[VIII. AN EARLY EXPLORATION IN MAINE]
41. Weymouth's Voyage, 1605
From A True Relation of Captain George Waymouth, His Voyage (1605), reprinted in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Vol. VIII. Weymouth's voyage was a precursor of the attempt at settlement on the Kennebec in 1607 by one branch of the Virginia Company.
Upon Tuesday, the 5th day of March, about ten o'clock before noon, we set sail from Ratcliffe, and came to an anchor that tide about two o'clock before Gravesend....
Friday, the 17th of May, about six o'clock at night, we descried the land. ... It appeared a mean high land, as we after found it, being an island of some six miles in compass, but I hope the most fortunate ever yet discovered....
This island is woody grown with fir, birch, oak and beech, as far as we saw along the shore; and so likely to be within. On the verge grow gooseberries, strawberries, wild pease, and wild rose bushes. The water issued forth down the rocky cliffe in many places: and much fowl of divers kinds breed upon the shore and rocks.
While we were at shore, our men aboard, with a few hooks, got above thirty great cods and haddocks, which gave us a taste of the great plenty of fish which we found afterward wheresoever we went upon the coast. From hence we might discern the main land from the west-south-west to the east-north-east; and a great way (as it then seemed, and we after found it,) up into the main we might discern very high mountains, though the main seemed but low land;...
The profits and fruits which are naturally on these islands are these:
All along the shore, and some space within, where the wood hindereth not, grow plentifully, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, roses, currants, wild vines, angelica.