Lying under cold snow-white sheets, with jealous neighbors, the French settlers of Canada and Acadia, ready to put pins in the youngster and keep her crying, and if possible to stunt her growth, Maine was longest in her cradle of any of the infant settlements. As early as 1602 some Frenchmen landed on her coast, but only remained long enough to make a few eyelet-holes in that watery frill which the busy but chill fingers of the Atlantic has wrought upon her eastern hem. It was reserved for the sturdier Saxon race to take the infant in hand, and, by hardier treatment, to bring her up to robuster strength. The first serious effort was made in 1622. That court pet, Gorges, obtained, in 1639, a charter, which not only covered the present State, but lapped over into the borders of Massachusetts. The latter resented this interference with her own by making counter-claims, and in 1652 insisted upon taking the child under its exclusive protection. The contest, carried into the English courts, outlived of course its original promoters, but was at last, in 1677, terminated, to the astonishment of the suitors and the disgust of the lawyers. The custody of the infant, now grown to be a stripling, was awarded to Massachusetts, which, always looking after the Maine chance, got a most obstreperous minor in charge.
In 1630 a band of eight hundred and forty bodies and souls, led by John Winthrop, and tempted by a spring of good water, settled on the peninsula of Shawmut, and began Boston, which, we are glad to say, is not finished yet. May it never be; but, ever growing, may it carry on wagon-making as successfully as in former days, furnishing hubs for those covered transportation carts which trundle westward, and which, if allowed to stand still over night, swarm into a new colony the next morning.
The following year a miniature church and state experiment was made in the Massachusetts settlement, by limiting the eligibility to civil office to church-members, whether civil or not.
The first log-cabin builders, who had themselves fled from the knife of the law, whetted it to a keen edge and turned it upon their fellow-sufferers, who differed from them in their religious or moral sentiments. Profane swearing, tippling, taking interest on loans of money, and wearing expensive jewelry became legal crimes, among those who had suppressed with Spartan rigor their exercise in themselves and their families. The next generation, in 1658, could not tolerate drab coats or drab principles, and sought to put down the new fashions by hanging up several of their owners in them. The wood-colored styles multiplied of course, notwithstanding the crimson mode of dealing with them,—a mode which, whenever mentioned, brings up a flush on every fair New England cheek to this day. The flush is not likely to be left unsummoned so long as the enemies of New England have any ink left, or so long as her own gifted sons preserve in choicest amber the well-embalmed and dramatic specimens.
In 1635 Roger Williams, illuminated by principles of religious toleration, unkindled as yet in the Puritan settlements of Massachusetts Bay, Salem, and Boston, carried his softly burning torch out of the reach of the chill breath of the General Court, which sought in vain to blow out the wavering flame.
He pitched his tent on the Blackstone River where it widens into Narragansett Bay, and there grafted such a lovely little bud of religious equality upon the old trunk of settled law, that, swelling under Providence into the State of Rhode Island, it has become one of the finest fruit-trees in our American orchard. Some people, of aquatic notions and learning their geography in the pitching hold of a yacht, have erroneously supposed that Rhode Island was included in the state of Newport. Such notions rest on very sandy foundations, and are no more to be trusted than the speculations of the idly learned about the round tower of that resort for capital sea-bathing.
The settlement of Rhode Island, like the other American plantations, was kept alive and stirring by Indian wars; but, aided by the Narragansetts, she succeeded at last, after attempting to bury their hatchets, in burying the Pequods themselves, leaving not one to perpetuate the seed.
Meanwhile, the valley of the Connecticut, visited by exploring parties from Plymouth Colony under the younger Winthrop, and by heavy flanked Dutchmen from the island of Manhattan, had also attracted attention to its valuable real estate; and its lots of course were mapped out and deeded in that first-class broker’s office, the Court of Charles I., situated in London.
Wethersfield, although it then had no onions to affect their eyes, made the mouths of a party of emigrants, who went there under Hooker in June, 1636, to water pleasantly, as they gaped over its broad meadow-lands, shaded with huge trees, and dipping their heavy grasses into the wide and flowing river.
But these huge trees at Wethersfield and Windsor, under which the infant plantations of Connecticut were made, were less valuable than the large old oak at Hartford, which afterwards became more famous for standing mute, and hiding its secrets, than the talking oak of Tennyson.