[12] Made of maize or Indian corn.
[13] James I., then King of England, had been a widower for about a year.
[14] This was probably the fish called tataug.
[15] Abbott’s Life of King Philip.
[16] Mr. Drake, in his History of Boston, supposes that the “cliff” alluded to must have been that pile of rocks now called “the chapel,” in Quincy Bay.
[17] The Fortune.
[18] It will be remembered that, as half of their number had died, seven houses accommodated the survivors.
[19] Morton, in his New English Canaan, writes: “There is a fish, by some called shads, that at the spring of the year pass up the rivers to spawn in the ponds, and are taken in such multitudes in every river that hath a pond at the end, that the inhabitants dung their ground with them. You may see in one township a hundred acres together set with these fish, every acre taking a thousand of them. And an acre thus dressed will produce and yield so much corn as three acres without fish.”
It was the rule of the Indians to plant their corn when the leaves of the white oak were as big as the ear of a mouse. They put two or three fishes in every cornhill.
[20] Probably Martha’s Vineyard, then called Capawock.