WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY FORD
Boston, February, 1920
THE ISLE OF PINES
OR,
A late Diſcovery of a fourth ISLAND in
Terra Auſtralis, Incognita.
BEING
A True Relation of certain Engliſh perſons, Who in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth making a Voyage to the Eaſt India, were caſt away, and wracked on the Iſland near to the Coaſt of Auſtralis, and all drowned, except one Man and four Women, whereof one was a Negro. And now lately Ann Dom. 1667, A Dutch Ship driven by foul weather there, by chance have found their Poſterity (ſpeaking good Engliſh) to amount to ten or twelve thouſand perſons, as they suppoſe. The whole Relation follows, written, and left by the Man himſelf a little before his death, and declared to the Dutch by His Grandchild.
THE ISLE OF PINES
The scene opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the year 1668, where in one of the college buildings a contest between two rival printers had been waged for some years. Marmaduke Johnson, a trained and experienced printer, to whose ability the Indian Bible is largely due, had ceased to be the printer of the corporation, or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, but still had a press and, what was better, a fresh outfit of type, sent over by the corporation and entrusted to the keeping of John Eliot, the Apostle. Samuel Green had become a printer, though without previous training, and was at this time printer to the college, a position of vantage against a rival, because it must have carried with it countenance from the authorities in Boston, and public printing then as now constituted an item to a press of some income and some perquisites. By seeking to marry Green's daughter before his English wife had ceased to be, Johnson had created a prejudice, public as well as private, against himself.{1}
1 Mass. Hist Soc. Proceedings, xx. 265.
Each wished to set up a press in Boston itself, but the General Court, probably for police reasons, had ordered that there should be no printing but at Cambridge, and that what was printed there should be approved by any two of four gentlemen appointed by the Court. It thus appeared that each printer possessed a certain superiority over his rival. In the matter of types Johnson was favored, as he had new types and was a trained printer; but these advantages were partially neutralized by indolence and by Green's better standing before the magistrates.{1}