The latter part of the afternoon they arrived at Pokanoket. Much to their disappointment, they found that Massasoit, uninformed of their intended visit, was absent on a hunting excursion. As he was, however, not far from home, runners were immediately dispatched to recall him. The chieftain had selected his residence with that peculiar taste for picturesque beauty which characterized the more noble of the Indians. The hillock which the English subsequently named Mount Hope was a graceful mound about two hundred feet high, commanding an extensive and remarkably beautiful view of wide, sweeping forests and indented bays.
Mount Hope.
This celebrated mound is about four miles from the city of Fall River. From its summit the eye now ranges over Providence, Bristol, Warren, Fall River, and many other minor towns. The whole wide-spread landscape is embellished with gardens, orchards, cultivated fields, and thriving villages. Gigantic steamers plow the waves, and the sails of a commerce which girdles the globe whitens the beautiful bay.
Reflections on the past.
But, as the tourist sits upon the solitary summit, he forgets the present in memory of the past. Neither the pyramids of Egypt nor the Coliseum of the Eternal City are draped with a more sublime antiquity. Here, during generations which no man can number, the sons of the forest gathered around their council-fires, and struggled, as human hearts, whether savage or civilized, must ever struggle, against "life's stormy doom."
Here, long centuries ago, were the joys of the bridal, and the anguish which gathers around the freshly-opened grave. Beneath the moon, which then, as now, silvered this mound, "the Indian lover wooed his dusky maid." Upon the beach, barbaric childhood reveled, and their red limbs were bathed in the crystal waves.
Here, in ages long since passed away, the war-whoop resounded through the forest. The shriek of mothers and maidens pierced the skies as they fell cleft by the tomahawk; and all the horrid clangor of war, with "its terror, conflagration, tears, and blood," imbittered ten thousand fold the ever bitter lot of humanity.
"'Tis dangerous to rouse the lion;
Deadly to cross the tiger's path;
But the most terrible of terrors
Is man himself in his wild wrath."