BATTLE-GROUND OF AUGUST 29, 1778.
By the river, in the forked branches of blasted sycamores, the fish-hawk builds and broods. Their nests are made of dried eel-grass from the shore interwoven with twigs. The shrill scream of the female at my coming was answered by the cry of the male, who left his fishing out on the river at the first signal of distress. An old traveler says this bird sometimes seems to lie expanded on the water, he hovers so close to it. Having by some attractive power drawn the fish within his reach, he darts suddenly upon them. The charm he makes use of is supposed to be an oil contained in a small bag in the body. In defense of his mate and her young the bird seems to forget fear.
After many agreeable surprises already encountered, I was unprepared for what I saw from the summit of Mount Hope. I felt it was good to be there. Every town in Rhode Island is said to be visible. All the islands dispersed about the bay are revealed at a glance. Glimmering in the distance was Providence. On the farther shore of Mount Hope Bay, Fall River appeared niched in the sheer side of a granite ledge. Here were Warren and Bristol, there Warwick; and, far down the greater bay, Newport was swathed in a hazy cloud. I had made a long walk, yet felt no fatigue, on the top of Mount Hope.
KING PHILIP, FROM AN OLD PRINT.
Near the brow of the hill Philip fixed his wigwam and held his dusky court. He has had Irving for his biographer, Southey for his bard, and Forrest for his ideal representative. In his own time he was the public enemy whom any should slay; in ours he is considered as a martyr to the idea of liberty—his idea of liberty not differing from that of Tell and Toussaint, whom we call heroes.
Philip did not comprehend the religion of the whites, but as he understood their policy he naturally distrusted their faith. When the prophet Eliot preached to him, he went up to that good man, and, pulling off a button from his doublet, said he valued his discourse as little as the piece of "brass—the monster!" exclaims pious Cotton Mather.
Such hills as Mount Hope were the settlers' sun-dials, when clocks and watches were luxuries known only to the wealthy few. The crest is a green nipple, having quartz cropping out everywhere; in fact, the basis of the hill is nearly a solid mass of quartz. Between the site of Philip's wigwam and the shore, where the escarpment is fifty feet, is a natural excavation, five or six feet from the ground, called "Philip's Throne." A small grass-plot is before it, and at its foot trickles a never-failing spring of water, known as "Philip's Spring."