[426] Winnisimmet, the Indian name of Chelsea. Upon the significance of the name Mr. Trumbull writes: “I have my doubts about Morton’s Weenasemute, but am inclined to believe that his interpretation is founded on fact. Ashim (= asim, in local dialect) is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for ‘fountain.’ It denotes a place from which water (for drinking) is taken. Winn’ashim, or Winn’asim, means ‘the good fountain,’ or spring; and Winn’asim-ut (or et) is ‘at the good spring.’ The efficacy of the water ‘to cure barrenness’ may have been Morton’s embellishment, but not improbably was an Indian belief.”
[427] Squantum, in Quincy.
[428] This is a gross exaggeration. Thomas Wiggin, in November, 1622, wrote: “For the plantation in Mattachusetts, the English there being about 2000 people, yonge and old.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Writing on May 22, 1634, about the time Morton referred to (Supra, [78]), Governor Winthrop says: “For the number of our people, we never took any surveigh of them, nor doe we intend it, except inforced throughe urgent occasion (David’s example stickes somewhat with us) but I esteeme them to be in all about 4000: soules and upwarde.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Dec. 14, 1882.) So in the New England’s Prospect (p. 42), Wood speaks of the population of Massachusetts as “foure thousand soules.” In the spring of 1634 there may have been five hundred persons in the Plymouth colony, and as many more in New Hampshire and Maine, making a total New England population of five thousand at the time Morton was writing. When the New Canaan was published, however, in 1637, the population undoubtedly was as large as 12,000.
[430] This astounding proposition was in the early days of the settlement not peculiar to Morton. Higginson, in his New Englands Plantation, speaks of the “extraordinary clear and dry air, that is of a most healing nature to all such as are of a cold, melancholy, phlegmatic, rheumatic temper of body,” and concludes what he has to say on the subject with his often-quoted sentiment that “a sup of New-England’s air is better than a whole draught of Old England’s ale.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 251-2.) Williams, too, says in his Key (ch. xiii.): “The Nor-West wind (which occasioneth New-England cold) comes over the cold frozen Land, and over many millions of Loads of Snow: and yet the pure wholesomnesse of the Aire is wonderfull, and the warmth of the Sunne, such in the sharpest weather, that I have often seen the Natives Children runne about starke naked in the coldest dayes.” Again, in the pamphlet entitled New England’s First Fruits, printed in London in 1643, it was stated, in reply to the objection of extreme winter cold, that “the cold there is no impediment to health, but very wholsome for our bodies, insomuch that all sorts generally, weake and strong, had scarce ever such measure of health in all their lives as there.... Men are seldome troubled in winter with coughes and Rheumes.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 249.) Josselyn, however, writing nearly thirty years later, remarks: “Some of our New-England writers affirm that the English are never, or very rarely, heard to sneeze or cough, as ordinarily they do in England, which is not true.” (Two Voyages, p. 184.)
[433] Wood in his Prospect (p. 2), referring to the approach to Boston Bay from Cape Anne, had said: “The surrounding shore being high, and showing many white Cliffes, in a most pleasant prospect.”
[434] The Second Book of the New Canaan, it would seem, originally ended with this chapter. The next chapter was an afterthought of the author, written before December, 1635, as is evident from the allusions in it to events then taking place. (Supra, [78].) Wood’s Prospect was published in 1634, and the constant references to it in the first two books of the New Canaan show that they were both written subsequent to its publication, probably during that year. In the Third Book there are no allusions to the Prospect, and the reference to the Third Book in the Second (Supra, [*51]), to which attention has already been called, show that it must have been written before the others, and probably during the year 1633. It would seem to have been completed in May, 1634. There is, however, also a reference to be found in the Third Book to the Second (Infra, [*120]), but it was probably interpolated during a revisal of the manuscript.
[435] Now Lake Champlain. “By the Indians north of the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, it was called the Lake of the Iroquois, as likewise the River Richelieu, connecting it and the River St. Lawrence, they called the River of the Iroquois. Champlain discovered the lake in 1609, and gave it his own name. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. ii. pp. 210-20; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, p. 316.) On some of the early maps it is put down ‘Lake Champlain or Irocoise.’ It is so called in Purchas’s Pilgrims (vol. iv. p. 1643). The region about the lake was sometimes called Irocosia. The Iroquois lived on the south of the lake, and, as their enemies on the north approached them through this lake, they naturally called it the Lake of the Iroquois.” (MS. letter of Rev. E. F. Slafter.)