Turning to the southward is the battle-field of 1778, where Sullivan and Greene fought with Pigot and Prescott, and where Lafayette, though he had ridden from Boston in six hours, was not. This campaign, begun so auspiciously, terminated ingloriously. New England had been aroused to arms. Men of all ranks of society shouldered their firelocks and marched. Volunteers from Newburyport, a company of the first merchants of Salem, artillery and infantry corps from Boston, thronged the roads to Sullivan's camp. It was a good and salutary lesson to the Americans, not to put their faith in French appearances.[304]
FROM BUTTS'S HILL, LOOKING NORTH.
When Coddington and his associates determined to remove from Massachusetts, they meant to settle upon Long Island or in Delaware Bay. While their vessel was making the dangerous passage around Cape Cod without them, they came by land to Providence, where Mr. Williams courteously entertained and afterward influenced them to settle upon the Isle of Aquidneck. Plymouth having disclaimed jurisdiction over it, and promised to look upon and assist them as loving neighbors, in March, 1637-'38, the exiles organized their political community upon the northern end of the island. Sir H. Vane and Roger Williams were instrumental in procuring Rhode Island from the Narraganset chieftains, Miantonimo and Canonicus. By the next spring their numbers were so much augmented that some of the settlers removed to the southern or western shores. The island was divided into two townships—Portsmouth, which now engrosses its upper half, and Newport. In 1644 they named it the Isle of Rhodes, which was merely exchanging one pagan name for another.[305]
QUAKER HILL FROM BUTTS'S HILL, LOOKING SOUTH.
Mount Hope is scarcely more than two hundred feet high, though in its isolation it looks higher. It is commandingly situated on a point of land on the eastern shore of Bristol Neck, giving its name to a broad expanse of water that receives Taunton River in its course to the sea. On the eastern side the hill is precipitous, vastly more so than Horse Neck, down which the valiant Putnam urged his steed when pursued by British dragoons. Down this declivity Philip is said to have rolled like a cask when surprised by white enemies. Here, on the shores of Taunton River, is the scene of those hand-to-hand encounters between settler and savage in which the old historians are wont to mix up gunpowder with religion so perplexedly. In those days the fall of a red chieftain on the hunting-grounds of his fathers was hailed as a special providence. Mount Hope was the sequel of Samoset's "Welcome, Englishmen."