-Mount, and John Adams on this point commented in his notes as follows:—“The Fathers of Plymouth, Dorchester, Charlestown, &c., I suppose would not allow the name to be Ma-re-Mount, but insisted upon calling it Merry-Mount, for the same reason that the common people in England will not call gentlemen’s ornamental grounds gardens, but insist upon calling them pleasure-grounds, i. e., to excite envy and make them unpopular.”
Ma-re-Mount, however, was a characteristic bit of Latin punning on Morton’s part, designed to tease his more austere neighbors. He himself says (Infra, [*132]): “The inhabitants of Passonagessit, having translated the name of their habitation from that ancient salvage name to Ma-re-Mount ... the precise seperatists that lived at New Plimmouth stood at defiance with the place threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount.” (Infra, [*134].) In view of the situation of the place, Ma-re-Mount was a very appropriate name, but it may well be questioned whether it was ever so called by any human being besides Morton, or by him except in print. Bradford calls it Merie-mounte. (p. 237.) The expression used by Morton, that they “translated the name” from Passonagessit to Ma-re-Mount, would naturally suggest that the Indian name might find its equivalent in the Latin one, and mean simply “a hill by the sea.” On this point, however, J. Hammond Trumbull writes: “Morton’s ‘Passonagessit’ has been a puzzle to me every time it has caught my eye since I first marked it twenty years ago or more with double (??). Morton, as he shows in chap. ii. of book I., could not write the most simple Indian word without a blunder. What may have been the name he makes ‘Passonagessit’ we cannot guess, unless it survives in some early record. There is no trace of ‘sea,’ or ‘water,’ or ‘mount’ in it. If it stands for Pasco-naig-és-it, it means ‘at [31] Bradford, p. 253. [32] Whitney’s Hist. of Quincy, p. 18. [34] Josselyn says of the “Indesses,” as he calls them, “All of them are of a modest demeanor, considering their savage breeding; and indeed do shame our English rusticks whose rudeness in many things exceedeth theirs.” (Two Voyages, pp. 12, 45.) When the Massachusets Indian women, in September, 1621, sold the furs from their backs to the first party of explorers from Plymouth, Winslow, who wrote the account of that expedition, says that they “tied boughs about them, but with great shamefacedness, for indeed they are more modest than some of our English women are.” (Mourt, p. 59.) See also, to the same effect, Wood’s Prospect, (p. 82.) It suggests, indeed, a curious inquiry as to what were the customs among the ruder classes of the British females during the Elizabethan period, when all the writers agree in speaking of the Indian women in this way. Roger Williams, for instance, referring to their clothing, says: “Both men and women within doores, leave off their beasts skin, or English cloth, and so (excepting their little apron) are wholly naked; yet but few of the women but will keepe their skin or cloth (though loose) neare to them, ready to gather it up about them. Custome hath used their minds and bodies to it, and in such a freedom from any wantonnesse that I have never seen that wantonnesse amongst them as, (with griefe) I have heard of in Europe.” (Key, pp. 110-11.) And he adds, “More particular: “Many thousand proper Men and Women, I have seen met in one place: Almost all naked, yet not one Thought want of clothes disgrace.” In Parkman’s Jesuits in North America (ch. iv.) there is a very graphic account of the missionary Le Jeune’s experience among the Algonquins, in which he describes the interior of the wigwam on a winter’s evening. “Heated to suffocation, the sorcerer, in the closest possible approach to nudity, lay on his back, with his right knee planted upright and his left leg crossed on it, discoursing volubly to the company, who, on their part, listened in postures scarcely less remote from decency.” Le Jeune says, “Les filles et les jeunes femmes sont à l’exterieur tres honnestement couvertes, mais entre elles leurs discours sont puants, comme des cloaques;” and Parkman adds, “The social manners of remote tribes of the present time correspond perfectly with Le Jeune’s account of those of the Montagnais.” See also Voyages of Champlain, Prince Soc., vol. iii. pp. 168-70. [35] Parkman says that “chastity in women was recognized as a virtue by many tribes.” (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxiv.) Of the New England Indians Williams remarks,—“Single fornications they count no sin, but after marriage then they count it heinous for either of them to be false.” (Key, p. 138.) Judging by an incident mentioned by Morton, however, adultery does not seem to have been looked upon as a very grave offense among the Indians of the vicinity in which he lived. (Infra, [*32].) On the general subject of morality among young Indian women, especially in the vicinity of trading-posts, see Parkman’s Jesuits in North America (pp. xxxiv, xlii) and the letter from Father Carheil to the Intendant Champigny, in The Old Régime in Canada (p. 427). [37] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 62. [38] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 478. [39] Hazlitt’s Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, p. 121. See also on this subject, Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, p. 352. [41] Bradford, p. 237. [42] Bradford, p. 238. [43] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi, p. 70. See also note 202 in Trumbull’s ed. of Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, p. 117. [44] Bradford, p. 240. [47] Bradford, p. 204. [48] Ib. p. 233. [50] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 83. [53] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii, pp. 63, 64. [54] Bradford, p. 241. [55] XII. Coke, p. 75. [56] Hist. of England (Edition of Harper Bros.) vol. iv. p. 280. [57] Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. i. p. 283. See also a paper on “Royal Proclamations,” in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature (ed. 1863), vol. iii., p. 371. [58] Bradford, p. 241-2. [60] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. pp. 63-4. [63] The letters in full are in Bradford’s Letter-Book, III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. pp. 62-4. [64] The names of neither Maverick nor Walford appear in this list, though in his history Bradford especially mentions Winnisimmet (p. 241) as one of the places the settlers at which contributed to the charge. They may, as Savage suggests, (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *43 n.) have been included with Blackstone, though, considering what Maverick’s means were, this does not seem probable. Edward Hilton lived at Dover, eight miles above Piscataqua. (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 315. Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1875-6, pp. 362-8.) Mr. Deane suggests that Little Harbor, the place formerly occupied by Thomson, was meant by Piscataqua. (Ib., 368.) The locality of Bursley and Jeffreys greatly confused the authorities for a time, but it no longer seems open to question. (Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1878, p. 198.) [65] Hazard, vol. i. p. 243. [66] Bradford, p. 238; Infra, [*134]. Dagon was the sea-god of the Philistines, upon the occasion of whose feast, at Gaza, Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple. Judges, xvi. [67] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 79. [68] Oldham’s “vast conceits of extraordinary gain of three for one” afterwards caused “no small distraction” to the sober-minded governor and assistants of the Massachusetts Company. Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 147. [69] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 80. [70] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 171; Hutchinson, vol. i. p. 6. [71] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 147. [72] Bradford, p. 243. [75] XII. Coke, p. 76. [76] Campbell’s Chief Justices, vol. ii. p. 42. [77] Campbell’s Lord Chancellors, vol. iii. p. 256. [78] Bradford, p. 237. [79] Bradford, p. 250. [81] Bradford, p. 252. [82] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 63. [83] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 145. [85] Hazard, vol. i. p. 252. [86] Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 96, 148. [88] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *57. [91] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 311. [92] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30. [93] Records, vol. i. p. 74. [95] Records, vol i. p. 75. [97] Coll. of N. Y. Hist. Soc. (1869), p. 42. [99] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1860-2, p. 133. [100] Bradford, p. 253. [101] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *57. [102] Morton says (Infra, [*163]) “the Snare must now be used; this instrument must not be brought by Iosua [Winthrop] in vaine.” [103] Mass. Hist. Soc., Lowell Inst. Lectures (1869), p. 377. [104] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 250. [105] Bradford, p. 253. [106] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 336. [107] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *102. [108] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 391. [109] Bradford, pp. 251-2. [110] Clarendon’s Rebellion, B. III. § 27; B. VI. § 404. [111] Winthrop. vol. i. p. *100. Downing sent a detailed account of the hearing, now lost, to Winthrop; see Hutchinson, vol. ii. p. 2. [112] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 33, n. [113] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 392. [114] Bradford, p. 297. [115] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *190. [116] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 338. [117] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 80. [118] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 338. The reference here, as at some other places, is to Deane’s chapter on “The Charter of King Charles I.” As a rule, in works of this description, dealing with the sources of history, it is not permissible to refer to contemporaneous authorities. Mr. Deane, however, so far as New England history is concerned, may fairly be made an exception to this rule. His knowledge is so exhaustive and his accuracy so great that a reference to him I consider just as good and as permissible as a reference to the original authorities. [119] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *56, n. [120] Palfrey, vol. i. pp. 391-3. [121] Briefe Narration, III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 82. Hazard, vol. i. p. 390-4. [122] Proc. of Amer. Antiq. Soc., 1867, p. 124. Winthrop, vol. ii. p. 233. Hazard, vol. i. p. 347. [123] Hazard, vol. i. p. 347. [124] William Jeffreys was one of the Robert Gorges Company. He had contributed to the cost of arresting Morton in 1628 and sending him to England. Morton, in writing to him, could not but have been aware of this; but not improbably, during the time of his return to Mount Wollaston in 1630, he had seen more of Jeffreys, and found that he too, like the rest of the “old planters,” looked on the Massachusetts Company with jealousy and apprehension. At that time, indeed, Jeffreys was in active correspondence with Gorges, and outspoken in his complaints. (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 3.) Hence the familiarity of the address. It is apparent from the letter, however, that Morton, when he wrote it, was so sure of his position and so elated with a sense of his own importance that he could not contain himself. He could not resist the desire to let his old acquaintances in America know what an important personage he had become, and he probably hoped they would show the letter to Winthrop and every one else. It was a childish outbreak of delight and vanity. [125] There is some confusion about these dates. The letter itself is dated the 1st of May, and the commission is here said on that day to have passed the great seal. The commissioners may have designated Gorges as governor-general at this time, and ordered a commission as such to be at once made out to him; but a year later the King’s intention of appointing him was formally announced. (Proc. of Amer. Antiq. Soc., 1867, p. 120.) The probability is that the business relating to the colonies was regarded as of little moment and done in the most careless and irregular way, hardly a record even of it being kept. Some proceedings were thus begun and not carried out, and other things were done twice. [126] Morton is here quoting from the New Canaan, (p. *188) and its very last page. It would seem, therefore, now to have been written, though it was not published until three years later. (See Infra, pp. [78-9].) [128] This letter is in Hubbard, pp. 428-30 (II. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi.), and in Winthrop, vol. ii. pp. *190-1. The readings do not materially differ, but the punctuation has been corrected and the spelling is modern. [129] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 379, n. [130] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *137. [131] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *143. [132] Ib., vol i. p. *102. [133] Autobiography of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, vol. ii. p. 118. [134] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *172. [136] Bradford, pp. 329-30. [137] Supra, p. [66]. Winthrop, vol. i. p. *157. [138] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 401 n. Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 341. [139] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *161, *187. [140] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 403. Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 343. [141] In January, 1640, Richard Vines wrote to Governor Winthrop, of Sir Ferdinando, that he was then “nere 80 yeares ould.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 342.) This can hardly be correct, however, as subsequently he served on the royal side in the civil wars, and was among the prisoners taken by Fairfax when he stormed Bristol in September, 1645. (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 342.) He must, however, have then been a very old man, as fifty-four years before, in 1591, he had distinguished himself at the siege of Rouen, in Essex’s English contingent. (Devereux’s Earls of Essex, vol. i. p. 271). [143] See further on this subject, Winthrop, vol. i. pp. *161, *187; which is also referred to in the same work, vol. ii. p. *12. [144] Hazard, vol. i. p. 400. [145] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 127. [146] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *231. [147] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 330. [151] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *137. [152] Bradford, p. 254. [153] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 81. [154] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *12. [155] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 331. [156] Hazard, vol. i. p. 474. [157] Hutchinson’s State Papers, p. 106. [158] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *264. [159] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *266. [160] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *269. [161] Ib., p. *298. [162] Bradford, p. 375. [163] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 175. [165] See Mr. Deane’s note on the “Plough patent,” in IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. pp. 88-96. Also the note on Cleaves, Ib. p. 363. D’Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii. p. 488) gives a singular anecdote of Rigby. [166] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 343. [167] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 148. [168] Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 147, n. [169] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *189. [171] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *298. [172] N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1869, p. 40. [173] Records, vol. ii. p. 90. [174] Hist. of New England, vol. ii. p. 225. [176] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *192. [177] New York Hist. Soc. Coll., 1869, p. 40. [178] “It is undeniable that Morton became an object of aversion largely for the reason that he used the Prayer Book.” (Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 83.) [179] White’s Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church, p. xxii. n. See also Oliver’s Puritan Commonwealth, pp. 37-9. [180] Infra, [*138]. See, also, [*50], [332], note 2. [181] Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 89. [182] Wonder-Working Providence, p. 30. [183] “Such a rake as Morton, such an addle-headed fellow as he represents himself to be, could not be cordial with the first people from Leyden, or with those who came over with the patent, from London or the West of England. I can hardly conceive that his being a Churchman, or reading his prayers from a Book of Common Prayer, could be any great offence. His fun, his songs and his revels were provoking enough, no doubt. But his commerce with the Indians in arms and ammunition, and his instructions to those savages in the use of them, were serious and dangerous offences, which struck at the lives of the new-comers, and threatened the utter extirpation of all the plantations.” (Notes of John Adams, 1802.) [184] Infra, [249-52], and note. [186] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *14. [187] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *166. [188] See Deane’s note to Bradford, p. 254. [189] Harvard Univ. Library Bulletin, No. 10, p. 244. [191] Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 94, n. [192] Mr. DeCosta says that the titlepage of the copy in the Library of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel reads in this way. Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 94, n. 4. [193] This copy was in the Adams Library for many years, and until within a quite recent period. It cannot, however, now (1882) be found. It would appear to have been stolen, together with many other volumes and almost innumerable autographs, which formerly lent a peculiar value to the John Adams Collection, given by him in 1822 to the town of Quincy. [194] “Mint and cumin” uniformly appears as “muit and cummin;” “humming-bird” as “hunning-bird.” [195] Ante, pp. 61-3. [196] In regard to the Board of Lords Commissioners of 1634, see supra, [57-60]. The royal letter patent in the original Latin is in Hazard, vol. i. pp. 344-7. There are translations of it in Hubbard (pp. 264-8) and in Bradford (pp. 456-8), together with notes by Harris in his edition of the former, and by Deane in the latter. [197] [seth.] Wherever in this edition an apparently obvious misprint in the text of 1637 has been, as in the present case, corrected, the misprinted word, as it appears in the original, is printed between brackets as a foot-note. [198] In regard to Sir Christopher Gardiner, see infra, [*182-4] and note. [199] [Connick.] See supra, [111], note 1. [200] [stife.] [201] [muit.] [202] The Isle of Sall appears on the map in the Geography of Peter Heylyn, London, 1674, as one of the Cape Verde Islands. It is called in the text Insula Salis, and on other old maps Isle of Sal, or Ilha do Sal. There are some ten islands in the group. Professor J. D. Whitney writes that several islands are known by the name of Sall, and that the one referred to by Morton is probably that off the north shore of Cuba. “A good deal has been written about the poisonous fishes of the waters about the island of Cuba. The disease produced by eating poisonous fish is called ciguatera, and the fish itself is said to be ciguato. All that is definitely known about the matter seems to be that quite a large number of species of fish in that region are believed to be liable to some disease, the nature and course of which is unknown; and that those who eat the fish thus diseased are themselves liable to be attacked by the malady called ciguatera.” [203] Morton here apparently refers at second hand to Aristotle’s resumé of the ancient belief of five zones, two only of which were habitable. Meteorologica, B. II. ch. v. § 11. [204] From this passage it would appear that the Isle of Sall and the tropical waters, which Morton in this chapter refers to as having been visited by him, were in the neighborhood of the Western and Cape Verde Islands. In his time the word tornado had probably not been adopted into the English language, and in writing it Morton gives to the letter d the peculiar Western Island or Portuguese pronunciation. [205] Morton here confounds Davis with Hudson. Davis’s three voyages were made in 1585-6-7, and it was in the first of them that he discovered the straits which bear his name. He afterwards made five voyages to the East Indies, in the last of which he was killed in a fight with some Japanese on the coast of Malacca. Hudson made four voyages between 1607 and 1610, during the last of which he passed a winter, frozen in, near the entrance to Hudson Bay. His crew mutinied, and turned him adrift in an open boat, on the 22d of July, 1610. He was never heard of again; and it is his “fate,” probably, which Morton had in mind. No other noted discoverer of the Northwest Passage was lost prior to 1634. The discovery of that passage, however, then excited as active an interest as it has since, or does now. In 1632 Edward Howes sent out to Governor Winthrop a printed “Treatise of the North-West Passage” (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 480) which is still in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. [206] The phrase in the Meteorologica (ubi supra, [117], note 1.) is, “the parts under the Bear (i.e., north) by cold are uninhabitable.” Impiger extremos curris mercator ad Indos, Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes. Horace, Epist. I. ll. 45-6. [208] “18. Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. “19. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?” Ecclesiastes, ch. ii. vers. 18, 19. [209] Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Ashton Phillips in Somerset, has already been frequently referred to in the introductory portions of this volume. Of an old West Country family and pure English descent, he was born about the year 1560 (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 329). He early devoted himself to a military and naval life, and in 1591 served under Essex at the siege of Rouen. Subsequently he is said to have been wounded, either at Amiens, or during the siege of Paris by Henry IV. In consequence of his services he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth royal governor of Plymouth, and in 1597 was designated as one of the staff of Essex in the Ferrol expedition, with the title of Sergeant-Major. In 1601 he was concerned in Essex’s insurrection, and was one of the principal witnesses against the Earl at his trial. After a considerable period of imprisonment he was released, and, on the accession of James I., was reappointed governor of Plymouth. In 1605 he became interested in American discovery and colonization, and in 1607 he was one of the projectors of the Popham colony in Maine. During the next thirteen years he was engaged in fishing and trading ventures to New England, and indefatigable in collecting information as to America. (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 79.) In 1620 he procured from James I. the great patent of the Council for New England. In 1623 he sent out the Robert Gorges expedition which settled itself at Wessagusset. (Supra, [2-4].) His subsequent connection with Morton, and his intrigues against the Massachusetts colony and charter, have been sufficiently referred to in this volume. During the Civil War Gorges espoused the royal side, and was made a prisoner when Fairfax captured Bristol in August 1645. He died probably about the 10th of May 1647, as he was buried on the 14th of that month. In regard to Gorges, see Belknap’s American Biography; Folsom’s Catalogue of Original Documents in the English Archives relating to the Early History of the State of Maine; Williamson’s Maine; Palfrey’s New England (vol. i.); Poole’s Introduction to Johnson’s Wonder Working Providence; Devereux’s Earls of Essex (vol. i.); and the Briefe Narration (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 44), and Gorges’s own letters, to Winthrop and others, in the Winthrop Papers. (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii.) [210] That is, in 1634. See supra, [78]. [211] These are the Inner Harbor (Boston), so called, and Dorchester, Quincy, and Weymouth bays. The latter includes all the inlets south and west of Nut and Pettuck’s islands and Hull, among which is Hingham Bay. [212] “Sleetch, n. The thick mud or slush lying at the bottom of rivers.” Webster. [213] [iland.] See supra, [111], note 1. [215] In the letter already quoted from (Supra, [14]), Mr. J. H. Trumbull remarked that “Morton, as he shows in chap. ii. of book I., could not write the most simple Indian word without a blunder.” As respects the words which Morton believed to be Indian-Greek, Mr. Trumbull has further kindly furnished the following notes: “En animia—Wunanumau, as Eliot wrote it, signifies ‘he is well disposed, or well minded toward another,’ or ‘is pleased with’ him. There is another word, nearly related, which Morton may have had in mind, meaning ‘to help,’ ‘do a favor to,’—aninumeh, ‘help me’ (Eliot), anúnime (R. Williams).” [216] “Paskanontam (Eliot), ‘he suffers from hunger,’ ‘is starving.’ In Eliot’s orthography, paskuppoo would signify ‘he eats hungrily,’ or ‘as if starving,’ and from this comes the verbal Paskup-wen or Paskuppoo-en ‘a starving eater’—Morton’s ‘greedy gut.’” [217] “Eliot’s paskanontam, as above, which is well enough translated by ‘halfe starved.’” [218] “I can make nothing of these words. They certainly do not mean ‘set it upright.’” [219] “An island is munnoh (Eliot).” [220] “Here Morton mistook the word. Cos is, probably, Koüs (Eliot), ‘sharp-pointed,’ or, from the same root, mukqs, (Eliot), mucks (R. Williams), ‘an awl,’ used for boring wampum, beads, &c.; cau-ompsk (R. Williams) was ‘a whetstone,’ i. e., a sharpening stone.” [221] “Om (aum, Eliot), is fish-hook; aumau-i, ‘he is fishing’ (with hook and line,) R. Williams; whence omaën, (Eliot) ‘a fisherman.’” [222] “Probably misprinted for Pantucket—the equivalent of Pautucket, meaning ‘at the fall’ of the river. (The n was not distinctly sounded, but represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel.)” [223] “Mattapan means ‘sitting down’—or ‘a setting down’—and usually designates the end of a ‘carry’ or portage, where the canoes were put in water again.” [224] Winslow, in his Relations, says of the Indians: “The people are very ingenious and observative; they keep account of time by the moon, and winters or summers; they know divers of the stars by name; in particular they know the north star, and call it maske, which is to say, the bear.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 365-6.) See also to the same effect, Roger Williams’s Key (Publications of the Narragansett Club, vol. i.) and Mr. Trumbull’s note (p. 105). Mr. Trumbull now further adds: “The name (maske) was given to Ursa Major or Charles’s Wain, not to the North Star; and by nearly all Algonkin tribes. An interesting note on this point can be found in Hopkins’s Hist. Memorials of the Housatonic Indians (p. 11), and another in Dawson’s Acadian Geology (2d ed. p. 675), showing that the Micmacs still know that constellation as Mooin, ‘the bear.’” [225] Roger Williams, in the preface to his Key (p. 23), says: “Wise and judicious men, with whom I have discoursed, maintain their [the Indians] original to be northward from Tartaria.” The Asiatic origin of the North American Indians was a necessary part of the scriptural dogma of the origin and descent of man. It is safe, however, to assert that, first and last, every possible theory on this subject has been carefully elaborated. It is not necessary, in connection with the New Canaan, to enter into the discussion, as the views of those, from St. Gregory to Voltaire, who have taken part in it, have been laboriously collected by Drake in his Book of Indians (ch. ii.). [226] [muit.] See supra, [111], note 1. [227] See Infra [*182-4] and note. [228] David Thomson occupied the island in Boston Harbor, which still bears his name, from some time in 1625, apparently, until his death in 1628 (supra, [24]). He left a widow and an only son, who inherited the island. Originally, Thomson seems to have been a messenger, or possibly an agent, of the Council for New England. In November, 1622, a patent, covering a considerable tract of land, was issued to him, and the next year, he then being apparently a young man and newly married, he came out and established himself at Piscataqua, whence he afterwards moved to Boston Harbor. All that is known of Thomson can be found in Mr. Deane’s Notes to an Indenture, &c., in the Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1876 (pp. 358-81). See also, Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1878 (p. 204), and Memorial History of Boston (vol. i. p. 83). [229] Morton’s attempt to trace the origin of the North American Indians from Brutus, and the support he finds for his theory in the resemblance of some Indian to Greek words, there being no reason to suppose that Brutus or the Latins had any acquaintance with Greek, reads like a humorous satire on the historical methods in vogue with the writers of his time. Until within the last century there were two historical events, or events assumed to be historical, to one or the other of which it was deemed safe to refer the origin of any modern nation. These events were the Siege of Troy and the Flood,—the profane and the sacred beginnings of modern history. Morton wrote in 1635, and his mind naturally had recourse to the profane theory. Fifteen years later, Milton began his history of England, and at the outset came in contact with Brutus. “That which we have,” he then remarks, “of oldest seeming, hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected for a modern fable.” He nevertheless “determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales, ... seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true; as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned.” Then passing on, he says: “After the flood, and the dispersing of nations, as they journeyed leisurely from the East, Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, and his offspring, as by authorities, arguments and affinity of divers names is generally believed, were the first that peopled all these west and northern climes.” Coming down to Brutus and the whole progeny of kings, and following Geoffrey of Monmouth, Milton then recounts in detail the marriages, voyages, adventures and mishaps of the descendants of Æneas until Brutus reached an “island, not yet Britain but Albion, in a manner desert and inhospitable; kept only by a remnant of giants, whose excessive force and tyranny had destroyed the rest. These Brutus destroys,” and, after this, “in a chosen place, builds Troja Nova, changed in time to Trinovantum, now London.” The superiority of Morton’s historical method to Milton’s, or to that in use in Milton’s time, is obvious. Accepting the common origin, he premises that he does not find that “when Brutus did depart from Latium his whole number went with him at once.” Accordingly, some of them being put to sea, “might encounter with a storm,” and then being carried out of sight of land, “they might sail God knoweth whether, and so might be put on this coast, as well as any other.” And hence the author is “bold to conclude that the original of the natives of New England may be well conjectured to be from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium.” It would be easy to quote from many serious productions, contemporaneous with the New Canaan and a century after it, examples of the same method of daring historical hypothesis; a single instance will, however, suffice. In his history of Lynn, written in 1829, the Rev. Alonzo Lewis says (p. 21): “The Indians are supposed by some to be the remnants of the long lost ten tribes of Israel; and their existence in tribes, the similarity of some of their customs, and the likeness of many words in their language, seem to favor this opinion.” More sensible than either Thomas Morton or Mr. Lewis, William Wood, in writing his New England’s Prospect, in 1633, remarks (p. 78), that “Some have thought they [the Indians] might be of the dispersed Jews, because some of their words be near unto the Hebrew; but by the same rule they may conclude them to be some of the gleanings of all nations, because they have words which sound after the Greek, Latin, French, and other tongues.” There is in the Magnalia (book III. part iii.) a lengthy but highly characteristic passage, in which Mather recounts the points of resemblance which the evangelist Eliot saw between the Indians and “the posterity of the dispersed and rejected Israelites.” [230] Peddock’s, or Pettick’s, Island, still so called, is one of the largest islands in Boston Bay. It lies directly opposite to George’s Island and Hull, from which last it is separated by a narrow channel, and is between Weymouth and Quincy bays, on the east and west. See Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 557. [231] Leonard Peddock seems to have been in the employment of the Council for New England. In the records of the Council for the 8th of November, 1622, is the following entry: “Mr. Thomson is ordered to pay unto Leo: Peddock £10 towards his paynes for his last Imployments to New England.” Subsequently, on the 19th of the same month: “It is ordered that a Letter be written from the Counsell to Mr. Weston, to deliver to Leonard Peddock, a boy Native of New England called papa Whinett belonging to Abbadakest, Sachem of Massachusetts, which boy Mr Peddock is to carry over with him” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April, 1867, pp. 70, 74). Andrew Weston had returned to England in the Charity, leaving Wessagussett in September, 1622 (supra, [7]). He would seem to have brought over the Indian boy in question with him. From the entry in the records of the Council for New England, just quoted, it would appear that Leonard Peddock was in New England during the summer of 1622. The reference to him in the text is additional evidence that Morton was there at the same time, and in company with Weston. [232] This is undoubtedly a misprint for Auckies, which was a sailor’s corruption for Auks. The Great Auk (Alca impennis) is probably referred to. This bird, now supposed to be extinct, was formerly common on the New England coast. Audubon, writing in 1838, says: “An old gunner, residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” (Am. Ornithological Biog., vol. iv. p. 316.) Professor Orton, alluding to this passage, in the American Naturalist (1869, p. 540), expresses the opinion that the Razor-billed Auk was the bird referred to; but Professor F. W. Putnam adds, in a foot-note, that “the ‘old hunter’ was undoubtedly correct in his statement, as we have bones of the species taken from the shell-heaps of Marblehead, Eagle Hill in Ipswich, and Plum Island.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman found them in the shell-heaps at Cotuit. See Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 12. There is an elaborate paper on the Great Auk, under the title of “The Garefowl and its Historians,” by Professor Alfred Newton, in the Natural History Review for 1865, p. 467. [233] Morton would seem to be mistaken in this statement. Between 1614 and 1619 two French vessels were lost on the Massachusetts coast. One was wrecked on Cape Cod, and the crew, who succeeded in getting on shore, were most of them killed by the savages, and the remainder enslaved in the way described in the text. Two of these captives were subsequently redeemed by Captain Dermer (Bradford, p. 98). The other vessel was captured by the savages in Boston Bay, and burned. This is the vessel referred to by Morton as riding at anchor off Peddock’s Island. The circumstances of the capture are described in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. pp. 479, 489). All the crew, he says, were killed, and the ship, after grounding, was burned. Pratt’s statement is distinct, and agrees with Bradford’s, that the captives among the Indians were the survivors from the vessel wrecked on Cape Cod, not from that captured in Boston Bay. [234] Pratt’s account of this survivor among the French crew is to be found in IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. pp. 479, 489. He says that “one of them was wont to read much in a book (some say it was the New Testament), and that the Indians enquiring of him what his book said, he told them it did intimate that there was a people like French men that would come into the country and drive out the Indians.” The account given by Mather (Magnalia, B. I. ch. ii. § 6) is curiously like that in the text. After quoting the substance of Pratt’s statement he adds: “These infidels then blasphemously replied, ‘God could not kill them;’ which blasphemous mistake was confuted by a horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcases; and they that were left alive were smitten into awful and humble regards of the English by the terrors which the remembrance of the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.” Pratt, whom Mather followed, claims to have derived his knowledge of these events during the winter of 1622-3 directly from savages concerned in them. The probability is that the tradition of the French captive, and his book and prophecy, was a common one among the settlers both at Plymouth and about Boston Bay. Pratt apparently had a habit, as he grew old, of appropriating to his own account many of the earlier and more striking incidents of colonial history. (Mather’s Early New England, p. 17.) [235] The mysterious pestilence, which in the years 1616 and 1617 swept away the New England Indians from the Penobscot to Narragansett Bay, is mentioned by all the earlier writers, and its character has recently been somewhat discussed. There can be no doubt that it practically destroyed the tribes, especially the Massachusetts and the Pokanokets, among which it raged. The former were reduced from a powerful people, able, it is said, to muster three thousand warriors, to a mere remnant a few hundred strong. The Pokanokets were in some localities, notably at Plymouth, actually exterminated, and the country left devoid of inhabitants (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 148; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 183). Winslow gave a description of the desolation created by this pestilence, and of the number of the unburied dead, very like that in the text (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 183, 206). On this subject, see also, Bradford, pp. 102, 325; Johnson, p. 16; Wood’s Prospect, p. 72; III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 57. No definite conclusion as to the nature of this pestilence has been reached by medical men. It has been suggested that it was the yellow-fever (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 99, n). As, however, it raged equally in the depth of the severest winter as in summer, this could not have been the case (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 57; Bradford, p. 325). Other modern medical authorities have inclined to the opinion that it was a visitation of small-pox (Dr. Holmes in Mass. Hist. Soc., Low. Inst. Lect., 1869, p. 261; Dr. Green’s Centennial Address before the Mass. Med. Soc., June 7, 1881, p. 12). In support of this hypothesis Captain Thomas Dermer is quoted, who, sailing along the coast in 1619-20, wrote “we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who described the spots of such as usually die” (Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1778). On the other hand, none of the contemporaneous writers who speak of the disease ever call it the small-pox, though all of them were perfectly familiar with small-pox, and a very large portion of them probably bore its marks. Dermer speaks of it as “the plague.” Bradford, when the same pestilence raged on the Connecticut, described it as “an infectious fever.” Dr. Fuller, the first New England physician, then died of it (Bradford, p. 314). He could not but have been familiar with the small-pox and its symptoms; and it would seem most improbable that he should have died of that disease among his dying neighbors, and not have known what was killing him. Moreover, in 1633-4 the small-pox did rage among the Indians, and Bradford, in giving a fearfully graphic account of its ravages, adds, “they [the Indians] fear it more than the plague.” Josselyn also draws the same distinction, saying (Two Voyages, p. 123): “Not long before the English came into the country, happened a great mortality amongst [the Indians]; especially where the English afterwards planted, the East and Northern parts were sore smitten by the contagion; first by the plague, afterwards, when the English came, by the small-pox.” It would seem, therefore, that the pestilence of 1616-7 was clearly not the small-pox. More probably it was, as Bradford says, “an infectious fever,” or some form of malignant typhus, due to the wretched sanitary condition of the Indian villages, which had become over-crowded, owing to that prosperous condition of the tribes which Smith describes as existing at the time of his visit to the coast in 1614 (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 109). [236] “Their houses, which they call wigwams, are built with poles pitcht into the ground of a round form for most part, sometimes square. They bind down the tops of their poles, leaving a hole for smoak to go out at, the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their wigwams with mats made of rushes painted with several colors. One good post they set up in the middle that reaches to the hole in the top, with a staff across before it; at a convenient height, they knock in a pin upon which they hang their kettle. Beneath that they set up a broad stone for a back which keepeth the post from burning. Round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep whilst their women dress their victuals. They have commonly two doors, one opening to the south, the other to the north, and, according as the wind sets, they close up one door with bark and hang a deers skin or the like before the other. Towns they have none, being always removing from one place to another for conveniency of food, sometimes to those places where one sort of fish is most plentiful, other whiles where others are. I have seen half a hundred of their wigwams together in a piece of ground and they show prettily; within a day or two or a week they have been all dispersed.” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 126). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 144. [237] Giving in his Key (p. 48) the Indian combination of words signifying “let us lay on wood,” Roger Williams adds: “This they do plentifully when they lie down to sleep winter and summer, abundance they have and abundance they lay on: their fire is instead of our bed-clothes. And so, themselves and any that have any occasion to lodge with them, must be content to turn often to the fire, if the night be cold, and they who first wake must repair the fire.” Elsewhere he says: “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes.” See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 150. When Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow were sent on their mission to Massasoit, in June, 1621, they say of their entertainment on the night they arrived at his lodge: “Late it grew, but victuals he offered none; for indeed he had not any, being he came so newly home. So we desired to go to rest: he layd us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks layd a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” (Mourt, p. 45). Two nights of this entertainment sufficed for the embassadors who “feared we should either be light-headed for want of sleep, for what with bad lodging, the savages barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,) lice and fleas within doors, and musketos without, we could hardly sleep all the time of our being there.” (Ib., p. 46) Another observer remarked of the New England Indians: “Tame cattle they have none, excepting Lice, and Dogs of a wild breed” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 127); and to the same effect Roger Williams notes (Key, p. 74): “In middle of summer, because of the abundance of fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they [the Indians] will fly and remove on a sudden to a fresh place.” Smith, describing the Virginia Indians, says (True Travels, vol. i. p. 130): “Their houses are built like our arbors, of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that nothwithstanding either winde, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stoves, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to go into right over the fire. “Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of Reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foote and more by a hurdle of wood. On these round about the house they lie heads and points, one by the other, against the fire, some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from six to twenty in a house.” In Parkman’s Jesuits in North America there is a lively account of Le Jeune’s experience in passing the winter of 1633-4 among the Algonquins: “Put aside the bear-skin, and enter the hut. Here, in a space some thirteen feet square, were packed nineteen savages, men, women and children, with their dogs, crouched, squatted, coiled like hedge-hogs, or lying on their backs, with knees drawn up perpendicularly to keep their feet out of the fire.... The bark covering was full of crevices, through which the icy blasts streamed in upon him from all sides; and the hole above, at once window and chimney, was so large, that, as he [Le Jeune] lay, he could watch the stars as well as in the open air. While the fire in the midst, fed with fat pine-knots, scorched him on one side, on the other he had much ado to keep himself from freezing. At times, however, the crowded hut seemed heated to the temperature of an oven. But these evils were light when compared to the intolerable plague of smoke. During a snow-storm, and often at other times, the wigwam was filled with fumes so dense, stifling, and acrid, that all its inmates were forced to lie flat on their faces, breathing through mouths in contact with the cold earth. Their throats and mouths felt as if on fire; their scorched eyes streamed with tears.... The dogs were not an unmixed evil, for by sleeping on and around [Le Jeune], they kept him warm at night; but, as an offset to this good service, they walked, ran and jumped over him as he lay” (pp. 27-8). [238] In regard to the food of the Indians and their alternate gluttony and abstinence, see Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 129-30; Wood’s Prospect, p. 57. Wood’s account of the Indians is usually the best. As respects eating, he says: “At home they will eate till their bellies stand South, ready to split with fulnesse: it being their fashion, to eate all at sometimes, and sometimes nothing at all in two or three days, wise providence being a stranger to their wilder dayes.” [239] “Cattup keen? ‘Are you hungry?’ Meechin, ‘meat;’ or, as an Indian would be more likely to say, Meech, ‘eat.’ In Eliot’s orthography, Kodtup kēn? Meechum, ‘victuals, food,’ or meech, ‘eat.’”—J. H. Trumbull. [240] In regard to the hospitality of the Indians, Wood says (Prospect, p. 59): “Though they be sometimes scanted, yet are they as free as Emperors, both to their countrymen and English, be he stranger or mere acquaintance; counting it a great discourtesie not to eat of their high conceited delicates, and sup of their un-oat-meal’d broth, made thick with fishes, fowles and beasts boiled all together; some remaining raw, the rest converted by over-much seething to a loathed mass, not halfe so good as Irish Boniclapper.” See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153. So also Roger Williams (Key, ch. ii. and iii.): “If any stranger came in, they presently give him to eat of what they have; many a time, and at all times of the night (as I have fallen in travel, upon their houses) where nothing hath been ready, have themselves and their wives, risen to prepare me some refreshing.” “In Summer-time I have knowne them lye abroad often themselves, to make room for strangers, English, or others.” “I have known them leave their House and Mat to lodge a friend or stranger, Where Jewes and Christians oft have sent Christ Jesus to the manger.” [241] In regard to the games and removals of the Indians, see Williams’s Key, chs. xi. and xxviii.; Smith’s True Travels, vol. i. p. 133; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153; and Wood’s Prospect; pp. 63, 73-5. Wood gives an excellent description of the Indian game of foot-ball: “Their goals be a mile long placed on the sands, which are as even as a board; their ball is no bigger than a hand-ball, which sometimes they mount in the air with their naked feet, sometimes it is swayed by the multitude; sometimes also it is two days before they get a goal; then they mark the ground they win, and begin the next day.... Though they play never so fiercely to outward appearance, yet anger-boiling blood never streams in their cooler veins; if any man be thrown, he laughs out his foil, there is no seeking of revenge, no quarrelling, no bloody noses, scratched faces, black eyes, broken shins, no bruised members or crushed ribs, the lamentable effects of rage; but the goal being won, the goods on the one side lost; friends they were at the foot-ball, and friends they must meet at the kettle.” To the same effect see Strachey’s Historie, p. 78. [242] Ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta, neque tam fera, quæ non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat (De Legibus, Lib. I. § 8). Quæ est enim gens, aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrinâ anticipationem quandam deorum? (De Natura Deorum, Lib. I. § 16). [243] The reference here is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect (p. 70). In regard to the time when this work was written and published, see Mr. Deane’s preface to the edition in the publications of the Prince Society. Morton makes numerous references to it in the New Canaan (infra, [*38], [53], [64], [84], [99]). The present reference is one of the few unintelligible passages in the book. Wood’s language, to which Morton apparently takes exception, is as follows: “As it is natural to all mortals to worship something, so do these people; but exactly to describe to whom their worship is chiefly bent, is very difficult; they acknowledge especially two, Ketan, who is their good God, to whom they sacrifice after their garners be full with a good crop: upon this God likewise they invocate for fair weather, for rain in time of drought, and for the recovery of their sick; but if they do not hear them, then they verify the old verse, Flectere si nequeo Superes, Acheronta movebo, their Pow-wows betaking themselves to their exorcisms and unromantick charms ... by God’s permission, through the Devil’s help, their charms are of force to produce effects of wonderment.” Morton would seem to have wished to depreciate Wood, as an authority on New England, and so, playing upon his name and the title of his book, he implied that he had taken a much more elevated view of the religious development of the Indians than could be justified either by the actual facts, or the judgment of the best informed. Being unintelligible, the passage, from the word “neither” to the end of the paragraph, is reproduced here in all respects, including punctuation, as it is in the text of the original edition. [244] There is no expression of this nature to be found anywhere in those writings of Sir William Alexander which have come down to us and are included in the publications of the Prince Society. He may have used the expression quoted in conversation, or in a letter. Winslow, in Mourt, says: “They [the savages] are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God” (p. 61). This statement he subsequently, however, retracted in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 355), where he says, “therein I erred, though we could then gather no better.” The subject of the religion of the North American aborigines has been treated by Parkman in the introduction to the Jesuits in North America (pp. lxvii.-lxxxix.), and he concludes that “the primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to an All-pervading grand Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians and sentimentalists.” To the same effect Palfrey, at the close of his vigorous discussion of the same subject (vol. i. p. 45), declares that the devout Indian of the “untutored mind is as fabulous as the griffin or the centaur.” [245] Thomas May, better known as the historian and secretary of the Long Parliament, was born in 1595 and died in 1650. In 1627 he published a translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, with a supplementum, or continuation (1630), by himself in seven books. This continuation he subsequently translated into Latin, and it is included in Lemaire’s edition of the Pharsalia in his Bibliotheca Classica Latina (Paris, 1832). The passage to which Morton refers is in the third book of the continuation (ll. 108-78). The following are some of the verses:— “But in a higher kind (as some relate) Do Elephants with men communicate. (If you believe it) a religion They have, and monthly do adore the Moon, Besides the loftie Nabathæan wood, Of vast extent, Amylo’s gentle flood, Gliding along, the sandie mould combines. Thither, as oft as waxing Cynthia shines In her first borrowed light, from out the wood, Come all the Elephants, and in the floud Washing themselves (as if to purifie) They prostrate fall; and when religiously They have adored the Moon, return again Into the woods with joy.” [246] In his Latin poem on New England, which the Rev. William Morell wrote during his eighteen months’ residence at Wessagusset as the spiritual head of the Robert Gorges settlement of 1623, there is a description of the Indian and his garments. The following is the author’s English rendering of his more elegant Latin original:— “Whose hayre is cut with greeces, yet a locke Is left; the left side bound up in a knott: Their males small labour but great pleasure know, Who nimbly and expertly draw the bow; Traind up to suffer cruell heat and cold, Or what attempt so ere may make them bold; Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin Of deare or bever, with the hayre-side in; An otter skin their right armes doth keepe warme, To keepe them fit for use, and free from harme; A girdle set with formes of birds or beasts, Begirts their waste, which gentle gives them ease. Each one doth modestly bind up his shame, And deare-skin start-ups reach up to the same; A kind of pinsen keeps their feet from cold, Which after travels they put off, up-fold, Themselves they warme, their ungirt limbes they rest In straw, and houses, like to sties.” I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 131. Wood’s description of the Indian apparel is very like Morton’s. He says, however: “The chiefe reasons they render why they will not conforme to our English apparell are because their women cannot wash them when they be soyled, and their meanes will not reach to buy new when they have done with their old; and they confidently beleeve, the English will not be so liberall as to furnish them upon gifture: therefore they had rather goe naked than be lousie, and bring their bodies out of their old tune, making them more tender by a new acquired habit, which poverty would constrain them to leave.” (Prospect, p. 56). The description given by Winslow (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 365) is very similar to Morell’s. See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 152; Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 128-9, and Williams’s Key, ch. xx. Smith (True Travels, vol. i. p. 129) says: “For their apparell, they are sometimes covered with the skinnes of wilde beasts, which in winter are dressed with the hayre, but in Sommer without. The better sort use large mantels of Deare skins, not much differing in fashion from the Irish mantels. Some imbrodered with white beads, some with copper, others painted after their manner. But the common sort have scarce to cover their nakednesse, but with grasse, the leaves of trees or such like. We have seene some use mantels made of Turkey feathers so prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be discerned but the feathers.” [248] Speaking of a ceremony common to the Algonquins and the Hurons, of propitiating their fishing-nets by formally marrying them every year to two young girls, Parkman says: “As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen” (The Jesuits in North America, p. lxix. note). The subject of female chastity among the Indians has already been referred to (supra, p. [17]), and it is extremely questionable whether they had any conception of it. Winslow, in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364) says:—“When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair, and after weareth a covering on her head, till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet others seem light, lascivious, and wanton.... Some common strumpets there are, as well as in other places; but they are such as either never married, or widows, or put away for adultery; for no man will keep such an one to wife.” Strachey (Historie, p. 65), says of the Virginians: “Their younger women goe not shadowed [clothed] amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes of the leafe old, nor are they much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pochahuntas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe, and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over; but being over twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as doe our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac’t to be seen bare.” Ellis, in his Red Man and White Man (p. 185), remarks on this point: “The obscenity of the savages is unchecked in its revolting and disgusting exhibitions. Sensuality seeks no covert.” Under these circumstances it is unnecessary to say that Morton’s statements as to the red cap and the Sachem’s privilege are pure fiction, and what Parkman says of the Hurons is probably true of the Massachusetts,—their women were wantons before marriage and household drudges after it. (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxv). [249] To the same effect Roger Williams says: “Most of them count it a shame for a woman in travell to make complaint, and many of them are scarcely heard to groane. I have often known in one quarter of an hour a woman merry in the house, and delivered and merry again: and within two dayes abroad, and after foure or five dayes at worke.” (Key, ch. xxiii.). See also Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 127. Wood’s account is almost as comprehensive, though not quite so detailed and graphic as Josselyn’s: “They likewise sew their husband’s shooes, and weave mats of Turkie feathers; besides all their ordinary household drudgery which dayly lies upon them, so that a bigge belly hinders no businesse nor a childbirth takes much time, but the young infant being greased and footed, wrapped in a Beaver skin, bound to his goode behaviour with his feete up to his bumme, upon a board two foot long and one foot broade, his face exposed to all nipping weather, this little Pappouse travels about with his bare-footed mother, to paddle in the Icie Clammbanks after three or four daies of age have sealed his passe-board and his mother’s recovery.” (Prospect, p. 82). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 358. [250] The idea that the Indian was born white was very commonly entertained in the first half of the seventeenth century. Lechford, in his Plaine Dealing, says (p. 50): “They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their children are borne white, but they bedaube them with oyle, and colours, presently.” Josselyn also speaks of the Indians “dying [their children] with a liquor of boiled Hemlock-Bark” (Two Voyages, p. 128). Speaking of the Virginia women, Smith says: “To make [their children] hardie, in the coldest mornings they them wash in the rivers, and by paynting and oyntments so tanne their skinnes, that after a year or two, no weather will hurt them.” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 131). Strachey gives a more particular account of the supposed process: The Indians “are generally of a cullour browne or rather tawny, which they cast themselves into with a kind of arsenick stone, ... and of the same hue are their women; howbeit, yt is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discouloured; for Captain Smith (lyving somtymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women, dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming yt the best beauty to be neerest such a kynd of murrey as a sodden quince is of (to liken yt to the neerest coulor I can), for which they daily anoint both face and bodyes all over with such a kind of fucus or unguent as can cast them into that stayne.” (Historie, p. 63). [251] “If there was noticed a remarkable exemption from physical deformities, this was probably not the effect of any peculiar congenital force or completeness, but of circumstances which forbade the prolongation of any imperfect life. The deaf, blind or lame child was too burdensome to be reared, and according to a savage estimate of usefulness and enjoyment, its prolonged life would not requite its nurture.” Palfrey, vol. i. p. 23. [252] Mr. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s nan weeteo stands for Eliot’s nanwetee (nanwetue, Cotton), ‘a bastard.’ Titta should be tatta, a word common among Indians, which is well enough translated by Morton. Eliot renders it ‘I know not,’ and R. Williams adds to this meaning, ‘I cannot tell; it may be so.’ “Cheshetue is unknown to me, but I am inclined to believe that Morton heard something like it, in the connection and substantially with the meaning he gives it,—some adjective of dispraise, qualifying squaa, or, as we write it, squaw.” [253] [likenesse.] See supra, [111], note 1. [254] The observations of Roger Williams led him to a different conclusion: “Their affections, especially to their children, are very strong.... This extreme affection, together with want of learning, makes their children saucie, bold and undutifull. I once came into a house, and requested some water to drink; the father bid his sonne (of some 8 yeeres of age) to fetch some water: the boy refused, and would not stir; I told the father, that I would correct my child, if he should so disobey me &c. Upon this the father took up a sticke, the boy another, and flew at his father: upon my persuasion, the poore father made him smart a little, throw down his stick, and run for water, and the father confessed the benefits of correction, and the evill of their too indulgent affections.” (Key, ch. v.) To the same effect Champlain wrote (Voyages, vol. iii. p. 170): “The children have great freedom among these tribes. The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them.” Winslow, on the other hand, in his Good News, lends some support to Morton’s statement in the text. He says: “The younger sort reverence the elder, and do all mean offices, whilst they are together, although they be strangers.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 363.) [255] This Sachem, “the most noted powow and sorcerer of all the country,” is better known by the name of Passaconaway. There is quite an account of him in Drake’s Book of the Indians (B. III. ch. vii). He is the Pissacannawa mentioned by Wood in his Prospect (p. 70), of whom the savages reported that he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphize himself into a flaming man.” Morton says of the Indian conjurers, “some correspondency they have with the Devil out of all doubt;” Wood, to the same effect, remarks that “by God’s permission, through the Devil’s helpe, their charmes are of force to produce effects of wonderment;” Smith declares of the Indians, “their chiefe God they worship is the Devil” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 138); Mather intimates that it was the devil who seduced the first inhabitants of America into it (Magnalia, B. I. ch. i. § 3), and Winthrop, describing the great freshet of 1638, records that the Indians “being pawawing in this tempest, the Devil came and fetched away five of them” (vol. i. p. *293). See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 154; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 356; and Champlain’s Voyages, vol. iii. p. 171. Champlain says the Indians do not worship any God; “they have, however, some respect for the devil.” [256] [Ingling.] See supra, [111], note 1. [257] In regard to the Indian Powaws, priests, or medicine men, and their methods of dealing with the sick, see the detailed account in Champlain’s Voyages, vol. iii. pp. 171-8; Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 134; Wood’s Prospect, p. 71; Williams’s Key, ch. xxxi.; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 154; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 317, 357; Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, (Trumbull’s ed.) p. 117; Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, pp. lxxxiv.-lxxxvii.; also Magnalia, B. III. part. iii., where Mather says: “In most of their dangerous distempers, it is a powaw that must be sent for; that is, a priest who has more familiarity with Satan than his neighbors; this conjurer comes and roars and howls and uses magical ceremonies over the sick man, and will be well paid for it when he is done; if this don’t effect the cure, the ‘man’s time is come, and there’s an end.’” For a summary in Indian medical practice, see further, Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, pp. 127-33. [258] Passaconoway, already referred to (supra, p. [150], note), dwelt at a place called Pennakook, and his dominions extended over the sachems living upon the Piscataqua and its branches. The young Sachem of Saugus was named Winnepurkitt, and was commonly known among the English as George Rumney-marsh. He was a son of Nanepashemet, and at one time proprietor of Deer Island in Boston Harbor. (Drake’s Book of the Indians, ed. 1851, pp. 105, 111, 278.) The incident in the text has been made the subject of a poem, The Bridal of Pennacook, by Whittier, and Drake repeats it; but as Winnepurkitt is said by Drake to have been born in 1616, and to have succeeded Montowampate as Sachem in 1633, and as Morton, at the close of the present chapter, declares that “the lady, when I came out of the country [in 1630], remained still with her father,” the whole story would seem to be not only highly inconsistent with what we know of Indian life and habits, but also at variance with facts and dates. [259] [not determined.] See supra, [111], note 1. [260] Josselyn’s account of the Indian wampum is written, more than any other which has come down to us, in the spirit of the New Canaan: “Their Merchandize are their beads, which are their money, of these there are two sorts, blew Beads and white Beads, the first is their Gold, the last their Silver, these they work out of certain shells so cunningly that neither Jew nor Devil can counterfeit, they dril them and string them, and make many curious works with them to adorn the persons of their Sagamores and principal men and young women, as Belts, Girdles, Tablets, Borders for their womens hair, Bracelets, Necklaces, and links to hang in their ears. Prince Phillip, a little before I came for England, coming to Boston, had a coat on and Buskins set thick with these Beads in pleasant wild works, and a broad belt of the same; his Accoutrements were valued at Twenty pounds. The English Merchant giveth them ten shillings a fathom for their white, and as much more or near upon for their blew beads.” (Two Voyages, pp. 142-3.) There is a much better description of wampum in Lawson’s account of Carolina, quoted by Drake (Book of the Indians, p. 328), in which he says that wampum was current money among the Indians “all over the continent, as far as the bay of Mexico.” Lawson’s explanation of the fact that wampum was not counterfeited to any considerable extent is much more natural than Morton’s. It cost more to counterfeit it than it was worth. “To make this Peak it cost the English five or ten times as much as they could get for it; whereas it cost the Indians nothing, because they set no value upon their time, and therefore have no competitors to fear, or that others will take its manufacture out of their hands.” Roger Williams (Key, ch. xxvi.) devotes considerable space to this subject, and says: “They [the Indians] hang these strings of money about their necks and wrists; as also upon the necks and wrists of their wives and children. They make [girdles] curiously of one, two, three, foure and five inches thickness and more, of this money which (sometimes to the value of ten pounds and more) they weare about their middle and as a scarfe about their shoulders and breasts. Yea, the Princes make rich Caps and Aprons (or small breeches) of these Beads thus curiously strung into many formes and figures: their blacke and white finely mixt together.” See also Trumbull’s notes in his edition of the Key, and Palfrey, vol. i. p. 31. Parkman (Jesuits in North America, pp. xxxi., lxi.) says of wampum: “This was at once their currency, their ornament, their pen, ink and parchment.” He describes the uses to which it was put among the Hurons and Iroquois, but adds: “The art [of working it] soon fell into disuse, however; for wampum better than their own was brought them by the traders, besides abundant imitations in glass and porcelain.” [261] “How have foule hands (in smoakie houses) the first handling of these Furres which are often worne upon the hands of Queens and heads of Princes!” (Williams’s Key, p. 158.) [262] There is obviously some corruption of the original manuscript here, but I have been unable to obtain any even plausible suggestion of what word may have been turned into “reles” through the compositor’s inability to decipher copy. [263] There is not much to be said on the manufactures, utensils and trade of the New England aborigines. Gookin (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151) has a comprehensive paragraph on the subject, and there is a passage in Josselyn (Two Voyages, p. 143). See also Williams’s Key, ch. xxv. [264] Josselyn also speaks of “baskets, bags and mats woven with Sparke.” (Two Voyages, p. 143.) “Spart,” Mr. Trumbull writes, “was a northern English name for the dwarf-rush, and (as ‘spart’ in the glossaries) for osiers, and I guess, Morton’s and Josselyn’s sparke is another form of that name.” Gookin says (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151): “Some of their baskets are made of rushes; some, of bents; others, of maize-husks; others, of a kind of silk grass; others, of a kind of wild hemp; and some, of barks of trees.” [265] Wood says of the Indian women: “Their corn being ripe, they gather it, and drying it hard in the Sun, conveigh it to their barnes, which be great holes digged in the ground in forme of a brasse pot, seeled with rinds of trees, wherein they put their corne, covering it from the inquisitive search of their gurmundizing husbands, who would eate up both their allowed portion, and reserved seed, if they knew where to finde it. But our hogges having found a way to unhindge their barne doores, and robbe their garners, they are glad to implore their husbands helpe to roule the bodies of trees over their holes, to prevent these pioneers, whose theevery they as much hate as their flesh.” (Prospect, p. 81.) Mather also, in enumerating the points of resemblance between the Indians and the Israelites, (Magnalia, B. III. part iii.) says: “They have, too, a great unkindness for our swine; but I suppose that is because the hogs devour the clams, which are a dainty with them.” [266] See Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, p. 148; also, infra, [175], n. [267] This Sachem has already been sufficiently referred to (Supra, p. [11].) All that is known concerning him can be found in Drake’s Book of the Indians, (ed. 1851), pp. 107-9. [268] Morton’s neighbors at Wessaguscus were William Jeffrey, John Bursley and such others of the Robert Gorges expedition of 1623 as still remained there. (Supra, [4], [24], [30].) See also Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1878, p. 198. [270] “Frumenty, n. [Also furmenty and fumety; from Lat. frumentum]. Food made of wheat boiled in milk, and seasoned with sugar, cinnamon, &c.” Webster. [271] Squanto. See infra, [*104]. [272] In reference to this passage, Mr. Francis Parkman writes: “I have searched my memory in vain for anything in the early French writers answering to Morton’s statement. I don’t think that Cartier, Champlain, Biard, Lescarbot or Le Jeune, the principal writers before 1635, make the extraordinary assertions in question. In fact, as there were no Spaniards in Canada, and likely to be none on French vessels going there, Indians of those parts would hardly have the opportunity of distinguishing between them by smell or otherwise. Indeed, they did not know the existence of such a nation.” [274] “Kytan was an appellation of the greatest manito. The word signifies ‘greatest’ or ‘pre-eminent.’ See my note (p. 207) in Lechford’s Plaine Dealing (p. 120), where is mention of ‘Kitan, their good god.’ Roger Williams in a letter to Thomas Thorowgood, 1635, names ‘their god Kuttand to the south-west’ (Jewes in America, 1650, p. 6) but in his Key, he writes the name Cautantowit (To the Reader, p. 24.) i. e., Keihte-anito—‘greatest manito.’ “I have not met with the name Sanaconquam elsewhere: at least I do not remember seeing it except in Morton. The derivation is apparently from a word meaning to press upon, to op-press, to crush, or the like.” (Manuscript Letter of J. H. Trumbull, June 25, 1882.) See, also, authorities referred to supra, p. [140], note, and also Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, pp. 134-9. Morell has a passage on the Indian’s methods of worship in his poem. (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 136.) [275] Roger Williams says: “They will relate how they have it from their Fathers, that Kantántowwit made one man and woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them in pieces, and made another man and woman of a tree, which were the Fountaines of all mankind.” (Key, ch. xxi.) “They believe that the soules of men and women goe to the Sou-west, their great and good men and women to Cantántowwit his House, where they have hopes (as the Turks have) of carnal Joyes: Murtherers, theeves and Lyers, their souls (say they) wander restlesse abroad.” (Ib.) Wood, enlarging on this, says: “Yet do they hold the immortality of the never-dying soul, that it shall passe to the South-west Elysium, concerning which their Indian faith jumps much with the Turkish Alchoran, holding it to be a kind of Paradise, wherein they shall everlastingly abide, solacing themselves in odoriferous Gardens, fruitfull corn-fields, green meadows, bathing their hides in the coole streams of pleasant Rivers, and shelter themselves from heat and cold in the sumptuous Pallaces framed by the skill of Natures curious contrivement. Concluding that neither care nor pain shall molest them but that Natures bounty wil administer all things with a voluntary contribution from the overflowing storehouse of their Elysian Hospital, at the portall whereof they say lies a great Dog, whose churlish snarlings deny a Pax intrantibus to unworthy intruders.” (Prospect, p. 79.) Parkman says: “The primitive Indian believed in the immortality of the soul, but he did not always believe in a state of future reward and punishment.” (Jesuits in North America, p. lxxx.) Referring to a case in which one of the Jesuits quoted an Indian as saying “there was no future life,” Parkman adds: “It would be difficult to find another instance of the kind.” The romantic view of the Indian on this point was taken by Arnold, in his History of Rhode Island (vol. i. p. 78), and the realistic view by Palfrey, in his New England (vol. i. p. 49); and, though writing at the same time, the two seem to be controverting each other. See Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, p. 115. [277] Roger Williams, also, in a passage just quoted (supra, [168], note), speaks of the future punishment supposed, among the New England Indians, to be allotted to thieves and liars. Josselyn, on the other hand, describes them as “very fingurative or theevish” (Two Voyages, p. 125); and Gookin says: “They are naturally much addicted to lying and speaking untruth: and unto stealing, especially from the English” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 149). Winslow describes the severe punishments inflicted for theft (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364). Dodge, in his Wild Indians (pp. 63-5), explains this discrepancy in the authorities. He says: “All these authors are both right and wrong. In their own bands, Indians are perfectly honest.... It [theft] is the sole unpardonable crime among Indians.” He then describes, like Winslow, the severity of the punishments inflicted for thefts; “but,” he adds, “this wonderfully exceptional honesty extends no further than to the members of his immediate band. To all outside of it, the Indian is not only one of the most arrant thieves in the world, but this quality or faculty is held in the highest estimation.” [278] The reference is to ch. iii. of the Third Booke (infra, [*106-8]). This passage would seem to indicate that the third book of the New Canaan was written first, and that the two other books were prepared subsequently, probably in imitation of Wood’s Prospect. (See supra, [78].) [279] “Yea, I saw with mine owne eyes that at my late comming forth of the Countrey, the chiefe and most aged peaceable Father of the countrey, Caunoŭnicus, having buried his sonne, he burned his owne Palace, and all his goods in it, (amongst them to a great value) in a sollemne remembrance of his sonne, and in a kind of humble Expiation to the Gods, who, (as they believe) had taken his sonne from him.” (Williams’s Key, ch. xxxii.) In the same passage Williams says: “Upon the Grave is spread the Mat that the party died on, the Dish he ate in, and, sometimes, a faire Coat of skin hung upon the next tree to the Grave, which none will touch, but suffer it there to rot with the dead.” See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 142, 143, 154, 363; Strachey’s Historie, p. 90. “In times of general Mortality they omit the Ceremonies of burying, exposing their dead Carkases to the Beasts of prey. But at other times they dig a Pit and set the diseased therein upon his breech upright, and, throwing in the earth, cover it with the sods and bind them down with sticks, driving in two stakes at each end; their mournings are somewhat like the howlings of the Irish, seldom at the grave but in the Wigwam where the party dyed, blaming the Devil for his hard-heartedness, and concluding with rude prayers to him to afflict them no further.” (Josselyn, Two Voyages, p. 132.) There is a highly characteristic passage to the same effect in Wood’s Prospect, p. 79. [281] The reference is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect, p. 13; where, also, the Indian custom of firing the country in November is described. [282] Gookin says: “This beastly sin of drunkenness could not be charged upon the Indians before the English and other Christian nations, as Dutch, French, and Spaniards, came to dwell in America: which nations, especially the English in New-England, have cause to be greatly humbled before God, that they have been, and are, instrumental to cause these Indians to commit this great evil and beastly sin of drunkenness.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151.) In regard to the peculiarities of Indian drunkenness, see Dodge’s Wild Indians, pp. 333-5. What is there said of the Indians of “the plains” is probably true of all the northern American Indians. “This passion for intoxication amounts almost to an insanity.... To drink liquor as a beverage, for the gratification of taste, or for the sake of pleasurable conviviality, is something of which the Indian can form no conception. His idea of pleasure in the use of strong drink is to get drunk, and the quicker and more complete that effect, the better he likes it.” [283] “They live in a country where we now have all the conveniences of human life: but as for them, their housing is nothing but a few mats tyed about poles fastened in the earth, where a good fire is their bed-clothes in the coldest seasons; their clothing is but a skin of a beast, covering their hind-parts, their fore-parts having but a little apron, where nature calls for secrecy; their diet has not a greater dainty than their Nokehick, that is a spoonful of their parched meal, with a spoonful of water, which will strengthen them to travel a day to-gether; except we should mention the flesh of deers, bears, mose, rackoons, and the like, which they have when they can catch them; as also a little fish, which, if they would preserve, it was by drying, not by salting; for they had not a grain of salt in the world, I think, till we bestowed it on them.” Magnalia, B. III. part iii. In his Letters and Notes on the North American Indians (Letter No. 17) Catlin comments on the failure of the Indians to make any use of salt, even in localities where it abounds. See supra, [161]. [284] The relations supposed to exist between the Indians and the devil have been referred to in a previous note, supra, [150]. It is, however, a somewhat curious fact that the aboriginal hierarchy, suggested in the text, had a few years before found its exact political counterpart in the talk of the English people. “‘Who governs the land?’ it was asked. ‘Why, the King.’ ‘And who governs the King?’ ‘Why, the Duke of Buckingham.’ ‘And who governs the Duke?’ ‘Why, the Devil.’” (Ewald’s Stories from the State Papers, vol. ii. p. 117.) [285] “Sed quoniam, (ut præclare scriptum est a Platone) non nobis solum nati sumus, ortusque nostri partem patria, vindicat, partem amici.” De Officiis, Lib. I. § 7. The words “partem parentes” are not in the original, but have been inserted by modern scholars as rendering the quotation from Plato more correct. [286] In annotating this chapter I have been indebted to Professors Asa Gray and C. S. Sargent of Harvard University for assistance, they having sent me several of the more technical notes. This and the five following chapters of the New Canaan have a certain interest as being among the earliest memoranda on the trees, animals, birds, fish and geology of Massachusetts. The only earlier publication of at all a similar character is Wood’s New England’s Prospect, which appeared in 1634, and contained the result of observations made during the four years 1629 to 1633. Morton’s acquaintance with the country was earlier and longer than Wood’s, but the New Canaan was not published until three years after the Prospect, which it followed closely in its description of the country and its products. Josselyn’s first voyage was made in 1638, and his stay in New England covered a period of fifteen months, July, 1638, to October, 1639. His second visit was in 1663, and lasted until 1671. The New England’s Rarities was published in 1672, and the Two Voyages in 1674. Josselyn’s alone of these works can make any pretence to a scientific character or nomenclature, but the four taken together constitute the whole body of early New England natural history and geology. Only occasional reference to this class of subjects is found in other writers. [287] The White Oake includes, no doubt, Quercus alba and bicolor, and the Redd Oake, Quercus rubra, tinctoria and coccinea. [288] Edward Williams, in his Virginia (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11. p. 14), written in 1650, says: “Nor are Pipestaves and Clapboard a despicable commodity, of which one man may with ease make fifteen thousand yearely, which in the countrey itselfe are sold for 4 l. in the Canaries for twenty pound the thousand, and by this means the labour of one man will yeeld him 60 l. per annum, at the lowest Market.” [289] Probably Fraxinus Americana, although two other species of Ash are common in Massachusetts, the Red and the Black Ash (F. pubescens and sambucifolia). [290] It is interesting to note that, at this early day, two forms of our one species of Beech were distinguished by the color of the wood, a distinction which has often been adopted by Botanists and is still considered by mechanics and woodsmen. [291] This refers, no doubt, to our different species of Hickory, although the Butternut (Juglans cinerea) is common in Massachusetts. [292] Both the White and the Pitch Pine (Pinus strobus, and rigida) are probably referred to. [293] “For I have seene of these stately high growne trees, ten miles together close by the River side, from whence by shipping they might be conveyed to any desired Port.” (Wood’s New England’s Prospect, p. 15.) [294] The Red Cedar (Juniperus virginia). [295] This is clearly a contemptuous reference to Wood, who in his Prospect (p. 15) had said, “The Cedar tree is a tree of no great growth, not bearing above a foote and a halfe square at the most, neither is it very high. I suppose they be much inferiour to the Cedars of Lebenon, so much commended in holy writ.” [297] The White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides); or perhaps Arbor-Vitæ (Thuja occindentalis), which is the “more bewtifull tree.” [298] A misprint for Gerard, whose Herball, or Generall Historie of Plants, was published in 1597, and Johnson’s edition of it in 1633. [299] This probably includes both the Black Spruce (Picea nigra) and the Hemlock (Truga canadensis). [300] “Spruce is a goodly Tree, of which they make Masts for Ships, and Sail Yards: It is generally conceived by those that have skill in Building of Ships, that here is absolutely the best Trees in the World, many of them being three Fathom about, and of great length.” (Josselyn, Rarities, p. 63.) “At Pascataway there is now a Spruce-tree brought down to the water-side by our Mass-men of an incredible bigness, and so long that no Skipper durst ever yet adventure to ship it, but there it lyes and Rots.” (Two Voyages, p. 67.) [301] [whether.] See supra, [111], note 1. [302] Probably the Sugar, Red and White Maples are intended: Acer saccharinum, rubrum and dasycarpum. It is singular that no reference to the manufacture of maple sugar by the Indians occurs. [303] (Elder) Sambucus Canadensis. [304] Wood (Prospect, p. 15) says, “Two sorts, Red and White.” None of our native Grape vines bear White grapes. [306] Perhaps our little Beach plum (P. maritima) is intended. The wild American Plum-tree is probably not a native of Massachusetts, although it was early cultivated by the aborigines and settlers. [307] (Sassafras officinale.) [308] The Ginseng (Aralia quinquefolia), or the Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis). [309] In Chapter IX. of this Book (infra, [*94]) Morton again refers to the growth of hemp in New England, as evidence of the fertility of the soil. He declares “that it shewteth up to be tenne foote high and tenne foote and a halfe.” Thomas Wiggin, also, in writing of New England in November, 1632, says: “As good hempe and fflax as in any parte of the world, growes there naturally.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Hemp, however, is not native to New England or America. That spoken of must have been grown from seed brought over by the colonists. Morton may have seen it growing in garden soil at Plymouth and Wessagusset, but that any field of it ever reached a height of ten or ten and a half feet in eastern Massachusetts is very questionable. [310] Professor Gray of Harvard University has furnished me the following note on this chapter:— “Unlike Josselyn, the author evidently was not an herbalist, and wrote at random. His pot-marjoram, thyme and balm, though not to be specifically identified, and none of them of the same species as in England, must be represented by our American pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides), a native mint (Mentha borealis), wild basil (Pycnanthemum), and a species of Monarda, sometimes called balm, all sweet herbs of the New England coast. Alexander is hardly to be guessed. Angelica as a genus occurs here, but not the officinal species. Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) was probably in view. Purslane is interesting in this connection, adding as it does to the probability that this plant was in the country before the settlement. There are no Anniseeds in New England, and it is impossible to guess what the author meant. It was probably a random statement founded on nothing in particular. The Honeysuckles were doubtless the two species of Azalea to which the name is still applied.” Wood also says (Prospect, pp. 11, 12), “There is likewise growing all manner of Hearbes for meate and medicine, and not only in planted Gardens, but in the woods, without either the art or helpe of man, as sweete Marjoram, Purselane, Sorrell, Peneriall, Yarrow, Myrtle, Saxifarilla, Bayes, &c.” See also Mr. Tuckerman’s introductory matter and notes, in his edition of New England’s Rarities [1865], and Professor Gray’s chapter (vol. i. ch. ii.) on the Flora of Boston and vicinity, and the changes it has undergone, in the Memorial History of Boston. [311] For the greater part of the notes to this chapter, and for all those of a technical character, I am indebted to Mr. William Brewster, of Cambridge. To his notes I have added a few references to, and extracts from, other early works more or less contemporaneous with the New Canaan. [312] Probably the Whistling Swan (Cygnus Americanus), now a rare visitor to New England. Wood, also, in his poetical enumeration of birds and fowls (Prospect, p. 23), speaks of “The Silver Swan that tunes her mournfull breath, To sing the dirge of her approaching death.” Further on (p. 26) he says, “There be likewise many Swannes which frequent the fresh ponds and rivers, seldome consorting themselves with Duckes and Geese; these be very good meate, the price of one is six shillings.” In his enumeration of birds of New England, Josselyn (Two Voyages, p. 100) mentions “Hookers or wild-Swans.” This bird is not included in Peabody’s Report on the Ornithol. of Massachusetts (1839). [313] The Brant (Bernicla brenta), common at the present day. [314] The Snow Goose (Anser hyperboreus), now rare in New England, although common throughout the West. [315] The Canada Goose (Bernicla Canadensis). [316] The Black Duck (Anas obscura), still abundant. The identity of the other two is doubtful: the Pide Duck may have been the Pied or Labrador Duck (Camptolæmus Labradorius), a species formerly common but now nearly if not wholly extinct; the Gray Duck is probably the Pintail (Dafila acuta). [317] The Green-winged Teal (Querquedula Carolinensis) and the Blue-winged Teal (Querquedula discors), both noted for the delicacy of their flesh. [318] Probably the American Widgeon, or Baldpate (Mareca Americana). The name Widgeon is sometimes applied to other species, however. [319] Probably some species of web-footed bird, but exactly what is not clear. Mr. Merriam, in his Review of the Birds of Connecticut (pp. 104-5), identifies Morton’s Simpe as the American Woodcock (Philohela minor), but in this he is doubtless in error. In the first place, it is not likely that a keen sportsman like Morton would have shot woodcock merely out of curiosity, and “more did not regard them;” in the second place, Josselyn, in enumerating the different sorts of ducks, speaks of “Widgeons, Simps, Teal, Blew wing’d and green wing’d.” (Two Voyages, p. 101.) But for the reference in the next paragraph in the text, and the disparaging manner in which the bird in question is alluded to, it would be inferred that Simpes was a natural misprint for Snipes. That, however, is clearly not the case. [320] The Sanderling (Calidris arenaria), a common Sandpiper, peculiar in lacking the usual hind toe. The context indicates that other shore birds were included under this name. “There are little Birds that frequent the Sea-shore in flocks called Sanderlins, they are about the bigness of a Sparrow, and in the fall of the leaf will be all fat; when I was first in the Countrie the English cut them into small pieces to put into their Puddings instead of suet. I have known twelve score and above kill’d at two shots.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 102.) To precisely the same effect Wood says (Prospect, p. 27), “I myselfe have killed twelve score at two shootes.” [321] Neither the Whooping Crane (Grus Americana) nor the Sandhill Crane (Grus pratensis) is now found in New England. The latter is probably the species referred to here. Our large Heron (Ardea herodias) is often called Crane by country people, but it does not eat corn, and “in a dishe” would hardly be considered “a goodly bird.” [322] The Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallipavo Americana) is mentioned by all the early writers as an abundant bird; but it disappeared almost as rapidly as the Indians, before the encroachment of the white settlers. Peabody, writing in 1839 (Report on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds of Massachusetts, p. 352), says: “It is still found occasionally in our western mountains, and also on the Holyoke range, where some are taken every year.” Its total extinction probably occurred only a few years later. [323] Probably an exaggeration, although Audubon mentions one that weighed thirty-six pounds; the ordinary weight of the full-grown male is from fifteen to twenty pounds, a gobbler weighing twenty-five pounds being an unusually large bird. Yet Morton’s statement is fully borne out by other contemporary authorities. Wood says, “The Turky is a very large bird, of a blacke colour, yet white in flesh; much bigger then our English Turky. He hath the use of his long legs so ready, that he can runne as fast as a Dogge, and flye as well as a Goose: of these sometimes there will be forty, three-score and an hundred of a flocke, sometimes more and sometimes lesse; their feeding is Acorns, Hawes, and Berries, some of them get a haunt to frequent our English corne: In Winter when the Snow covers the ground, they resort to the Sea-shore to looke for Shrimps, and such small fishes at low tides. Such as love Turkie hunting must follow it in Winter after a new falne Snow, when he may follow them by their tracts; some have killed ten or a dozen in halfe a day; if they can be found towards an evening, and watched where they peirch, if one came about ten or eleaven of the clocke, he may shoote as often as he will, they will sit, unlesse they be slenderly wounded. These Turkies remain all the yeare long. The price of a good Turkie cocke is foure shillings: and he is well worth it, for he may be in weight forty pound; a Hen two shillings.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 24.) So also Josselyn: “I have heard several credible persons affirm, they have seen Turkie Cocks that have weighed forty, yea sixty pounds; but out of my personal experimental knowledge I can assure you, that I have eaten my share of a Turkie Cock, that when he was pull’d and garbidg’d, weighed thirty pound.” He adds, however, that even then [1670] “the English and the Indians having now destroyed the breed, so that ’tis very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the Woods.” (New England’s Rarities, p. 9.) See also Two Voyages, p. 99, where the same writer says: “If you would preserve the young Chickens alive, you must give them no water, for if they come to have their fill of water, they will drop away strangely, and you will never be able to rear any of them.” John Clayton, in his Letter to the Royal Society [1688], says of Virginia: “There be wild Turkies extream large; they talk of Turkies that have been kill’d, that have weigh’d betwixt 50 and 60 Pound weight; the largest that ever I saw, weigh’d something better than 38 Pound.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 30.) Williams, in his Virginia [1650], speaks of “infinites of wilde Turkeyes, which have been knowne to weigh fifty pound weight, ordinarily forty.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11, p. 12.) See also Strachey’s Historie, p. 125; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 253. [324] In regard to this expression Mr. Trumbull writes: “Metawna is mittànnug (R. Williams), muttannunk (Eliot),—Englished by ‘a thousand;’ but to the Indians less definite, ‘a great many,’ more than he could count. Neent is possibly a misprint for necut (nequt, Eliot), ‘one,’—but, more likely, stands for ‘I have,’ or its equivalent, ‘there is to me.’ Roger Williams (p. 164) puts the numeral first, nneesnneánna, ‘I have killed two,’—shwinneánna, [‘I have killed] three,’” &c. [325] The Pheasant of Morton and other early writers has been supposed by ornithologists to be the Prairie Hen or Pinnated Grouse (Cupidonia cupido), a species which, however, has dark not “white flesh,”—“formerly ... so common on the ancient busky site of the city of Boston, that laboring people or servants stipulated with their employers, not to have the Heath-Hen brought to table oftener then a few times in the week.” (Nuttall’s Ornithology, vol. i. p. 800.) There is good evidence that this bird once ranged over a large part of Southern New England; it is still found on Martha’s Vineyard, where it is carefully protected and is not uncommon. Elsewhere it does not now occur much to the eastward of Illinois. [326] The Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbella). [327] The American Partridge, Quail, or Bob White (Ortyx Virginiana). [328] Of doubtful application. Our Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) is the nearest North American ally of the English Skylark, but it is so differently colored that Morton probably had in mind some other species, perhaps the Titlark (Anthus ludovicianus). [329] Three species of Crows are found in New England: the Raven (Corvus carnivorus), now confined to the northern parts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; the Common Crow (Corvus Americanus); and the Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus), which occasionally wanders to Massachusetts from its true home in the Middle and Southern States. The latter may have been the Rook. “Kight” is a dubious appellation, possibly referring to the Swallow-tailed Kite (Nauclerus furcatus), now a rare straggler from the South, but formerly, as some ornithologists believe, of regular occurrence in New England. [330] The descriptions given for these Hawks are too vague to be of much use in determining species. A clew is often furnished by familiar terms of falconry, which, we may assume, would be naturally applied to American representatives of Old World forms. Morton, however, uses these terms very loosely, or, perhaps, with a regard to fine distinctions of meaning not now understood. In such a case nothing can be done beyond pointing out their accepted significance and probable application. [331] The male of Falco lanarius, a Falcon found in the southern and south-eastern parts of Europe, as well as in Western Asia and the adjoining portions of Africa. An American variety, the Prairie Falcon (Falco lanarius polyagrus), has a wide range in the West, but is not known to have occurred to the eastward of Illinois. The bird referred to by Morton is doubtless the Duck Hawk (Falco peregrinus), an allied species not uncommon in New England. [332] In the records of the Council for New England, under date of the 26th of November, 1635, or about the time that Morton was writing the New Canaan, is the following entry: “The Hawks brought over by Capt. Smart are to be presented to his Majesty on Saturday next, by the Lords of those Provinces. And the said Captain to be recommended to his Majestys service upon occasion of employments for his care and industry used to bring them over, and for other his services done in those parts.” [333] The Cockchafer. [334] I. e., like the Buzzard-Hawks of the genus Buteo, a sluggish tribe of Raptores. [335] Properly of general application to the genus Falco; if used specifically here there is no clew to its precise meaning. [336] Usually written tercel, and sometimes tiercel or tiërcel. The male of any hawk, so termed because he is a third smaller than the female, or, as some have thought, because it was believed that every third bird hatched was a male. The name, as used in falconry, almost always refers to the male Goshawk (Astur palumbarius), while with the addition of gentil, or gentle, it indicated the female or young of this species. The bird alluded to here is probably the American Goshawk (Astur atricapillus). [337] The American Sparrow Hawk (Falco sparverius), a small and richly colored Falcon, would be likely to be used for such a purpose. [338] If not applied to the male Goshawk (see note on “tassel gentles”), perhaps referring to Hawks of the genus Buteo, represented in New England by three species, Buteo borealis, B. lineatus and B. Pennsylvanicus. [339] If Morton always uses tassel in its commonly accepted sense (see preceding notes), another application must be sought for the present name. The accompanying text may relate to the Marsh Hawk (Circus cyaneus Hudsonius), the adult male of which is our whitest New England Hawk, and the young or female perhaps the reddest. The Marsh Hawk does not prey on full-grown poultry, but it may have been credited with depredations committed by other species, a piece of injustice by no means uncommon at the present day. [340] The Pigeon Hawk (Falco columbarius) is the New England representative of the European Merlin (Falco regulus). [341] Probably the Crow Blackbird (Quiscalus purpureus æneus). [342] The Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter fuscus), a common New England species closely allied to the European Sparrow Hawk (Accipiter nisus). Our Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperi) also may be referred to under this name. [343] The Ruby-throated Humming-bird (Trochilus colubris), our only New England species. The Humming-birds are peculiar to the New World; hence the wonder and interest with which they were regarded by the early explorers and colonists. There is a letter from Emanuel Downing to John Winthrop, Jr., of the 21st of November, 1632, in which is this paragraph: “You have a litle bird in your contrie that makes a humminge noyse, a little bigger then a bee, I pray send me one of them over, perfect in his fethers, in a little box.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 40e.) There are many descriptions of this bird in the earlier writers, though none that I have found so early as Downing’s letter. Wood says: “The Humbird is one of the wonders of the Countrey, being no bigger than a Hornet, yet hath all the dimensions of a Bird, as bill and wings, with quils, Spider-like legges, small clawes: For colour, shee is glorious as the Raine-bow; as shee flies, shee makes a little humming noise like a humble bee: wherefore she is called the Humbird.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 24.) Josselyn’s description is especially good: “The Humming Bird, the least of all Birds, little bigger than a Dor, of variable glittering Colours, they feed upon Honey, which they suck out of Blossoms and Flowers with their long Needle-like Bills; they sleep all Winter, and are not to be seen till the Spring, at which time they breed in little Nests, made up like a bottom of soft, Silk-like matter, their Eggs no bigger than a white Pease, they hatch three or four at a time, and are proper to this Country.” (New England’s Rarities, p. 6.) See also Clayton’s Letter, &c. (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 33). [344] For all the technical and scientific notes to this chapter I am indebted to Mr. Joel A. Allen, of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy of Harvard College. To the matter contributed by him I have merely added, as in the immediately preceding chapters, extracts from other writers, more or less contemporaneous with Morton, which seemed to me to be illustrative of the text, or in the same spirit with it. This chapter of Morton’s is more complete, though probably of less value, than Wood’s and Josselyn’s chapters on the same subject. [345] The Elke here mentioned is the Moose (Alces malchis) of American writers; it is specifically the same as the elk of Northern Europe. From Wood’s account (New England’s Prospect, p. 18), it would seem that the moose in Morton’s time ranged into eastern Massachusetts, though not found now south of northern Maine. The moose has but a single fawn at a birth, not three as stated in the text. Mr. Allen then adds to the above note: “I have met with no published record of the occurrence of the American Elk, or Wapiti Deer (Cervus Canadensis), in eastern Massachusetts. Since publishing a statement to this effect (Mem. Hist. Boston, vol. i. p. 10), however, I have learned through the kindness of a correspondent (Henry S. Nourse, Esq., of South Lancaster, Mass.,) that early in the eighteenth century sixteen elk were seen near a brook in South Lancaster, one of which was killed. The tradition is supported by the fact that the antlers of the individual killed were preserved in the family of the lucky hunter (Jonas Fairbanks) for a long period, and afterwards placed on the top of a guide-board, where they still remain, moss-grown and weather-worn by eighty years of sun and storm. Since the receipt of Mr. Nourse’s letter (dated Feb. 25, 1882), his account has been corroborated by information from another source. That the antlers mentioned belonged to an elk and not to a moose is beyond question.” [346] “The English have some thoughts of keeping them tame, and to accustome them to the yoake, which will be a great commoditie: First, because they are so fruitfull, bringing forth three at a time, being likewise very uberous. Secondly, because they will live in Winter without any fodder. There be not many of these in the Massachusetts Bay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 18.) There are very good descriptions of the Moose, and the methods pursued in hunting them, in Gorges’s Brief Relation (II. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix. p. 18) and in Josselyn’s Two Voyages, (pp. 88, 137). See, also, New England’s Rarities, p. 19. [347] The common Virginian Deer (Cariacus Virginianus), formerly more or less abundant throughout the eastern half of the United States. [348] The number of fawns produced at a birth is commonly two, sometimes one, and still more rarely three; although three is stated to be the usual number in various seventeenth-century accounts of the natural productions of New England, Virginia, &c. [349] Mourt, in his Relation (p. 8), records how Governor William Bradford, of Plymouth, was caught in one of these traps, and “horsed up by the leg,” when the first party from the Mayflower was exploring Cape Cod in November, 1620. Wood says: “An English Mare being strayed from her owner, and growne wild by her long sojourning in the woods ranging up and down with the wild crew, stumbled into one of these traps which stopt her speed, hanging her like Mahomet’s tombe, betwixt earth and heaven; the morning being come the Indians went to looke what good successe their Venison trapps had brought them, but seeing such a long scutted Deere, praunce in their Meritotter, they bade her good morrow, crying out, what cheere what cheere, Englishmans squaw horse; having no better epithete than to call her a woman horse, but being loath to kill her, and as fearefull to approach neere the friscadoes of her Iron heeles, they posted to the English to tell them how the case stood or hung with their squaw horse, who unhorsed their Mare, and brought her to her former tamenesse, which since hath brought many a good foale, and performed much good service.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 75.) Williams, in his Key (ch. xxvii.), describes how the deer caught in these traps were torn and devoured by wolves before the Indians came to secure them. See, also, Colonel Norwood’s Voyage to Virginia. (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 10, p. 39.) [350] Wesil, obsolete for weasand. [351] The “third sort of Deere,” of which the author evidently had no personal knowledge, is doubtless a myth, as the Virginia Deer is the only species of small deer found in the United States, south of New England, east of the Mississippi River. The statement that it is “lesse then the other” (i. e. Virginian Deer), together with the southern habitat assigned it, preclude reference to the Caribou of northern New England, which the name “rayne deare” otherwise suggests. [352] “They desire to be neare the Sea, so that they may swimme to the Islands when they are chased by the Woolves.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 18.) Deer Island is consequently a very common name along the New England coast; and of the island bearing that name in Boston harbor, now the site of the city reformatory institutions, Wood says: “This Iland is so called, because of the Deare which often swimme thither from the Maine, when they are chased by the woolves: some have killed sixteene Deere in a day upon this Iland.” Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 405. See, also, Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 464. [353] The Beaver (Castor fiber). The account of the way “they draw the logg to the habitation appoynted” is a fanciful exaggeration, hardly less ridiculous than the preceding statement about the precaution the animal takes in winter to preserve his tail! Cunny, mentioned in the first paragraph, is doubtless a seventeenth-century barbarism for cony, a name at this time commonly applied to the rabbit. The context, both here and in the account of the muskewashe, seems to imply this, although the word is correctly written cony in the paragraph relating to Hares. In some of the early accounts of Virginia, published in the first half of the seventeenth century, hares and cunnies are enumerated in the lists of animals, where the latter name evidently means cony or rabbit. Serat, in the same paragraph, is a term of much greater obscurity of application. [354] “The tail, as I have said in another Treatise, is very fat and of a masculine vertue, as good as Eringo’s or Satyrion-Roots.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 93.) [355] Bradford, writing of the year 1636, gives the following prices: “The coat beaver usualy at 20s. per pound, and some at 24s.; the skin at 15 and sometimes 16. I doe not remember any under 14. It may be the last year might be something lower” (p. 346). In 1671 Josselyn says: “A black Bears Skin heretofore was worth forty shillings, now you may have one for ten.” (Rarities, p. 14.) The following prices were named as ruling in Virginia in 1650; (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11, p. 52.) “Sables, from 8s. the payre, to 20s. a payre. “Otter skins, from 3s. to 5s. a piece. “Luzernes, from 2s. to 10. a piece. “Martins the best, 4s. a piece. “Fox skins, 6d. a piece. “Muske Rats skins, 2s. a dozen. “Bever skins that are full growne, in season, are worth 7s. a piece. “Bever skins, not in season, to allow two skins for one, and of the lesser, three for one. “Old Bever skins in mantles, gloves or caps, the more worne the better, so they be full of fur, the pound weight is 6s.” See infra, [207], note 4, and also [*80]. [356] The servant here referred to was probably Walter Bagnall, of Richmond Island, who was killed by Indians, Oct. 3, 1631. See infra, [218], note 1. [357] The common Otter (Lutra Canadensis), now of rare occurrence in the more settled parts of southern New England. [358] The Luseran, or Luseret, is the Bay Lynx, or Wild-cat (Lynx rufus). “The Ounce or the wild Cat, is as big as a mungrell dogge; this creature is by nature feirce, and more dangerous to bee met withall than any other creature, not feering either dogge or man; he useth to kill Deere which he thus effecteth: Knowing the Deeres tracts, he will lie lurking in long weedes, the Deere passing by he suddenly leapes upon his backe, from thence gets to his necke, and scratcheth out his throate: he hath likewise a devise to get Geese, for being much of the colour of a Goose, he will place himselfe close by the water, holding up his bob taile, which is like a Goose necke; the Geese seeing this counterfeiting Goose, approch nigh to visit him, who with a sudden jerke apprehends his mistrustlesse prey.” (New England’s Prospect, pp. 19, 20.) Josselyn says: “I once found six whole Ducks in the belly of one I killed by a Pond side.” (Rarities, p. 16.) [359] The Martin. Under this name are doubtless confounded the Marten (Mustela Americana) and the Fisher (M. Pennanti). The size, however, even in case the Fisher alone were referred to, is greatly overstated. [360] The Racowne is the common well-known Raccoon (Procyon lotor). [361] Josselyn says of the Raccoon: “their grease is soveraign for wounds with bruises, aches, streins, bruises; and to anoint after broken bones and dislocations.” (Two Voyages, p. 85.) A little further on (p. 92) he notes: “One Mr. Purchase cured himself of the Sciatica with Bears-greese, keeping some of it continually in his groine.” [362] The Redd Fox is our common Red Fox (Vulpes vulgaris, var. Pennsylvanicus). The Gray Fox is doubtless the Virginian or Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargentatus) of the South and West, an animal formerly occurring in New England but long since nearly extirpated. This is inferred from Josselyn’s account of the Jaccal (New England’s Rarities, p. 22), rather than from any clew given in Morton’s text. The absence of strong scent referred to relates to the Gray Fox, a character mentioned by Josselyn in his brief but sufficiently explicit description of his Jaccal. [363] “The Indians say they have black foxes, which they have often seen, but never could take any of them. They say they are Manittóoes, that is Gods, spirits, or divine powers, as they say of every thing which they cannot comprehend.” (Williams’s Key, ch. xvii.) The black fox-skin, Josselyn says (Rarities, p. 21), “heretofore was wont to be valued at fifty and sixty pound, but now you may have them for twenty shillings; indeed there is not any in New England that are perfectly black, but silver hair’d, that is sprinkled with gray hairs.” The black wolf’s skin, he says (ib. p. 16), “is worth a Beaver Skin among the Indians, being highly esteemed for helping old Aches in old people, worn as a Coat.” Of the foxes Wood remarks: “Some of these be blacke; their furre is of much esteeme.” (Prospect, p. 19.) Elsewhere he says that the fur of a black wolf was “worth five or sixe pounds Sterling.” (Ib. 20.) See, also, supra, [205], note 2. [364] The Wolf is the large Gray Wolf (Canis lupus), formerly abundant throughout New England, and well known to vary in color as mentioned by Morton. [365] “They be made much like a Mungrell, being big boned, lanke paunched, deepe breasted, having a thicke necke and head, pricke eares, and long snoute, with dangerous teeth, long staring haire, and a great bush taile.... It is observed that they have no joynts from their head to the taile, which prevents them from leaping or sudden turning.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 20.) See Josselyn’s Rarities, p. 14, and Two Voyages, p. 83. He says: “They commonly go in routs, a rout of Wolves is 12 or more, sometimes by couples.” Of the Virginia species, Clayton says: “Wolves there are great store; you may hear a Company Hunting in an Evening, and yelping like a pack of Beagles; but they are very cowardly, and dare scarce venture on anything that faces them; yet if hungry will pull down a good large Sheep that flies from them. I never heard that any of them adventured to set on Man or Child.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 37.) According to Strachey, these Virginia wolves were “not much bigger then English foxes.” (Historie, p. 125.) Wood, however, says that the Massachusetts wolves cared “no more for an ordinary Mastiffe, than an ordinary Mastiffe cares for a Curre; many good dogges have been spoyled by them.” Shortly after the landing from the Mayflower at Plymouth, John Goodman, one evening in January, “went abroad to use his lame feet, that were pitifully ill with the cold he had got, having a little spaniel with him. A little way from the plantation two great wolves ran after the dog; the dog ran to him and betwixt his legs for succour. He had nothing in his hand, but took up a stick and threw at one of them and hit him, and they presently ran both away, but came again. He got a pale-board in his hand; and they set both on their tails grinning at him a good while; and went their way and left him.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 178.) [366] Supra, [205], note 2, and [207], note 4. [367] The common Black Bear (Ursus Americanus). [368] “For Beares they be common, being a great black kind of Beare, which be most fierce in Strawberry time, at which time they have young ones; at this time likewise they will goe upright like a man, and clime trees, and swim to the Islands: which if the Indians see, there will be more sportful Beare bayting than Paris Garden can afford. For seeing the Beares take water, an Indian will leape after him, where they goe to water cuffes for bloody noses, and scratched sides; in the end the man gets the victory, riding the Beare over the watery plaine till he can beare him no longer.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 17.) “He makes his Denn amongst thick Bushes, thrusting in here and there store of moss, which being covered with snow and melting in the daytime with heat of the Sun, in the night is frozen into a thick coat of Ice; the mouth of his Den is very narrow, here they lye single, never two in a Den all winter. The Indian as soon as he finds them, creeps in upon all four, seizes with his left hand upon the neck of the sleeping Bear, drags him to the mouth of the Den, where with a club or small hatchet in his right hand he knocks out his brains before he can open his eyes to see his enemy.” (Two Voyages, p. 91.) Wood adds that bear’s flesh was “accounted very good meete, esteemed of all men above Venison.” Clayton says that “their flesh is commended for a very rich sort of Pork.” (Virginia, III. Force’s Tracts No. 12, p. 37.) “Beares there be manie towardes the sea-coast, which the Indians hunt most greedily; for indeed they love them above all other their flesh, and therefore hardly sell any of them unto us, unles upon large proffers of copper, beads and hatchetts. We have eaten of them, and they are very toothsome sweet venison, as good to be eaten as the flesh of a calfe of two yeares old; howbeit they are very little in comparison of those of Muscovia and Tartaria.” (Strachey’s Historie, p. 123.) See, also, Josselyn’s New England’s Rarities, pp. 13-14, and Two Voyages, pp. 91-2. [369] The well-known Muskrat or Musquash (Fiber zibethicus) of our ponds. The “stones” are the oder glands. In respect to Cunny, see supra [204], note 2. [370] The Porcupine is the Canadian Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus). [371] The Hedgehogg is the same as the Porcupine, the author being in error in regarding it as “of the like nature to our English Hedgehoggs.” The English Hedgehog belongs to a very different order of mammals, and has no representative in America. [372] The Conyes are Hares, the small ones of the “Southerne parts” being the little Gray Hare or Wood Rabbit (Lepus sylvaticus) of southern New England. Those of “the North” are the Varying Hare (Lepus Americanus), or White Rabbit, which is brown in summer and white in winter. The reference to black ones is an error, wild black hares being unknown except in cases of Melanism, which are of extremely rare occurrence. We have no species of hare which is black. Rabbit, it may be added, is a name not strictly applicable to any indigenous mammal of America, it being the vernacular specific designation of an Old World species of hare. [373] The “Squirils of three sorts” are (1) the Gray Squirrel (Sciurus Carolinensis); (2) the Red Squirrel, or Chickaree (S. Hudsonius); (3) the Flying Squirrel (Sciuropterus volucellus). A fourth kind, the Striped Squirrel, or Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) is not mentioned. The “batlike winges” are of course neither batlike, nor even wings at all, but merely a narrow furred membrane extending along the sides of the body, from the fore to the hind limbs. [374] [and] See supra, [111], note 1. [375] “1639. May, which fell out to be extream hot and foggie, about the middle of May, I kill’d within a stones throw of our house, above four score Snakes, some of them as big as the small of my leg, black of colour, and three yards long, with a sharp horn on the tip of their tail two inches in length.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 22-3.) [376] Mr. J. H. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s ascowke is Eliot’s askook, R. Williams’s askùg, ‘a snake.’ In Zeifberger’s Delaware, achgook; whence (through Heckewelder) Cooper’s Chingachgook, ‘the Great Serpent,’ in the Last of the Mohicans.” [377] Williams, in his Key, gives the name as Sések. See, also, Mr. Trumbull’s note in his edition of the Key (p. 130), in the publications of the Narragansett Society. Wood gives it as seasicke. (Prospect, p. 86.) [378] The stories first told in Europe of the Rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus) were of the most exaggerated kind. He was described as a reptile of prodigious size, which could fly, and which poisoned by its breath. (New England’s Prospect, p. 39.) The first mention of this snake in Massachusetts is found in Higginson’s New England’s Plantation [1630]. It is as follows: “This country being very full of woods and wildernesses, doth also much abound with snakes and serpents, of strange colors and huge greatness. Yea, there are some serpents, called rattlesnakes, that have rattles in their tails, that will not fly from a man as others will, but will fly upon him and sting him so mortally that he will die within a quarter of an hour after, except the party stinged have about him some of the root of an herb called snake-weed to bite on, and then he shall receive no harm.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 255.) Wood gives an admirable description of the rattlesnake (Prospect, pp. 38-9), and also speaks of “the Antidote to expel the poyson, which is a root caled Snake weede, which must be champed, the spittle swallowed, and the roote applied to the sore.... Five or six men have been bitten by them, which by using of snakeweede were all cured, never any yet losing his life by them.” Josselyn, in his Rarities (p. 39), says: “The Indians when weary with travelling, will take them up with their bare hands, laying hold with one hand behind their Head, with the other taking hold of their Tail, and with their teeth tear off the Skin of their backs, and feed upon them alive; which they say refresheth them.” He further says that the heart of the rattlesnake “swallowed fresh” (Rarities, p. 39), or “dried and pulverized and drunk with wine or beer” (Voyages, p. 114), is an antidote against its poison. In Clayton’s Virginia (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 39), there is a very entertaining passage, too long to extract, on Rattlesnakes, and the use of East India snake-stones “that were sent [to Virginia] by King James the Second, the Queen, and some of the Nobility, purposely to try their Virtue and Efficacy,” at curing the bite of vipers, &c. [379] The Mice, which our author found in “good store,” belong chiefly to three species,—namely, the common short-tailed Meadow Mouse (Arvicola riparius), the White-footed Mouse, or Deer Mouse (Hesperomys leucopus), and the Long-tailed Jumping Mouse, or Kangaroo Mouse (Zapus Hudsonius). The common House Mouse (Mus musculus) is an exotic pest, which doubtless had not at that time made its appearance. Morton is quite right in stating: “but for Rats, the Country by Nature is troubled with none.” The Black Rat (Mus rattus) was quite early introduced, but the Gray, Wharf, or Norway Rat (Mus decumanus) probably did not make its appearance till fully a century after Morton wrote his New English Canaan. [380] Morton, as was natural for a keen sportsman who had himself been in the tropics, was wiser on the subject of Lions than other Englishmen in New England. From the first landing at Plymouth, when John Goodman and Peter Browne, getting lost in the woods, heard “two lions roaring exceedingly,” down to 1639, when Josselyn heard “of a young Lyon (not long before) kill’d at Pascataway by an Indian,” there were vague stories of these animals having been either seen or heard in the New England woods. Josselyn argued on the great probability that there were lions because there were jackals (Rarities, p. 21); and Wood said that “the Virginians saw an old Lyon in their Plantation, who having lost his Iackall, which was wont to hunt his prey, was brought so poore that he could goe no further.” (Prospect, p. 17.) Strachey speaks of having found the skins and claws of lions in the hands of the Indians. (Historie, p. 124.) The animal referred to in all these cases was doubtless the Panther or Catamount (Felis concolor). On this subject see also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 176, note; Tuckerman’s New England’s Rarities, p. 57, note; and the Mem. History of Boston, vol. i. p. 9. [381] For the scientific and technical notes to this chapter I am indebted to Professor N. S. Shaler of Harvard University. As in the three preceding chapters, certain other notes of my own have been added, which are of a wholly different character, and will readily be distinguished from Professor Shaler’s. [382] The marble of Marble Harbor, or Marblehead, is not, in the present sense of the word, a marble at all, but is, in fact, a porphyry. In the old sense of the word it designated any smooth-striped or spotted stones, such as are found there. [383] No limestone, good or bad, is known to exist on the Monatoquit now; the nearest limestone is at Bear (or Bare) Hill, in Stoneham. [384] There is a locality in East Braintree, included in the Wainwright estate, at the foot of Wyman’s Hill and facing the Weymouth Fore-river, into which the Monatoquit flows, where is a quarry from which stone bearing some external resemblance to limestone was formerly taken for ballast. This place has always been locally called the Quaw, though the origin and meaning of the name have never been known. It would seem that this must be the place referred to in the text, and that Quaw, or Quor, is a corruption of the Indian Attaquatock. [385] There are no “chalke stones” at Squanto’s Chapelle, i.e., Squantum, or anywhere else in this part of the world. Morton may possibly have mistaken pebbles of decayed felspar for chalk. [386] There is some slate in Quincy and Weymouth that might be used for roofing, and a quarry of it was long worked for material for gravestones, &c., on Squantum Bay, a mile or so from Mount Wollaston; but it is slate of a very poor sort. The nearest workable slate is in Vermont and Maine. [387] This passage is more than usually confused, even for Morton. It is difficult to say whether he is perpetrating a clumsy joke, or indulging in a malicious insinuation. John Billington was hanged at Plymouth in September, 1630, being apparently the second person so executed in what is now Massachusetts, the first having been executed at Weymouth during the winter of 1622-3. (Infra, [*108-10].) The man shot by Billington, and for whose murder he was hung, was John New-comin (Bradford, p. 277), whence Morton’s play upon the name. Billington had two sons, but he was by no means “beloved.” As Bradford, writing about him as early as 1625, said, “he is a knave,” adding prophetically “and so will live and die.” (Savage’s Winthrop, vol. i. p. *36). Why Morton should have called him “Ould Woodman” is not clear. From his immediately going on to talk of the “woodden prospect,” and the wish of its author to secure for himself a monopoly of the Richmond Island whetstones, which “Ould Woodman labored to get a patent of,” it would seem as if he had intended to convey the idea that William Wood, the author of the New England’s Prospect, was one of the “many sonnes” of “Old Woodman,” who had been hanged at Plymouth. That such was Morton’s intention, however, is not clear. The passage is muddled, but not necessarily malicious. [388] The words quoted are not Ovid’s, but Virgil’s. Eclogues, viii. 43. [390] Josselyn, in his Two Voyages (p. 202), speaks of the “excellent whetstones” then (1670) found at Richmond Island. “There is a species of slate quite abundant on Richmond’s Island, and some other Islands in Casco Bay, which has been used for oil-stones. Josselyn, in his Voyages, says that ‘tables of slate could be got out long enough for a dozen men to sit at.’” See a communication on this passage of the New Canaan, signed J. P. B., in the Portland Press of January 2, 1883. Professor Shaler adds: “It is interesting to note the fact that Morton saw that whetstones could be made the basis for trade. Stones suitable for this purpose are rare in Europe, and to-day a New Hampshire company ships large quantities to Europe and even to Australia.” [391] Richmond Island lies directly south-east of Cape Elizabeth and close to it. From what Morton says in the next chapter and elsewhere (infra, [*149]), it would seem that before his arrest by Standish in June, 1628,—that is, in the summer of 1627,—he had a fur station on the coast of Maine. (Supra, [23].) Winthrop, writing under date of October 22, 1631, mentions the murder of “Walter Bagnall, called Great Watt, and one John P—— who kept with him,” by the Indians at Richmond Island. He adds: “This Bagnall was sometimes servant to one in the bay, and these three years had dwelt alone in the said isle, and had gotten about £400 most in goods. He was a wicked fellow, and had much wronged the Indians.” (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *63). Bagnall would, from this, appear to have been one of Morton’s servants at Mount Wollaston, as he alone in “the bay,” at that time, had any number of servants, or was engaged in trade on the Maine coast. As Bagnall was killed in 1631, and had then lived alone at Richmond Island three years, he seems to have taken up his abode there in 1628, the time of the breaking up of the company at Mount Wollaston by Standish and Endicott, and the settlement at Richmond Island was thus the Maine offshoot of that at Merry-mount. Bagnall was probably that one of Morton’s servants who, he says, was reputed, when he died, to have made a thousand pounds in the fur trade in five years, “whatsoever became of it.” (Supra, [*78]). Morton’s expression here of “five years” agrees with Winthrop’s “three years,” and confirms this surmise. Bagnall had died in 1631. Morton had gotten control at Mount Wollaston in 1626. (Supra, [15].) Bagnall had remained there as his servant two years, until 1628; then had been frightened away and gone to Richmond Island, where he had lived three years more, as Winthrop says,—making in all Morton’s five years. In his phrase “whatsoever became of it” Morton characteristically throws out an insinuation in regard to Bagnall’s possessions. He probably meant to imply some underhand proceeding to get hold of them on the part of the Massachusetts Bay people. Recently a theory has been advanced in the Maine press, that Bagnall was an Episcopalian, and competitor in trade of the Massachusetts Company; and that Winthrop and his associates, not being able otherwise to get rid of him, compassed his death by indirect means. (See a letter of S. P. Mayberry in Portland Press of Jan. 9, 1883.) Winthrop says that most of the possessions in question were in goods. A portion would naturally be in the form of money, and it was left for the present generation to form a most plausible surmise as to “whatsoever became” of some of this money. On May 11, 1855, an old stone pot was turned up by the ploughshare, on Richmond Island, containing fifty-two coins; and Mr. Willis, the historian of Portland, then took occasion, in a letter to the Massachusetts Historical Society (Proceedings, May 1857, pp. 183-8), to “express the belief that the money [was] connected with the fate of Walter Bagnall, who was killed by Sagamore Squidraket and his party, Oct. 3, 1631.” There was nothing to show that any of the coins were of a later date than 1631. A patent for Richmond Island, together with fifteen hundred acres on the main land, was issued to Bagnall by the Council for New England, Dec. 2, 1631, just three months after his death. (Records of the Council, pp. 51-2.) Morton was then in England, and unquestionably in communication with Gorges. (Supra, [49].) [392] Doubtless the magnetic iron oxides. None of these are known to me nearer than in the mountains forming the westerly part of the Berkshire Hills, from New York City to the Adirondacks, except in Cumberland, R. I., where there is some iron of this nature. [393] No ironstones are known around Massachusetts bay; the nearest deposits are in Rhode Island. [394] Small quantities of galena ore have been found in Woburn and that vicinity. There are some localities near Newburyport where the savages may have found small quantities of galena. [395] Black leade is doubtless plumbago, or graphite; it is found in Wrentham and in Worcester, Mass., as well as at various points in Rhode Island. [396] Red leade is doubtless an ochre, such as may have been found near Cranston, R. I. [397] Boll armoniack is the Bolus armeniaca of the old apothecaries. Bolus is the prefix to several old pharmacopial names, having lost its original special signification and come to be a given term for all lumpy substances. Here it means a sort of reddish clay, such as may be used for marking,—a clayey ochre such as may have come from about Providence, R. I. [398] Vermilion oxide of mercury is not known to occur this side of the Rocky Mountains. It is likely that he mistook some brilliant ochre for true vermilion. It may be, however, that the aborigines traded for it with western tribes. Their copper implements probably came from Lake Superior. Many evidences of almost as wide a commerce could be adduced. [399] Brimstone, or sulphur, does not exist in its metallic state this side of the Cordilleras. He may have seen some pyrite-bearing schists, such as occur in Maine, which in dumping give a sulphuric smell. [400] Tin does not occur in this region. Some localities are known in Maine and elsewhere in New England, but they could hardly have been found by the Savages, or known to Morton. [401] Copper in its metallic state, the only form in which he would have recognized it, does not occur about Massachusetts Bay. A very little of it has been found in Cumberland, R. I., in the valley of the Blackstone River. [402] No silver, except when combined with lead and zinc ore, has ever been found in this district. Some occurs in the district from Woburn to Newburyport. Metallic silver could not have been known to the natives. The nearest localities for metallic gold are the streams of Vermont, New Hampshire, and western Maine, in which district placer gold occurs in considerable quantities, and some auriferous quartz veins are known. Professor Shaler adds to his foregoing notes: “The general impression which I get from the writer is that he was a bad observer, but not more untruthful than most of the seventeenth century travellers. He does not say that gold or silver had been seen by him, and limits his hearsay evidence to a single mine. Except for the extraordinary stuff about the whetstones,—wherein we may perhaps see something of the Maypole humor,—it is, for its time, a rather sober and reasonable story.” [403] This is the name by which Morton invariably designates John Endicott. For reasons which have been explained in the preliminary matter to this edition of the New Canaan (supra, pp. [38-42]), its author felt—and, as will be seen, never missed an opportunity to express—a peculiar bitterness towards Endicott. [404] For the notes to this chapter I am indebted to Theodore Lyman, of the Massachusetts Fish Commission. Higginson, in his New England’s Plantation, has a passage on Fish (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 248-51), and Williams, in his Key, devotes a chapter (xix.) to the same subject. Wood again, in his Prospect (pp. 27-31), deals with it in his peculiar manner, and Josselyn, both in his Voyages (pp. 104-15) and in his Rarities (pp. 22-37), devotes a good deal of space to the enumeration of the different kinds of New England fishes, their peculiarities, and the methods of taking them. In editing the Rarities, Mr. Tuckerman remarked that he had “little to offer in elucidation of the list [of fishes], which, indeed, in good part, appears sufficiently intelligible,”—a remark equally applicable to the present chapter of the New Canaan. [405] Portland Harbor. See supra, [218], note 1. [406] This proves that the local Cod, i. e., those that breed close to the shore, have much decreased; and this partly by over-fishing, and partly by the falling-off of their food in the form of young fishes coming to the sea from rivers and brooks. [407] This is perhaps the first mention in America of cod-liver oil, now so much used in medicine. [408] The Striped Bass (Labrax). The Bass mentioned four paragraphs below, as chasing mackerel “into the shallow waters,” may perhaps be the Bluefish (Temnodon). [409] This is either an expression which has wholly passed out of use, or else a misprint. Probably the latter. It may, however, also be surmised that Morton characteristically coined a word from the Latin, and here meant to refer to the various large fish in New England waters, such as the Horse Mackerel (Thynnus secundo dorsalis), the Mackerel Shark (Lamna punctata), and the common Dogfish (Acanthias Americanus), all of which follow schools of mackerel, bass, &c., into shoal waters and prey upon them. [410] “These Macrills are taken with drailes, which is a long small line, with a lead and a hooke at the end of it, being baited with a peece of a red cloath.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 30.) This instrument still bears the same name and is used in the same way. [411] When caught in the Thames, within the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London, the Sturgeon (Acipenser) is a royal fish reserved for the sovereign. “The Sturgeon is a Regal fish too, I have seen of them that have been sixteen foot in lenghth.” (Jossel., Two Voyages, p. 105.) [412] But little attention has been paid as yet in the United States to the Sturgeon fisheries, in spite of their great abundance. [413] [jieele.] See supra, [111], note 1. [414] “There be a greate store of Salt water Eeles, especially in such places where grasse growes: for to take these there be certaine Eele pots made of Osyers, which must be baited with a peece of Lobster, into which the Eeles entering cannot returne backe againe; some take a bushell in a night in this maner, eating as many as they have neede of for the present, and salt up the rest against Winter. These Eeles be not of so luscious a tast as they be in England, neither are they so aguish, but are both wholsom for the body, and delightfull for the taste.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 30.) [415] Morton confounds the Shad (Alosa præstabilis), or Allize (corruption of the French Alose), with the smaller Alewife. This, with the Smelt and the Eel, are among the few shore fishes that are still found in comparative plenty. The Menhaden is used in our time to set corn. [416] At the present time the Halibut (Hippoglossus) is seldom caught near the shore or in shoal water. It is taken by the Gloucester fishermen along the outer banks, in depths of a hundred to two hundred fathoms. The New England Turbot (Lophopsetta) of our coasts is a different fish, and rarely ventures to the north of Cape Cod. The fishermen frequently sell our turbot as chicken-halibut. [417] The Flounder (Pseudopleuronectes), whereof there are several species. [418] Hake (Phycis) are still somewhat common. [419] Morton probably means the Menhaden (Brevoortia). The European Pilchard, the adult of the Sardine, is not found on our coast. [420] Probably the Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax dilophus). The Common Cormorant (P. carbo) also occurs in New England, but it is rare to the southward of Maine. Both species breed abundantly on rocky shores about the Gulf of St. Lawrence and northward, visiting New England waters during the autumn and winter. While with us they are exclusively maritime, frequenting by choice the vicinity of outlying ledges and small, rocky islands. When passing from place to place, they often fly in large flocks, which are usually arranged in long lines or single files. They live on fish, which they capture by diving. [421] This paragraph, and the one on clams immediately following it, throw considerable light on the formation of the shell-heaps, a question which has been recently much discussed. See the paper of Professor F. W. Putnam, read at the meeting of the Maine Historical Society in Portland, in December, 1882, which will appear in the report of the proceedings of that meeting in the Collections of the Society. [422] We, in this country, have not retained the European taste for mussels and for razor-shells (Solen). [423] The eating of scallops (Pecten) has been revived within a few years. [424] A strong spirit of emulation existed in the early years of the seventeenth century, between the advocates of New England and those of Virginia, as sites for colonization. Morton was always a stanch New Englander, and in this chapter, as well as in those which immediately precede and follow it, he loses no opportunity to assert the superiority of the Massachusetts climate and products over those of the country further south. It is needless to point out that his advocacy led him into ludicrously wild statements. [425] There is no natural spring of any kind at Mount Wollaston, though water is easily obtained by digging. [426] Winnisimmet, the Indian name of Chelsea. Upon the significance of the name Mr. Trumbull writes: “I have my doubts about Morton’s Weenasemute, but am inclined to believe that his interpretation is founded on fact. Ashim (= asim, in local dialect) is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for ‘fountain.’ It denotes a place from which water (for drinking) is taken. Winn’ashim, or Winn’asim, means ‘the good fountain,’ or spring; and Winn’asim-ut (or et) is ‘at the good spring.’ The efficacy of the water ‘to cure barrenness’ may have been Morton’s embellishment, but not improbably was an Indian belief.” [427] Squantum, in Quincy. [428] This is a gross exaggeration. Thomas Wiggin, in November, 1622, wrote: “For the plantation in Mattachusetts, the English there being about 2000 people, yonge and old.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Writing on May 22, 1634, about the time Morton referred to (Supra, [78]), Governor Winthrop says: “For the number of our people, we never took any surveigh of them, nor doe we intend it, except inforced throughe urgent occasion (David’s example stickes somewhat with us) but I esteeme them to be in all about 4000: soules and upwarde.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Dec. 14, 1882.) So in the New England’s Prospect (p. 42), Wood speaks of the population of Massachusetts as “foure thousand soules.” In the spring of 1634 there may have been five hundred persons in the Plymouth colony, and as many more in New Hampshire and Maine, making a total New England population of five thousand at the time Morton was writing. When the New Canaan was published, however, in 1637, the population undoubtedly was as large as 12,000. [430] This astounding proposition was in the early days of the settlement not peculiar to Morton. Higginson, in his New Englands Plantation, speaks of the “extraordinary clear and dry air, that is of a most healing nature to all such as are of a cold, melancholy, phlegmatic, rheumatic temper of body,” and concludes what he has to say on the subject with his often-quoted sentiment that “a sup of New-England’s air is better than a whole draught of Old England’s ale.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 251-2.) Williams, too, says in his Key (ch. xiii.): “The Nor-West wind (which occasioneth New-England cold) comes over the cold frozen Land, and over many millions of Loads of Snow: and yet the pure wholesomnesse of the Aire is wonderfull, and the warmth of the Sunne, such in the sharpest weather, that I have often seen the Natives Children runne about starke naked in the coldest dayes.” Again, in the pamphlet entitled New England’s First Fruits, printed in London in 1643, it was stated, in reply to the objection of extreme winter cold, that “the cold there is no impediment to health, but very wholsome for our bodies, insomuch that all sorts generally, weake and strong, had scarce ever such measure of health in all their lives as there.... Men are seldome troubled in winter with coughes and Rheumes.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 249.) Josselyn, however, writing nearly thirty years later, remarks: “Some of our New-England writers affirm that the English are never, or very rarely, heard to sneeze or cough, as ordinarily they do in England, which is not true.” (Two Voyages, p. 184.) [433] Wood in his Prospect (p. 2), referring to the approach to Boston Bay from Cape Anne, had said: “The surrounding shore being high, and showing many white Cliffes, in a most pleasant prospect.” [434] The Second Book of the New Canaan, it would seem, originally ended with this chapter. The next chapter was an afterthought of the author, written before December, 1635, as is evident from the allusions in it to events then taking place. (Supra, [78].) Wood’s Prospect was published in 1634, and the constant references to it in the first two books of the New Canaan show that they were both written subsequent to its publication, probably during that year. In the Third Book there are no allusions to the Prospect, and the reference to the Third Book in the Second (Supra, [*51]), to which attention has already been called, show that it must have been written before the others, and probably during the year 1633. It would seem to have been completed in May, 1634. There is, however, also a reference to be found in the Third Book to the Second (Infra, [*120]), but it was probably interpolated during a revisal of the manuscript. [435] Now Lake Champlain. “By the Indians north of the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, it was called the Lake of the Iroquois, as likewise the River Richelieu, connecting it and the River St. Lawrence, they called the River of the Iroquois. Champlain discovered the lake in 1609, and gave it his own name. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. ii. pp. 210-20; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, p. 316.) On some of the early maps it is put down ‘Lake Champlain or Irocoise.’ It is so called in Purchas’s Pilgrims (vol. iv. p. 1643). The region about the lake was sometimes called Irocosia. The Iroquois lived on the south of the lake, and, as their enemies on the north approached them through this lake, they naturally called it the Lake of the Iroquois.” (MS. letter of Rev. E. F. Slafter.) [436] The measurement and distance here given are very nearly correct. Lake Champlain is 126 miles long by about 14 in width at its broadest part. Burlington is not far from 240 miles from Boston. [437] In regard to the imaginary attractions and advantages of Laconia and its great lake, see Belknap’s American Biography, vol. i. p. 377. [438] The two brothers, William and Emery de Caen, became prominent in the history of Canadian settlement in 1621, and remained so for a number of years. They did not, however, plant a colony of French in America, nor was the name of Canada, or of its famous river, derived from their name. On this point see Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 184, note, and 391-5. Morton’s derivation of the name Canada is entitled to much the same weight as his derivation of the names Pantucket and Mattapan. (Supra, [124].) It was not, however, peculiar to him as, forty years later, Josselyn also speaks (Rarities, p. 5) of “the River Canada, (so called from Monsieur Cane).” [439] On the breaking out of the war between England and France in 1627, under the influence of Buckingham, Sir William Alexander had been instrumental in organizing an expedition to seize the French possessions in America. At its head were three Huguenots of Dieppe,—David, Louis and Thomas Kirk, brothers. The expedition was successful, and on the 20th of July, 1629, Champlain surrendered Quebec to Louis Kirk. Daniel Kirk, the admiral of the expedition, returned to England in November of the same year; but his brother Thomas remained in Canada and held Quebec as an English conquest until July, 1632, when, in accordance with the conditions of the peace of April 14, 1629, it was restored to France. See Kirke’s First English Conquest of Canada, pp. 63-93; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 401-11; also Mr. Deane’s note in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1875-6, pp. 376-7. [440] The number of beaver-skins really carried to England by Kirk was seven thousand. (Kirke’s First English Conquest of Canada, p. 85.) [441] It is unnecessary to say that Morton was here writing at random. He confounds the Potomac with the Hudson, though, a few paragraphs further on (Infra, [*99]), he states the facts in regard to the latter river correctly; and the latitude he gives has no significance, being that of Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, and Cleveland, on Lake Erie. The Potomac nowhere flows so far north as 40°. The falls referred to are probably those of Niagara. They had not then been discovered (Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, p. 142), though vague reports concerning them had reached the French through the Indians, and they are plainly indicated on Champlain’s map of 1629. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. i. p. 271, note.) Some loose stories in regard to the rivers, falls, lakes and islands of the interior had been picked up by Morton, probably in his talks with seamen and others who had taken part in Kirk’s expedition. He certainly fell in with these in London, and it is more than likely that at the house of Gorges he saw Champlain’s map of 1629; though upon that the falls are placed at 43½ degrees of latitude, instead of at 41½. In 1634 there was no other map. On the strength of the information thus gathered, he made the statements contained in this chapter. The little he knew had been obtained in England, after his return there in 1631; for the Massachusetts Indians can hardly have known much of the remote interior, and in 1630 no attempts even at exploration away from the seashore had been made by the straggling occupants of the New England coast. [442] The stories here referred to probably came from the Indians of Connecticut and Maine, and referred to the rivers and lakes of New England, but were afterwards supposed to have had a wider significance. [443] Williams (Key, 64) gives Macháug as the Indian word for No, but it really signifies no-thing (Key, 182). Matta, as Morton gives it, is the simple negative. [444] Henry Josselyn was a brother of John Josselyn, author of New Englands Rarities and the Two Voyages to New England, frequently quoted in the notes to this edition of the New Canaan. He came out from England in the interest of Mason, as stated in the text, in 1634, and passed the remainder of his life in Maine, living at Black Point in the town of Scarborough. He died in 1683. He was deputy-governor of the province, and one of the most active and influential men in it, holding, through all changes of proprietorship and government, the most important offices. See Mr. Tuckerman’s Introduction to the New Englands Rarities; Hist. of Cumberland County, Maine, p. 362. [445] Of Captain John Mason of New Hampshire and the Laconia enterprise, it is not necessary to speak at length in this connection. Mason was the most prominent character in the early history of New Hampshire, and the loss which his death, in December 1635, entailed on the projects of Gorges and Morton has already been referred to (Supra, [76]). The late Charles W. Tuttle, of Boston was at the time of his death engaged in preparing a life of Mason, which would unquestionably have been a valuable addition to the history of the settlement of New England. The material he had collected is now in the possession of his family. In regard to the Laconia Company and its projects, see Belknap’s American Biography, under the title Gorges, and Mr. Deane’s note in the Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1875-6, pp. 376-80. [446] Wood’s statement here referred to is found on the first page of the Prospect, and is as follows: “The Place whereon the English have built their Colonies, is judged by those who have best skill in discovery, either to bee an Island, surrounded on the North side with the spacious River Cannada, and on the South with Hudsons River, or else a Peninsula, these two Rivers overlapping one another, having their rise from the great Lakes which are not farre off one another, as the Indians doe certainly informe us.” [447] In 1631 no less than 15,174 skins, the greater portion beaver, were exported from the New Netherlands, valued at about £12,000. (O’Callaghan’s New Netherland, p. 139.) [448] The Nipmucks, or Nipnets, inhabited the present county of Worcester. (Hist. of Worcester County, vol. i. p. 8.) [449] This is a confused, rambling account of the familiar Indian incidents which took place during the first year after the landing at Plymouth. There is nothing of historical value in it, and nothing which has not been more accurately and better told by Bradford, Winslow, Mourt and Smith. [450] Captain Thomas Hunt, who commanded one of the vessels of Smith’s squadron, in his voyage of 1614. (Bradford, p. 95.) [451] Morton, in this chapter, confounds Samoset with Squanto. It was Squanto who was kidnapped by Hunt and had been in England, but it was Samoset who walked into the Plymouth settlement, on the 26th of March [N. S.], 1621, and saluted the planters with “wellcome in the English phrase.” Squanto was a native of Plymouth, but Samoset belonged at Pemaquid, in Maine. (Mourt, Dexter’s ed., note 295, p. 83.) Hence Morton speaks of his having been detained by Massasoit as a captive. He apparently came to Massachusetts the year before on Captain Dermer’s vessel, in company with Squanto. Dr. Dexter is seriously in error in his account of Squanto in note 315 of his edition of Mourt. Squanto could not have been one of the Weymouth captives of 1605. [452] This is the familiar anecdote of Squanto. (Bradford, p. 113; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 292.) [454] The most connected account of Thomas Weston and his abortive plantation at Wessagusset, already referred to (Supra, [2]), is that contained in Adams’s Address on the 250th Anniversary of the Settlement of Weymouth, pp. 5-22. Winslow in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., Bradford, and Phinehas Pratt (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv.) are the original authorities. [455] This is a wholly confused and misleading account of the skirmish which took place between the Plymouth party, under command of Miles Standish, and the Massachusetts Indians living near Wessagusset, immediately after the killing of Pecksuot and Wituwamat, in March, 1623. The correct account of the affair is in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 341. Why Morton speaks of it as a battle between the English and the French is inexplicable. [456] See supra, pp. [11], [162], [170]. The Plymouth people may have despoiled the grave of Chickatawbut’s mother of its bear-skins during some one of their earlier visits to Boston Bay. Their last visit to those parts, prior to the “battle” spoken of in this chapter, was in November, 1622 (Young’s Chron. of Pilg. p. 302), when they got little in the way of supplies, and heard nothing but complaints from the Indians of Weston’s people, who had then been several months at Wessagusset. It is far more probable that these latter stripped the grave at Passonagessit. In any event there can be little doubt that Morton himself had visited the spot while taking his “survey of the country” during the previous summer (Supra, [6]), and it is quite clear that the despoiling the grave had no connection with the subsequent “battle,” in which Chickatawbut took no part. [457] “Insomuch as our men could have but one certain mark, and then but the arm and half face of a notable villain, as he drew [his bow] at Captain Standish; who, together with another both discharged at once at him, and brake his arm.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 341.) [458] This is the famous Wessagusset hanging which Butler introduced into his poem of Hudibras (Canto II. lines 409-36), in the passage already referred to (Supra, [96]). It is as follows:— “Our Brethren of New-England use Choice malefactors to excuse, And hang the Guiltless in their stead, Of whom the Churches have less need; As lately ’t happen’d: In a town There liv’d a Cobler, and but one, That out of Doctrine could cut Use, And mend men’s lives as well as shoes. This precious Brother having slain, In times of peace an Indian, (Not out of malice, but mere zeal, Because he was an Infidel), The mighty Tottipottymoy Sent to our Elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league held forth by Brother Patch, Against the articles in force Between both churches, his and ours, For which he craved the Saints to render Into his hands, or hang th’ offender; But they maturely having weigh’d They had no more but him o’ th’ trade, (A man that served them in a double Capacity, to teach and cobble), Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do The Indian Hoghan Moghan too Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old Weaver that was bed rid.” That a man was hung at Wessagusset, in March 1623, for stealing corn from the Indians, there can be no doubt. There is equally little doubt that it was the real thief who was hung. (Pratt’s Relation, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 491; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 332; Bradford, p. 130.) I have already (Supra, [96]) given my own theory as to how the incident came to take the shape it did in Butler’s poem. He wrote, I think, from a vague recollection of an amusing traveller’s-story, which he had heard told somewhere years before. There is no reason to suppose that he had ever seen the New Canaan. It has always been assumed that Butler’s version of the affair,—the vicarious execution version,—coming out as it did in 1664, at a period of violent reaction against Puritanism, and when the New England colonies were in extreme popular disfavor,—obtained a foothold in English popular tradition; much such a foothold, in fact, as the Connecticut Blue Laws. It was an intangible something, always at hand to be cast as a mocking reproach in the face of a sanctimonious community. As such it was sure to be resented and disproved; but never by any disproof could it be exorcised from the popular mind, or finally set at rest. This may have been the case, and the references to the matter in Hutchinson (vol. i. p. 6, note), in Hubbard (p. 77), and in Grahame (Ed. 1845, vol. i. p. 202, note), certainly look that way. I do not remember, however, to have myself ever met this particular charge among the many and singular charges, much more absurd, which English writers have from time to time gravely advanced against America. In Uring’s Voyages (p. 116-8) there is a singular account of a similar vicarious execution, which never could have met the eye of the author of Hudibras, inasmuch as it was not published until 1726; but it shows that either some such event did take place, or that its having taken place was at one period a stock traveller’s-tale. [459] Three of Weston’s company were among the Massachusetts Indians at the time of the Wessagusset killing; one of the three had before domesticated himself with them; the other two, disregarding Standish’s orders, had straggled off, the day before the massacre, to a neighboring Indian village. After the massacre the savages put all three to death by torture. (Pratt’s Narrative, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 486; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 344.) [460] Will Sommers was the famous jester and court fool of Henry VIII. His witticisms are frequently met with in the plays and annals of the period; and the portrait, said to be by Holbein and of him, looking through a window and tapping on the glass, was formerly a prominent feature in the gallery at Hampton Court. It is very questionable, however, whether the story alluded to in the text belongs to Sommers. He had been dead eighty years or more when Morton wrote, and the stories connected with him had been gotten together by Armin, and printed in his Nest of Ninnies, in 1608. This book Morton had probably seen. In it there is a story of another famous fool, Jack Oates, of an earlier period, which is probably the one Morton had in mind. Oates is represented as giving an earl, the guest of his patron, Sir William Hollis, “a sound box on the ear,” for saluting Lady Hollis, and then excused himself on the ground of “knowing not your eare from your hand, being so like one another.” (Doran’s Court Fools, p. 182.) Remembering this story in the Nest of Ninnies, Morton, with his well-developed faculty for getting everything wrong, seems to have fathered it on the most famous and popular of the occupants of the Nest. [461] For the detailed account of the Wessagusset killing, see Winslow’s Relation in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 336-41; Adams’s 250th Anniversary of Weymouth, pp. 18-22. [462] Mr. Trumbull, in a note (125) to Williams’s Key (p. 59). explains a blunder here made by Morton. The correct word is wotawquenauge, which means “coat-men,” or men wearing clothes, the waútacone-nûaog of Williams. This, Morton confounded with another name for Englishmen, chauquaqock, meaning, “knife- [i. e., sword-] men,” which he understood to mean “cut-throats.” [463] Weston, in 1622, got into serious trouble with the English government, in regard to some ordnance and military stores, which he had obtained a license to send to New England, and had then sold to the French, with whom the English were at war. (Bradford, p. 150.) He seems to have been in hiding in consequence of this transaction; and early in 1623 went on board of one of the fishing-vessels in the disguise of a blacksmith, and came out in her to the stations on the Maine coast. There he must have learned of the extreme straits, if not of the abandonment, of his plantation at Wessagusset, and he set out, with a companion or two, in an open boat, for Massachusetts Bay. He was wrecked near the mouth of the Merrimac, and barely escaped with his life. The savages there stripped him to his shirt, and in this plight he reached Thomson’s plantation at Piscataqua. Thence he found his way to Plymouth, arriving there, not as Morton says, “with supply and means to have raised [his company’s] fortunes,” but in absolute destitution. Bradford’s account of his reception and of what ensued (pp. 133-4, 149-53) is very different from that given in the text; and, it is hardly necessary to add, reads much more like the truth. [465] The incident here alluded to was the seizure of the Swan, under a warrant issued by Captain Robert Gorges, acting as Lieutenant of the Council for New England, in November, 1623. The Swan was a small vessel of 30 tons measurement, which Weston had sent out with his expedition, in 1622. His plan was, when the larger vessel—the Charity, in which his company went out—returned to England, to have the Swan remain in New England, to be used for trading purposes. Accordingly, all through the winter of 1622-3, it had been at Wessagusset, except when employed by the people there in obtaining supplies in connection with the Plymouth people. When, in March, 1623, Wessagusset was abandoned, the company went in the Swan to the Maine fishing-stations. Here Weston found the vessel in the course of the following summer, and recovered possession of her. He then began to trade along the coast. Meanwhile, in September, Captain Robert Gorges arrived, and immediately set out to look for Weston, in order to call him to account for the ordnance transactions referred to in the preceding note, and also for the disorderly conduct of his people at Wessagusset during the previous winter. Starting for the eastward, he was driven into Plymouth Harbor by heavy weather, and while he was lying there the Swan made its appearance with Weston on board. Bradford’s account of what ensued, including the seizure of the vessel, differs toto cœlo from that in the text. He says that Captain Robert Gorges, acting as governor-general under his commission from the Council for New England, at once organized a sort of a court,—he, Bradford, acting as an assistant in it,—and proceeded to arraign and try Weston. As a result of the whole proceedings Gorges threatened to send Weston under arrest back to England. Through the intercession of Bradford, however, he was mollified, and finally Weston was released on his own promise to appear when called for. Gorges then went to Wessagusset, leaving Weston with the Swan at Plymouth. After a time Gorges seems to have concluded that it would be very convenient for him to have control of the Swan, at any rate for that winter. Accordingly he sent a warrant to Plymouth for its seizure and the arrest of Weston. Bradford, not liking this proceeding, took some exception to the warrant, and refused to allow it to be served. At the same time it was intimated to Weston that he had better take himself and his vessel off. This he would not do. Apparently his crew was mutinous and unruly, their wages being long in arrears, and the Swan destitute of supplies. He seems to have looked upon arrest and seizure as the best way out of his difficulties. Presently a new warrant came from Gorges, and both vessel and prisoner were removed to Wessagusset. This was in November. There they passed the winter of 1623-4. Towards spring Gorges went in the Swan to the eastward, Weston accompanying him, apparently as a pilot. The tidings received there led the disappointed young Lieutenant of the Council to decide on immediately returning to England. Accordingly he came back to Wessagusset, and thence went probably to the fishing-stations, very possibly in the Swan. Before leaving he effected some sort of a settlement with Weston,—Bradford intimates much to the advantage of the latter,—who was released from arrest, had his vessel restored to him, and was compensated for whatever loss he had sustained. Weston thereupon reappeared at Plymouth, and thence went to Virginia. He seems to have traded along the coast for some years, but finally drifted back to England, where in 1645 he died, at Bristol, of the plague. (Bradford, pp. 140-53. Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 296-8, 302.) [466] This chapter relates to incidents of no apparent consequence, and of which there is no other record. It is not easy even to fix the time at which they occurred, and it would seem as if Morton, in his rambling, incoherent way, had confused the events of one year with those of another. The only time when “35 stout knaves” were landed, at all in the way described, at Plymouth, was in July, 1622, when the Charity brought in there Weston’s company. Yet Morton speaks of there then being “three cows” at Plymouth, which would indicate that Morton’s arrival, referred to in the text, was not in July 1622, but at some time subsequent to the spring of 1624, when Winslow brought over “three heifers and a bull, the first beginning of any cattle of that kind in the land.” (Bradford, p. 158.) Yet Weston, again, had no “barque” at Plymouth after 1623. The chapter seems to have been introduced simply for the purpose of working on the church prejudices of Laud against the Puritans. (See supra, [93-4].) There is in it a combination of “the booke of common prayer” and “claret sparklinge neate,” which is suggestive of the Book of Sports as well as of “the Word of God.” [467] Bradford, p. 158. [468] Facilis descensus Averno. Æneid, vi. 127. [469] A killock is a small anchor. The phrase in the text means that the wind caused the boat to drag her anchor, and she went ashore and was stove in. [470] The episode of Lyford and Oldham, in the history of the Plymouth plantation, is told in detail by Bradford. The account in the text differs from Bradford’s account only in that it is the other side of the story. (See Bradford, pp. 172-88.) [471] See infra, [324], note. Though Lyford frequently exercised in the Plymouth church, as an elsewhere ordained brother, he was never installed as its pastor. When admitted to it, Bradford says he made “a large confession,” saying, among other things, “that he held not himself a minister till he had a new calling.” (Bradford, pp. 181, 185, 188.) [473] This chapter and Chapter XIII. (pp. 273-6) relate to the same matter. It is impossible to venture a surmise even as to their meaning. It would seem clear that they have no historical value, but relate rather to some humorous incident—having the full seventeenth-century flavor of coarseness—which occurred in the settlement of Boston Bay. Apparently, judging by the expressions, “this goodly creature of incontinency” (Infra, [*129]), “that had tried a camp royal in other parts” ([*121]), some English prostitute found her way out to Mount Wollaston, in company with one of the adventurers there, and subsequently went on to Virginia. She may have come with Wollaston, and been left in Boston Bay when her companion went to Virginia, and then followed him, giving birth to a child on the way. This would explain the allusion to Phyllis and Demophoön subsequently made (p. *129). It is, however, a mere surmise on a subject not worth puzzling over. [474] It does not need to be said that this is one of Morton’s preposterous statements. As the settlement of Virginia dated from 1607, the twenty-seven years he speaks of was equivalent to saying, “up to the time at which he was writing,” viz. 1634. Virginia was then not only a much older settlement, but it had a population largely in excess of that of New England. [476] This chapter and Chapter XII. are, historically speaking, as inexplicable as Chapters IX. and XIII. There is nothing in any of the contemporaneous records to indicate who is referred to under the pseudonym of Bubble. [477] One of the smallest of the islands in Boston Bay, still called by the same name. It lies off Mount Wollaston, and a mile or so away, and between it and Pettuck’s Island. (See Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 360.) [478] [view] See supra, [111], note 1. [479] Nipnet, or Worcester County; see supra, [240], note. [480] [present] See supra, [111], note 1. [481] Squanto is apparently referred to here. (Supra, [244], note 2.) There is no incident in Squanto’s life—of which there is a quite detailed account to be gathered from the early Plymouth records—which is suggestive of the events described in the text. [482] The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605, and the second part in 1615. It was first translated into English by Thomas Skelton, in 1612-20. [483] The reference here is to the story of Demophoön and Phyllis, told by Ovid (Heroides, II.) Demophoön, son of Theseus and Phædra, accompanied the Greeks to Troy; and on his return, Phyllis, the daughter of the Thracian king Sithon, fell in love with him, and he consented to marry her. But before the nuptials were celebrated, he went to Attica to settle his affairs at home, and as he tarried longer than Phyllis had expected, she began to think that she was forgotten, and put an end to her life. She was metamorphosed into a tree. (See Smith’s Dictionary, title Demophoön.) [486] John Scogan was the famous court buffoon, attached to the household of Edward IV., whose head Justice Shallow makes the youthful Falstaff break at the court gate (Henry IV. Part II. act iii. sc. 2), though Falstaff is represented as having died at least twenty years before Scogan could have been born. In regard to him, see Doran’s Court Fools, pp. 123-30. “Scogan’s choice,” in Morton’s day, seems to have been a popular expression, signifying that a choice of some sort is better than no power to choose at all. It was derived probably from the story of Scogan, that he was once ordered to be hanged, but allowed the privilege of choosing the tree. He escaped the penalty by being unable to find a tree to his liking. Morton uses the expression again, see infra, [*137]. But the reference here is as obscure as “the poem.” [489] “Ye Roman Goddes Flora.” (Bradford, p. 237.) [490] In regard to the arrest of Morton by Standish, in June, 1628, see supra, [27-9]. [492] Morton here confounds his experience in Boston, two years later, with that at Plymouth in 1628. In 1630 the master of the Gift refused to carry him back to England. (Supra, [44].) In the spring of 1628, however, no vessel seems to have arrived at Plymouth from England, as Allerton then brought over an assortment of goods, and came in a fishing-vessel by way of the Maine stations. (Bradford, p. 232.) Allerton returned to London in the course of the succeeding summer or autumn, but it is not probable then any vessel left Plymouth in June, 1628, bound for England. (Supra, [29].) [493] It was not until towards the close of the summer of the next year that Morton returned to Massachusetts in company with Allerton. (Supra, [36-7].) [494] Morton implies above that the “Poem” which follows was written shortly after the events to which it relates occurred, and before his return to New England in 1629. It was then, it seems, “in use” in London. The name of Ben Jonson appears in the margin of the original edition, as of this reprint, and opposite the first two lines, as above. Exactly what this signifies it is impossible now to say. Some critics that I have consulted are inclined to think that Jonson, who was then about fifty-five years old and at the height of his fame, may have written all the verses. Others suggest that Morton, by putting the name in the margin, meant to imply that Jonson wrote them all, and that this was another of the unscrupulous tricks of the author of the New Canaan. Neither explanation commends itself to my judgment. The first five verified lines are a paraphrase of five lines at the beginning of one of Jonson’s productions, for a poem it is not. In his published works (Gifford’s ed. [1816], vol. viii. p. 241) they appear as follows:— “I sing the brave adventure of two wights, And pity ’tis, I cannot call them knights: One was; and he for brawn and brain right able To have been styled of king Arthur’s table. The other was a squire, of fair degree.” With the last of the foregoing lines the paraphrase stops, and the rest of the verses in the New Canaan are, it must in justice be said, not only more cleanly, but in other respects superior to those to be found in Jonson’s works. Indeed, where the latter are not unintelligible, they are almost unequalled for the nastiness in which the writer seems to revel. Gifford not too strongly remarks of them, “I dislike the subject.” Morton, it appears to me, abandoning, at the sixth line, the paraphrase with which he began, went on with a production of his own, but very properly put Jonson’s name opposite the lines he borrowed from him. The remainder is in his own style, and not inferior to the mass of the contemporary verse. He himself explains it. The “nine worthy wights” are Standish and his party, who were sent to arrest him. The “prodigeous birth,” was the establishment of the Mount Wollaston plantation. The “seven heads” were the seven persons composing the company at Mount Wollaston at the time of the arrest. The “forked tail” was the Maypole, with its antlered top. The fear that the Hydra of Ma-re Mount would devour “all their best flocks” refers to the apprehended competition in the fur trade. The “Soll in Cancer” indicates the season; the “thundering Jove” the storm, in which Morton made his escape from his captors at Wessagusset. The arrest at Mount Wollaston is passed over very lightly. Then follows the discussion among the magistrates at Plymouth, as to the disposition to be made of the prisoner. Standish would seem to be designated under the name of Minos. He recommends death. Eacus is more difficult to identify. In the preceding chapter (Supra, [288]), Morton speaks of him as being the one whose “voice was more allowed of then both the others.” My supposition is that, by Eacus, Morton meant Dr. Samuel Fuller, who then apparently (Bradford, pp. 264, note, 306, note) stood, next to Standish, at the head of the assistants. Morton says that he “confounded all the arguments that Eacus could make;” and he afterwards, in the New Canaan, refers to Fuller with peculiar bitterness. (Infra, [298].) “Sterne Radamant” is clearly Bradford, “the cheif Elder.” The remainder of the poem calls for no explanation; and the whole of it is much less unintelligible than is usual with Morton. [495] [what] See supra, [111], note 1. [496] “Brave Christmas gambols” were, it may be remarked, not greatly in vogue in the Plymouth of 1628. (See Bradford, p. 112.) [498] The personage referred to, in this amusing but extremely scurrilous chapter, is Dr. Samuel Fuller. There is a notice of Dr. Fuller in Young’s Chron. of Pilg. (p. 222, note), and in Eliot’s Biog. Dict. He was one of those who came over in the Mayflower; but that he was born in the County of Somerset, and bred a butcher, appears only from the statement in the text. At Plymouth, besides being the physician of the colony, he was a magistrate and a deacon of the church. He died there, of an infectious fever, in 1633, and his best possible epitaph is read in Bradford (p. 314): “A man godly, and forward to do good, being much missed after his death.” [500] Paul’s Walk, as the central nave of old St. Paul’s was called, was in the reign of Charles I. much what a business arcade is now. There is a vivid description of it, with extracts from writers of the time, in W. H. Ainsworth’s romance, Old St. Paul’s (B. II. ch. 7). See also, Gardiner’s Charles I. (vol. ii. p. 11). [501] The visit of Dr. Fuller to Salem, referred to in the text, may have taken place in 1628. Though he was also there in 1629; and again in 1630, when he likewise visited Charlestown. (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 222, note.) [502] This description of the usual effect of sea-sickness I take to be peculiar to Morton. [503] Endicott’s first wife was Anna Gover, a cousin of Governor Cradock. Little is known of her. She came to New England with her husband, and died during the very early days of the settlement, as she seems to have been in failing health in September, 1628. Endicott was married to his second wife August 18, 1630; on the 17th of the following month he sat among the magistrates at Boston in judgment upon the author of the New Canaan, who had been “sent for” just five days after the marriage, which seems to have taken place at Charlestown. (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30; Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 131, 292; Supra, [43-4].) [504] This was the case of Roger Clerk, of Wandsworth, attached in the chamber of the Guildhall of London, before the mayor and aldermen, on the 13th of May, 1382, on a plea of deceit and falsehood as to Roger atte Hacche. The record is to be found in Riley’s Memorials of London and London Life (pp. 464-6), and is very curious as illustrating English manners in the time of Richard II. Morton’s reference would indicate that the case had then been handed down as a tradition for two hundred and fifty years. It seems that Clerk gave Hacche a bit of old parchment, rolled up in “a piece of cloth of gold,” asserting that it was very good for the ailments with which his wife was afflicted. Upon being arraigned, Clerk contended that upon the parchment was written “a good charm for fevers.” Upon examination, no word of the alleged charm was found in the paper. The court then told the prisoner “that a straw beneath his foot would be of just as much avail for fevers, as this charm of his was; whereupon, he fully granted that it would be so. And because that the same Roger Clerk was in no way a literate man, and seeing that on the examinations aforesaid, (as well as others afterwards made,) he was found to be an infidel, and altogether ignorant of the art of physic or of surgery; and to the end that the people might not be deceived and aggrieved by such ignorant persons etc.; it was adjudged that the same Roger Clerk should be led through the middle of the City, with trumpets and pipes, he riding on a horse without a saddle, the said parchment and a whetstone, for his lies, being hung about his neck, an urinal also being hung before him, and another urinal on his back.” The punishment of the “pillory and the whetstone,” as it was called, was that ordinarily imposed on those telling falsehoods. In another case in the same volume (p. 316) it is thus given in detail: “The said John shall come out of Newgate without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod, with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck, and lying on his breast, it being marked with the words,—‘A false liar;’ and there shall be a pair of trumpets trumpeting before him on his way to the pillory.” [505] The person referred to in this chapter was probably the Rev. Francis Bright, of whom very little is known. He was one of the three ministers sent over by the Massachusetts Company in 1629, Higginson and Skelton being the other two. In June of that year, when Graves and the Spragues were sent by Endicott to effect a settlement at Charlestown, Bright accompanied them as “minister to the Company’s servants.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 316, 376.) As such, he was the Caiaphas, or high-priest, of that region, and it naturally devolved on him to “exercise his guifts on the Lords day at Weenasimute.” Morton further says that the person he refers to had been a silenced minister in England. That Bright had been silenced is not known, but both Skelton and Higginson had been (Magnalia, B. I. ch. iv. § 4; Neal’s Hist. of Puritans, vol. ii. p. 229); and, though Hubbard intimates that Bright was a conformist (p. 113), yet, in the Company’s letter to Endicott, the three ministers are stated to have “declared themselves to us to be of one judgment, and to be fully agreed on the manner how to exercise their ministry.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 160.) Winthrop, Morton adds, “spied out Caiphas practise; and he must be packing.” Bright returned to England shortly after Winthrop’s arrival. Johnson says (Wonder-working Providence, p. 20) that he “betooke him to the Seas againe,” when he saw that “all sorts of stones would not fit in the building.” Samuel Skelton is referred to by Morton a few pages further on (Infra, [306]) as “Pastor Master Eager,” which name may be taken to imply “covetousness” in him. But, though Skelton might be termed the “Caiphas” of the country, he was not silenced by Winthrop. He can, therefore, hardly be the person here aimed at. [506] [courteousnesse] See supra, [111], n. 1. [507] Supra, [229], note 3, and [300], note 1. [508] Iosua Temperwell. Under this name Morton always designates Governor John Winthrop. [509] Caiaphas was the high-priest of the Jews; Jonas, or Jonah, was the first Hebrew prophet sent to a heathen nation. The propriety of these two Biblical allusions in this connection is, therefore, apparent enough. The allusion to Demas is more obscure, as he is only mentioned by Paul as a fellow-disciple who had forsaken him, “having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica.” (II. Timothy iv. 10.) [514] By this name Morton designates Matthew Cradock, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, though he never came to America. Cradock was a wealthy London merchant, and as such subscribed largely to the funds of the company. In regard to him, see Dr. Young’s note in Chron. of Mass. (p. 137). [515] It is not clear who Morton may have intended to designate by this name. John Washburne was the secretary and “collector for the company” at the time Endicott was sent over, but of him nothing is known. (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 55.) It would seem more probable that Increase Nowell was the person Morton had in mind. Nowell was one of the original patentees, contributing money to forward the purposes of the company, serving on committees, &c. (Ib. p. 262.) He came to New England with Winthrop, and was among the magistrates who were present at the trial of Morton in September, 1630. (Records, vol. i. pp. 73, 75.) He was the first ruling-elder of the Charlestown church. He is described as having been “a worthy pious man” (Eliot); and if he was the person intended by Morton,—which is not at all clear,—the propriety of calling him Ananias, if it rests on anything, is not apparent from the record. [516] The “covered case,” in which Governor Winthrop is supposed to have brought over the charter of 1629, is still to be seen in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth at the State House in Boston; and that in which Endicott brought over the patent of 1628 was, it may be inferred from the text, similar in appearance. It very much resembles the case for “some instrument of musick,” being a flat, narrow box, 2 feet 10 inches long, by 3½ inches wide and 3 inches deep. It has a species of circular annex, so to speak, at its middle, intended to contain the seal. This annex, like the box, is of wood, and is 7 by 8 inches in surface, and the same in depth as the main case, of which it is a part. The whole is covered with stamped leather, now brown and mouldered with age. There are, however, some things about this case which suggest doubts as to its having been made quite so early as the time of Charles I. [517] In regard to this meeting at Salem, and the action taken at it, see supra, [38-40]. No record or other mention of it, except that contained in the text, has come down to us. [518] See supra [300], note 1. [519] This refers to the famous Salem ordination of Skelton and Higginson, July 20 and August 6, 1629; in regard to which see Palfrey, vol. i. pp. 295-6. [521] [converted] See supra [111], note 1. [522] The arrival of Winthrop’s fleet in June, 1630, is here referred to. It has already been stated that Iosua Temperwell is intended for Governor Winthrop. It will be noticed that Morton, much as he disliked him, always refers to Winthrop, if not with respect, yet with a certain restraint of tone and insinuation which he did not show to others, such as Endicott, Fuller and Standish. [524] Supra, [47]. See, also, the petition of Winslow, while a prisoner in the Fleet, to the Lords of the Council. (Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1860-2, p. 133.) [526] T. W. Higginson, who in 1866 published a translation of Epictetus, furnishes me the following note on this allusion: “The phrase ‘bear and forbear’ has always been received as the formula especially characteristic of Epictetus. It is most explicitly preserved to us in the Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius (B. XVII. ch. xix. §§ 5-6). Gellius says: ‘Verba duo dicebat: Ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου,’ having previously explained their meaning. There was in 1634 no English translation of any portion of Epictetus containing the phrase; nor was he an author then much read at the English universities. Morton probably, therefore, got the quotation from the Latin of Aulus Gellius; if, indeed, he did not pick it up in listening to the talk of some more scholarly man,—possibly Ben Jonson.” [527] Ille hæc ludibria fortunæ, ne sua quidem putavit, quæ nos appelamus etiam bona. (Paradoxa, I. 1.) [528] I am unable to suggest any explanation of the allusions contained in this chapter. There is no apparent clew either to the “zealous Professor” whose conscience did not permit him to cut tombstones, or to the “gentleman newly come into the land,” who “incurred the displeasure” of Governor Winthrop and was degraded. [529] “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” [530] “Antonomasia (Rhet.). The use of the name of some office, dignity, profession, science or trade, instead of the proper name of the person; as where his majesty is used for a king, or his lordship for a nobleman, or when, instead of Aristotle, we say the philosopher; or, conversely, the use of a proper name instead of an appellative, as where a wise man is called a Cato, or an eminent orator a Cicero, the application being supported by a resemblance in character.” (Webster.) [531] The phrase “them that are without [the church]” calls for no explanation. It was common in early New England, and both Lyford and Bradford are found using it (Bradford, pp. 184, 187) exactly as Morton uses it, who probably picked it up at Plymouth. [532] Innocence Fairecloath is the name under which Morton alludes to Philip Ratcliff. This man was a servant or agent of Governor Matthew Cradock. He got into trouble with Endicott and the members of the Salem church, and, according to Winthrop, “being convict, ore tenus, of most foul, scandalous invectives against our churches and government, was censured to be whipped, lose his ears, and be banished the plantation, which was presently executed.” (p. *56.) Another authority speaks of the offence as a “most horible blasphemy.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 323.) In the Records of Massachusetts (p. 88), under date of June 14 (24 N. S.), 1631, the sentence read as follows: “It is ordered, that Philip Ratcliffe shall be whipped, have his ears cut off, fined 40 l., and banished out of the limits of this jurisdiction, for uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the government and the church of Salem, &c., as appeareth by a particular thereof, proved upon oath.” The severity of this sentence caused much scandal in England after Ratcliff returned there, and in April of the next year Edward Howes wrote out to John Winthrop, Jr.: “I have heard diverse complaints against the severitie of your Government especially Mr. Indicutts, and that he shalbe sent for over, about cuttinge off the Lunatick mans eares, and other grievances.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix. p. 244.) In regard to Ratcliff’s subsequent connection with the Gorges-Mason attacks on the company before the Privy Council, see supra, [50-2], [62], and Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xx., January meeting, 1883. [533] See supra [304], note 2. [534] The first two deacons of the church at Charlestown were Robert Hale and Ralph Monsall. The Charlestown church, however, was not organized until November, 1632, sixteen months after Ratcliff’s punishment. (Budington’s First Church of Charlestown, pp. 31, 34.) The Boston church in June, 1631, had but one deacon, William Aspinwall (Ellis’s First Church of Boston, p. 328), in regard to whom there is a detailed note in Savage’s Winthrop (p. *32). He was the deacon of the Charlestown church at the time Morton was arraigned and punished, and it is possible that Morton refers to him as Shackles. Aspinwall was a man of prominence in the settlement; but it must be remembered that, thirteen years later, “two of our ministers’ sons, being students in the college, robbed two dwelling-houses in the night of some pounds. Being found out, they were ordered by the gouvernours of the college to be there whipped, which was performed by the president himself—yet they were about 20 years of age.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *166.) If the president of the college could officiate at the whipping-post in 1644, in a case of what Winthrop calls “burglary,” there seems no good reason why the deacon of the church should not have officiated there in 1631 in a case which the same authority calls “foul, scandalous invectives against our churches.” [536] The character of the New Canaan as a political pamphlet of the time, intended to effect a given result in a particular quarter, has already been referred to. (Supra, pp. [68-9].) In this respect the present chapter is the most significant one in the book. It was intended to act on the well-known prejudices of Archbishop Laud, the head and controlling spirit of that Board of Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations which then had supreme authority over the colonies. To that Board Morton dedicated his book; and at the time he was writing it the Lords Commissioners, and especially the Archbishop, were taking active measures to vacate the Massachusetts charter and to assume the direct government of the colonies. It is its connection with these facts which alone gives any great degree of historical value to the present chapter. In itself it is not deserving of careful annotation, as it contains nothing that is new, and the ground is much better covered by Lechford in his Plaine Dealing. Like Morton, Lechford was a lawyer; and, unlike Morton, he was by nature a devout man. A member of the Church of England he has given in his book a remarkably vivid and fair-minded description of the practice of the New England churches during the earliest days of the settlement. Mr. Trumbull’s very learned and elaborate notes to his edition of the Plaine Dealing, which is the edition referred to in the notes to the present chapter, have cleared up Lechford’s text wherever it is obscure; and they obviate the necessity of any careful annotation of the present chapter, except where it is desirable to call notice to the special bearing any particular assertion made may be supposed to have had on Archbishop Laud’s idiosyncrasies. [537] “Teaching in the church publicly,” was, it will be remembered, one of the offences charged against Winslow before the Lords Commissioners at the hearing of 1634, for which, at Archbishop Laud’s “vehement importunity,” he was committed to the Fleet. (Supra, [69]; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1860-2, p. 131.) On the real practice of the New England churches in regard to the exercise of their gifts by lay members, see Plaine Dealing, p. 42. [538] “I suppose the first preacher that ever thus preached with notes in our New-England was the Reverend Warham.” (Magnalia, B. III. part 2, ch. xviii.) In regard to John Warham, first of Dorchester and subsequently of Windsor, Connecticut, see Dr. Young’s note in Chron. of Mass., p. 347. [539] There probably never was any regularly chosen deaconess in New England. The office was recognized as having come down from the primitive churches (Dexter’s Congregationalism, p. 69); and Robert Browne in his definitions, in the Life and Manners of all true Christians, says: “The widow is a person having office of God to pray for the church, and to visit and minister to those which are afflicted and distressed in the church; for the which she is tried and received as meet.” (Bacon’s Genesis of the New England Churches, p. 84.) Bradford in his Dialogue, written in 1648, speaking of the Separatist church at Amsterdam, says, that besides the pastor, teacher, elders and deacons, there was “one ancient widow for a deaconess, who did them service many years, though she was sixty years of age when she was chosen. She honored her place and was an ornament to the congregation. She usually sat in a convenient place in the congregation, with a little birchen rod in her hand, and kept little children in great awe from disturbing the congregation. She did frequently visit the sick and weak, especially women, and, as there was need, called out maids and young women to watch and do them other helps as their necessity did require; and if they were poor, she would gather relief for them of those that were able, or acquaint the deacons; and she was obeyed as a mother in Israel and an officer of Christ.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 455.) It would be inferred from the passage quoted that there had in 1648 never been a deaconess in the Plymouth church, as in this Dialogue the old men are supposed to be describing to the young men events strange to the latter, as having occurred long before. Lechford says, speaking of the Massachusetts colony: “No church there has a Deaconesse, as far as I know.” (Plaine Dealing, pp. 24, 40) “I have not met with an instance of [the] actual institution [of the office of deaconess] in New England.” (Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 37, note.) It does not seem, however, to have been even theoretically one of the functions of the deaconess “to use her gifts at home,” as Morton says, “in an assembly of her sex, by way of repetition, or exhortation.” This would rather have pertained to the office of teacher. Meetings of females, such as those described, were held in the parishes during the early days, and played an important part in the Antinomian controversy. The deaconess did not, however, officiate at them. The character of these meetings appears in the following passage at the trial of Mrs. Hutchinson: “Court. ... What say you to your weekly public meetings? Can you find a warrant for them? Mrs. Hutchinson. I will show you how I took it up. There were such meetings in use before I came; and because I went to none of them, this was the special reason of my taking up this course. We began it with but five or six, and, though it grew to more in future time, yet, being tolerated at the first, I knew not why it might not continue. Court. There were private meetings indeed, and are still in many places, of some few neighbors; but not so public and frequent as yours; and are of use for increase of love and mutual edification. But yours are of another nature. If they had been such as yours they had been evil, and therefore no good warrant to justify yours. But answer by what authority or rule you uphold them? Mrs. H. By Titus ii. 3-5, where the elder women are to teach the younger. Court. So we allow you to do, as the Apostle there means, privately and upon occasion. But that gives no warrant of such set meetings for that purpose. And, besides, you take upon you to teach many that are older than yourself. Neither do you teach them that which the Apostle commands, viz: to keep at home. Mrs. H. Will you please to give me a rule against it, and I will yield. Court. You must have a rule for it, or else you cannot do it in faith. Yet you have a plain rule against it,—‘I suffer not a woman to teach.’ (I. Tim. ii. 12.) Mrs. H. That is meant of teaching men.” (Weld’s Short Story, pp. 34-5.) See also the version to the same effect in Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, vol. ii. pp. 484-7. [540] Supra, [262], note 3, and [306], note 3. The effect such a statement as that in the text would have upon Archbishop Laud is apparent. The real practice of the early New England churches in the matter of ordination can be found in the Plaine Dealing, pp. 13, 16, 17. [541] “There hath been some difference about jurisdictions, or cognizance of causes: Some have held that, in causes betweene brethren of the Church, the matter should be first told the Church, before they goe to the civill Magistrate, because all causes in difference doe amount, one way or other, to a matter of offence; and that all criminall matters concerning Church members, should be first heard by the Church. But these opinionists are held, by the wiser sort, not to know the dangerous issues and consequences of such tenets.” (Plaine Dealing, p. 34.) [542] There was no minister at Plymouth in the spring of 1628, when Morton was there. William Brewster was the ruling elder in the church and officiated in its pulpit, where, from the beginning, he had “taught twice every sabbath, and that both powerfully and profitably, to the great contentment of the hearers, and their comfortable edification.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 467; Bradford, pp. 187-8.) In the summer of 1628, but after Morton had been sent to England, Allerton brought over Mr. Rogers as a preacher, who soon proved to be “crased in his braine” (Bradford, p. 243), and the next season was sent home. In the autumn, apparently, of 1629, and while Morton may have been at Plymouth at Allerton’s house (Ib. p. 253), before his final return to Mount Wollaston, the Rev. Ralfe Smith, who had come over with Skelton and Higginson in the previous June (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 151), was found at Nantasket and brought down to Plymouth. (Bradford, p. 263.) He was not, however, chosen into the ministry there until a later time. (Ib.) It is unlikely that Morton here refers to Plymouth personages. He was at Salem in 1629 (Supra, [306]), and in Boston, where as a prisoner he was undoubtedly made regularly to attend divine service, from early September to the end of December, 1630. (Supra, [45]; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321.) At Salem he had come in contact with Skelton and Higginson; and it has been seen (Supra, [300], note 1) that he probably knew something of Francis Bright of Charlestown. The only other ministers then in the colony were John Warham and John Maverick at Dorchester, George Phillips at Watertown, and John Wilson at Boston. [543] It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three following pages are largely the fruit of Morton’s imaginative powers, and were intended for the special edification of Archbishop Laud. As Plymouth was much less well supplied with preachers than the towns of the Massachusetts colony, it is altogether probable—as Dr. John Eliot surmised, in his review of the New Canaan, in the Monthly Anthology for July, 1810—the allusions to the church-practises in this chapter found their largest basis of fact in incidents which Morton had been a witness of in the Plymouth meeting-house. It is safe to add, however, that he could have had no agreeable recollections of the meeting-houses at Boston and Charlestown. [544] Oliver Le Daim, barber of Louis XI., created by him Comte de Meulan, and sent in 1477 on a confidential mission to Mary of Burgundy at Ghent. The account of his experiences is to be found in the Memoires de Commines, L. v. ch. xiv. [546] I am indebted to Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, for the following explanation of this, to me, very perplexing allusion: “Nic, or, more correctly, nick,—namely, ‘a raised or indented bottom in a beer-can, by which the customers were cheated, the nick below and the froth above filling up part of the measure.’ I take this definition from Wright’s Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English. That the expression was a common one the following quotations prove:— ‘We must be running up and downe With cannes of beere (malt sod in fishes broth), And those they say are fil’d with nick and froth.’ (Rowland’s Knave of Harts.) ‘From the nick and froth of a penny pot-house.’ (Fletcher.) ‘Our pots were full quarted, We were not thus thwarted With froth-canne and nick-pot, And such nimble quick shot.’ (Spurious lines added to Rand’s 1624 edition of Skelton’s Elynour Rummynge.) Most of this information I have taken from Nares’s Glossary and Halliwell-Phillipp’s Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, second edition.” [547] The reference here is apparently to the running footmen much in use in the eighteenth century, and also, judging by the text, as early as the reign of Charles I. Their duty was to run before and alongside the cumbrous coaches then in use, to notify innkeepers of the coming guests. They carried long poles to assist them in clearing obstacles, and to help pry the carriages out of the sloughs in which they frequently got stuck. (Brewer’s Dict. of Phrase and Fable, p. 773; Macaulay’s England, vol. i. pp. 374-8.) [548] It was one of the doctrines of Pythagoras that the souls of the dying passed into the air, and thence into the living bodies of other men, taking controlling possession of them. That the nimbleness of the father’s feet might thus account for the volubility of the son’s tongue is, it is needless to say, a purely Mortonian deduction. [549] “May 12. [1621] was the first marriage in this place, which, according to the laudable custome of the Low-Countries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the scripturs. Ruth 4. and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers as a part of their office.” (Bradford, p. 101.) The marriage here referred to was that of Edward Winslow to Mrs. Susannah White. It took place in May, Winslow’s wife having died seven weeks before, and Mrs. White’s husband, William, twelve weeks before. That he had married people was, it will be remembered, the other of the two charges advanced against Winslow himself, at the Privy Council hearing just referred to. (Supra, [322], note 2.) The practice of civil marriage already prevailed in the Massachusetts colony also, as, a week before the arrest of Morton was ordered, Governor Endicott, on August 18, 1630, was married, at Charlestown apparently, “by the governour and Mr. Wilson.” (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30. See also Plaine Dealing, pp. 86-7.) There are few more edifying examples of the casuistical skill of Winthrop and his associates than is afforded by his method of dealing with the question of civil marriages, as explained in detail in his Journal (vol. i. p. *323). “In our church discipline, and in matters of marriage, to make a law that marriages should not be solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws of England; but to bring it to a custom by practice for the magistrates to perform it, is no law made repugnant, etc.” The charter of 1629 empowered the General Court of the colony “to make, ordeine, and establishe all Manner of wholesome and reasonable Orders, Lawes, Statutes, and Ordinances, Directions, and Instructions, not contrary to the Lawes of theis our Realme of England.” (Hazard, vol. i. p. 252.) [550] At the conference between the Bishops and the Puritans, held in presence of James I. at Hampton Court in January, 1603, one of the practices of the English Church especially excepted to as a “relique of popery” by Dr. John Reynolds, the spokesman of the Puritans, was the ring in marriage. (Neal’s Hist. of Puritans, vol. ii. p. 42.) Among the reasons urged against its use I have not elsewhere found the “diabolical circle” argument. It seems rather to have been associated in the Puritan mind with the Romish traditions. (Jones’s Finger-Ring Lore, pp. 288-90.) This count, in Morton’s indictment, was based on good grounds. “In the Weddings of [early] New England the ring makes none of the ceremonies.” (Mather’s Ratio Disciplinæ, p. 116.) [551] This refers to churching practice of the English Church. At the Hampton Court conference, referred to in the preceding note, another of the “reliques of popery,” specifically excepted to by Dr. Reynolds, was “the churching of women by the name of purification.” [552] This count in the indictment was well laid. The children of the non-communicants in early New England could not be baptized; though they might be if either one of the parents was a member of the church. At a later period this became one of the leading causes of political agitation in the colony, and is referred to in the Dr. Robert Childs petition of 1646. In 1670 from four fifths to five sixths of the adult male inhabitants of Massachusetts were without the franchise, as being non-communicants. (Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, pp. 47, 48, 151; Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 156; Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 8, vol. iii. p. 41.) [554] This was the favorite epithet employed by the early reformers in referring to the Mass. Calvin called it “an execrable idol;” Hooper, “a wicked idol.” Bradford—not Governor William, but John, the Smithfield martyr of Queen Mary’s time—terms it an “abominable idol of bread;” and again, “the horriblest and most detestable device that ever the devil brought out by man.” Bland, rector of Adishan, repeated the familiar figure, calling it a “most blasphemous idol;” and Latimer improved upon this by adding the words, “full of idolatry, blasphemy, sacrilege against God and the dear sacrifice of His Christ.” (Blunt’s Reformation of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 399-402.) The derivation of the Book of Common Prayer, in many of its parts, from the Missal was unmistakable; and naturally the next race of religious reformers applied to the former the same earnest epithets of theological dissent which had before been applied to the latter. Accordingly, in Barrowe’s Brief Discovery of the False Church, we find the Book of Common Prayer referred to as “a detestable idol, ... old rotten stuff ... abstracted out of the pope’s blasphemous mass-book, ... an abominable and loathsome sacrifice in the sight of God, even as a dead dog.” Barrowe was one of the three Separatist martyrs, and as such held in deepest veneration at Plymouth. (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 427-34.) The Book of Common Prayer was therefore undoubtedly looked upon and referred to at Plymouth as Morton says. Indeed, the Lyford schism was in some degree due to its use. (Bradford, p. 181.) That it was, in the early days, also so looked upon and so referred to at Salem and at Boston, is not clear. It is true that in 1629 it was again the cause of the Browne dissension at Salem (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 287), in consequence of which Skelton and Higginson both declared openly “that they came away from the Common Prayer and ceremonies, ... and therefore, being in a place where they might have their liberty, they neither could nor would use them, because they judged the imposition of these things to be sinful corruptions in the worship of God.” (Morton’s Memorial, p. 147.) The Puritans of Boston, however, were not Separatists, and it is open to question whether they at first felt towards the Common Prayer as the Plymouth people felt towards it, and as Morton says. In 1640 Governor Winthrop, it is true, noted it as a thing worthy of observation that his son “having many books in a chamber where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek testament, the psalms and the common prayer were bound together. He found the common prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though they were above a thousand.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *20.) When Governor Winthrop tried and sentenced Morton, however, he was anxious to preserve his connection with the Church of England, and it is very doubtful whether he then looked upon its Book of Prayer as “an idol.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xviii. p. 296.) As one count in Morton’s indictment of the people of New England, that in the text now under consideration was not only sufficiently well founded, but it was peculiarly calculated to excite Archbishop Laud’s anger. It is unnecessary to say that he was the special champion of the Church of England ritual. To enforce exact conformity to it he regarded as his mission. When the ships loaded with emigrants for New England were, in March, 1634, stopped in the Thames by order of the Privy Council, they were not allowed to proceed on their voyage until the masters bound themselves to have the Book of Common Prayer used at morning and evening service during the voyage. (Council Register, Feb. 21, 28, 1634; Gardiner’s Charles I., vol. ii. p. 23.) This was Laud’s act, and it is more than probable that he was as much influenced by Morton on that occasion as he was subsequently in the matter of Winslow’s imprisonment for having performed the marriage ceremony. (Supra, [69], [93].) [555] “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” (Matt. xxiii. 23.) “But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God.” (Luke xi. 42.) The significance of the text referred to lay, of course, in Morton’s mind, rather in its indirect than its direct application,—more in its denunciatory than in its contributory portions. The clergy in early Massachusetts were supported by the voluntary contributions in Boston, and by a regular town-tax levy outside of Boston. (Plaine Dealing, pp. 48-50; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1860-2, p. 116.) [556] Supra, Ch. XXV. pp. [316-20]. [557] “Wink, v. n. 1. to shut the eyes. obs.” (Worcester.) [558] Edward Howes, in writing from London to John Winthrop, Jr., in November, 1632, describes how, on going home at noon one day, he met the master of a vessel which had just arrived from New England, together with three others who had come over with him. The master passing into the house on some matter of business, Howes had a talk with one of the other men, whom he describes as an “egregious knave.” The report given by this man of the Massachusetts community strikingly resembles that given by Morton in this chapter. He would, writes Howes, “give none of you a good word, but the governor [Winthrop]; he was a good man and kept a good table, but all the rest were Hereticks, and they would be more holy than all the world; they would be a peculiar people to God, but go to the Devil; that one man with you being at confession, as he called it, said he believed his father and mother and ancestors went all to Hell; and that your preachers, in their public prayers, pray for the governor before they pray for our king and state; ... that you never use the Lord’s prayer; that your ministers marry none; that fellows which keep hogs all the week preach on the Sabbath; that every town in your plantation is of a several religion; that you count all men in England, yea all out of your church, in the state of damnation. But I believe and know better things of you; but here you may partly see how the Devil stirs up his instruments.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Col., vol. vi. p. 485.) [559] Mr. Swift (Supra, [328], note) suggests that Morton here alludes to the scene in Ben Jonson’s Tale of a Tub (act iv. sc. 1), where Justice Preamble says: “And what say you now, neighbor Turfe?” Turfe answers him: “I put it Even to your worship’s bitterment, hab, nab.” Here the Countryman makes the remark, and not the Justice; but a wholly correct allusion by Morton is not to be looked for. (Supra, [123], note 2.) The meaning of hab, nab is, of course, “hit or miss, at a venture, at random,” and is probably derived from habbe, nabbe,—“to have or not to have.” (See Nares’s Glossary.) [562] By the General Court of May, 1644, it was ordered, that “Nantascot shall be called Hull.” (Records, vol. ii. p. 74.) Mr. Savage, in his notes to Winthrop (vol. ii. p. *175), and Mr. Whitmore (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. 1871-3, p. 397), think it was so called from Hull in Yorkshire. It would appear from the text that it had been locally known by that name among the “old planters” before the settlement of Boston. [563] Sir Christopher Gardiner suddenly appeared in Massachusetts in May, 1630, and returned to England in 1632, arriving there in August. He is supposed to have come out as an agent, or emissary, of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. I had begun the preparation of a note on Sir Christopher, and “how hee spedd amongst the Seperatists,” for insertion at this point; but the subject developed on my hands until it assumed the shape of a study by itself. It can be found in the Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc. for January, 1883, vol. xx. [564] Machiavelli died in 1527, and The Prince was published in 1532. The reputation of the man and of the book were as well established in Morton’s day as they are now. “Nick Machiavel had ne’er a trick, (Tho’ he gave his name to our old Nick.)” (Hudibras, p. III. can. i. lines 1313-4.) This derivation is not accepted by the authorities. See Brewer’s Dict., p. 614. [565] Supra, Ch. XXV. pp. [316-20]. [566] As Saint Michael is one of the Azores, it may have been during this voyage that Morton visited the Isle of Sal and the tropics, as mentioned in the first chapter of the New Canaan. (Supra, [117].) If the voyage did last nine months, it was August or September, 1631, before he got back to England. “Cum canerem reges et prœlia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit:...” (Virgil, Eclogues, vi. 3-4.) There are in the New Canaan (Supra, [280], [297]) two references to certain imaginary or special gifts from “Phaos box,” which in editing I had been unable to explain. Mr. Lindsay Swift (Supra, [328], note) now supplies me with a reference, which, if it is indeed, as seems most probable, the allusion which Morton had in mind, seems to indicate that his familiarity with classic authors was greater than I have been disposed to give him credit for. The reference is to the Varia Historia of Ælianus (lib. XII. cap. xviii.), and reads as follows: “Phaonem, omnium hominum formosissimum, Venus in lactucis abscondit. Alii dicunt, eum portitorem fuisse, et habuisse hoc vitæ genus. Veniebat autem aliquando Venus, trajicere volens; ille vero, nesciens quænam esset, libenter recepit, magnaque cura, quoquo voluerat, eam vexit. Pro quibus meritis Dea alabastrum ei donavit, et erat in eo unguentum, quo unctus Phaon speciosissimus hominum evasit, atque adeo amarunt eum Mitylenensium feminæ. Tandem vero deprehensus in adulterio, trucidatus est.”