This follows the map in the Amsterdam ed. (1688) of Richard Blome’s L’Amérique, traduit de l’Anglois. This is a different map (on a larger scale) from the one in the original English edition of Blome. See reference to the map given in Mather’s Magnalia (1702) in Vol. III. p. 345. This map is reproduced in Cassell’s United States, i. pp. 492, 516.
Douglass, with some excess, again speaks of Mather’s map (Summary, etc., i. 362) “as composed from some old rough drafts of the first discoverers, with obsolete names not known at this time, and has scarce any resemblance of the country,” and he calls Cyprian Southack’s maps and charts even worse. For Southack see Mem. Hist. of Boston.
Plymouth, which had never had a royal charter, was endeavoring, through the agency of Ichabod Wiswall,[159] the minister of Duxbury, who had been sent over to protect their interests, to make the most of the present opportunity and get a favorable recognition from the king. Between a project of annexation to New York and Mather’s urging of an alternative annexation to the Bay, the weaker colony fared hard, and its ultimate fate was fashioned against its will. In the counsels of the four agents Cooke was strenuous for the old charter at all hazards, and Oakes sustained him. Mather’s course was professedly a politic one. He argued finally that a chance for the old charter was gone, and that it would be wiser to succumb in season to the inevitable, in order better to direct progress. When it came to a petition for a new charter, Oakes so far smothered his sentiments as to sign it with Mather; but Cooke held out to the last.
ELISHA COOKE, THE ELDER.
This follows a red-chalk drawing in the gallery of the American Antiquarian Society, which had belonged to the Rev. William Bentley, of Salem, who was born in Boston in 1759, and died in Salem in 1819.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts was governing itself, and had enough to do in looking after its frontiers, particularly at the eastward, where the withdrawal of the troops which Andros had placed there became the signal for Indian outbreaks. New Hampshire, weak in her isolation, petitioned to be taken under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and was (March 19, 1690) for the time being annexed.[160] Connecticut, destined to save her charter by delays and a less fiery spirit, entered upon a career characterized in the main by dignified quiet. Though she participated in some of the tumult of the recurrent Indian wars, and let her bitterness against episcopacy sometimes lead to violent acts, she had an existence of much more content than fell to the lot of the other New England colonies.[161]
The first momentous event which the restored governments had to encounter was the disastrous expedition which Phips led against Quebec, in 1690. With confident hope, the fleet on the 8th of August sailed from Boston harbor, and the whole community for three months waited for news with great solicitude. Scarce three weeks had passed when Sewall records (August 28) that they got from Albany intelligence of the Mohawks’ defection, which, as he writes, “puts a great damp here to think that our fleet should be disappointed of their expected aid.”[162] Apprehension of some more imminent danger grew throughout the colony. In September they placed watches at night throughout Boston, and gave as watchwords “Schenectady” and “Salmon Falls,”—fearful reminders.[163] One night at Charlestown there was an alarm because Indians were seen in their back fields,—they proved to be runaway servants. Again, the home guard, eight companies, trained another day. At last tidings came from Plymouth of certain losses which the contingent of that colony, among the forces acting at the eastward, had suffered, news whereof had reached them. This and other matters were made the grounds of an attempt to found a regular channel of communicating the current reports, which in a little sheet called Publick Occurrences was issued at Boston, Thursday, September 25, the precursor of the American newspaper. It told the people of various incidents of their every-day life, and warned them of its purpose to prevent false reports, and to correct the spirit of lying, “which prevails among us.” It represented that “the chief discourse of this month” was the ill-success of the expedition, which, under the command of Gen. Winthrop, of Connecticut, had attempted to advance on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, to distract the enemy’s attention in that direction while Phips ascended the St. Lawrence.[164]