The first of these surveys was made during the month of September, 1604. This expedition was under the sole direction of Champlain, and was made in a barque of seventeen or eighteen tons, manned by twelve sailors, and with two Indians as guides. He examined the coast from the mouth of the St. Croix to the Penobscot. He was especially interested in the beautiful islands which fringe the coast, particularly in Mount Desert and Isle Haute, to which he gave the names which they still bear. Sailing up the Penobscot, called by the Indians the Pentegöet, and by Europeans who had passed along the coast the Norumbegue, he explored this river to the head of tide-water, at the site of the present city of Bangor, where a fall in the river intercepted his progress. In the interior, along the shores of the river, he saw scarcely any inhabitants; and by a very careful examination he was satisfied beyond a doubt that the story, which had gained currency from a period as far back as the time of Alfonse, about a large native town in the vicinity, whose inhabitants had attained to some of the higher arts of civilization, was wholly without foundation. He not only saw no such town, but could find no remains or other evidence that one had ever existed. Having spent nearly a month in his explorations, he obtained a good knowledge of the country and much information as to the inhabitants, when having exhausted his provisions, he returned to his winter quarters at De Monts’ Island.
The next expedition was made early in the following summer, after it had been decided to abandon the island. Accordingly, on the 18th of June, 1605, De Monts himself, with Champlain as geographer, several gentlemen and twenty sailors, together with an Indian and his wife, necessary guides and interpreters, set sail for the purpose of finding a more eligible situation somewhere on the shores of the present New England. Passing along the coast which had been explored the preceding autumn, they soon came to the mouth of the Kennebec. Entering this river, and bearing to the easterly side, they sailed through a tidal creek, now called Back River, into the waters of the Sheepscot, and passing round the southern point of Westport Island, skirting its eastern shore, they came to the site of the present town of Wiscasset. Lingering a short time, exchanging courtesies with a band of Indians assembled there, and entering into a friendly alliance with them, they proceeded down the western shores of Westport, and passing through the Sasanoa, again entered the Kennebec, and sailed up as far as Merrymeeting Bay, where, by their conference with the Indians whom they met in the Sheepscot, they were led to believe they should meet Marchin and Sasinou, two famous chiefs of that region, whose friendship it was good policy to secure. Failing of this interview, they returned by a direct course to the mouth of the Kennebec.
Champlain having made a sketch of the mouth of the river, the islands and sandbars, with the course and depth of the main channel, the party moved on towards the west. Examining the coast as they proceeded, they passed without observing the excellent harbor of Portland, concealed as it is by the beautiful islands clustering about it, and next entered the bay of the Saco, which stretches from Cape Elizabeth to Fletcher’s Neck. Here they observed strong contrasts between the natives and those of the coast farther east. Their habits, mode of life, and language were all different. Hitherto the Indians whom they had seen were nomadic, living wholly by fishing and the chase. Here they were sedentary, and subsisted mainly on the products of the soil. Their settlement was surrounded by fine fields of Indian corn, gardens of squashes, beans, and pumpkins, and ample patches of tobacco. They observed also on the bank of the river a fort, which was made of lofty palisades. After tarrying two days in this bay, making ample sketches of the whole, including the islands, the place now known as Old Orchard Beach, and the dwellings on the shore, and having bestowed on the natives some small presents as tokens of gratitude for cordial and friendly entertainment, the French, on the 12th July, once more weighed anchor. Keeping close in, following the sinuosities of the shore, and lingering here and there, they observed everything as they passed, and on the morning of the 16th arrived at Cape Anne.
PORT ST. LOUIS.
[From the edition of 1613. Key: A, anchoring-place. B, channel. C, two islands (the left-hand one seems to be what is now known as Saquish, a peninsula connected at present with the Gurnet Head, here marked H; the right-hand one is the present Clark’s Island). D, sand-hills (apparently the low sand-hills of Duxbury beach). E, shoals. F, cabins and tillage ground of the natives. G, beaching-place of our barque (apparently the present Powder Point). H, land like an island, covered with wood (the present Gurnet Head). I, high promontory, seen four or five leagues at sea. This promontory has usually been called Manomet, and if the right-hand of the map is north, it has the correct bearing from the Gurnet; but it is in that case very strange that so marked a feature as the sand-spit known as Plymouth Beach is not indicated, and no sign is given of the conspicuous eminence known as Captain’s Hill. If, however, we consider the top of the map north (and the engraver may be accountable for the erroneous fashioning of the points of the compass), it becomes at once perfectly comprehensible as a sketch of that part of the bay known as Duxbury Harbor, and would not, accordingly, show that part of the shore on which the Pilgrims landed. In this view the hill I becomes Captain’s Hill, and the rest of the plan, though but rudely conforming to the lines of Duxbury Harbor, is much more satisfactory in its topographical correspondences than the other theory would allow. See the modern map of the harbor in Vol. III. chap. viii. Cf. further Davis’s Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth, p. 35, and the papers in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., December, 1882.
It will be remembered that the French found in all this region populous communities, which had been greatly reduced or destroyed by a plague in 1616 and 1617, before the English made their settlements. Mr. Adams has grouped the authorities on this point in his Morton’s New English Canaan, p. 133.
The French accounts of these Massachusetts Indians may be compared with the later English descriptions of Smith, Winslow, Wood, Morton, Williams, Lechford, Josselyn, and Gookin.
The French continued to frequent the Massachusetts coast for some years. We have accounts of two of their ships, at least, which were lost there between 1614 and 1619,—one on Cape Cod, two of whose crew were reclaimed by Dermer (Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation, 98), and the other in Boston Harbor, whose crew were killed. Cf. 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., iv. 479, 489, in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative; Morton’s New English Canaan, Adams’s edition, p. 131; Mather’s Magnalia, book i. chap. ii.—Ed.]