Bibliographical Note
The standard sources of information on early Plymouth are quickly named: William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1952, or other edition); the items in Alexander Young (ed.), Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (1844), most of which were printed for “Everyman’s Library” under the same title, 1910; and G. F. Willison, The Pilgrim Reader (1953). Other books which proved useful in the preparation of this one have been cited in footnotes. In addition to these, several ought to receive notice.
On John Pory there are articles in Dictionary of National Biography (by Charlotte Fell-Smith) and Dictionary of American Biography (by A. C. Gordon, Jr.). See also Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, translated by John Pory, ed. and intro. by Robert Brown (1896); W. F. Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company (1932) and The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (1949); S. M. Kingsbury (ed.), Records of the Virginia Company of London (1933, 1935), III, IV; Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, fourth series, IX, 8-47; J. H. R. Yardley, Before the Mayflower (1931).
Emmanuel Altham’s name until now has been virtually missing from the Pilgrim literature. The late Dr. Otto Fisher, of Detroit, had a file containing such information as exists on Altham and his family, compiled by Victor C. Sanborn and Oliver R. Barrett with the aid of correspondents in England. Dr. Fisher kindly let the editor of this volume use the file.
The life of Isaack de Rasieres is covered and illuminated by J. F. Jameson, “Introduction” to “Letter of Isaack de Rasieres to Samuel Blommaert, 1628 (?),” Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 (“Original Narratives of Early American History”; 1909), 98-99; and “Letter from Isaack de Rasière to the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company, September 23, 1626,” in A. J. F. van Laer (translator and editor), Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library (1924), 171-251, 260-276. See also A. C. Flick (editor), History of the State of New York (1933), I, II.
About New England in general and the fishing business, see also C. F. Adams, Three Episodes in Massachusetts History (1894), I; C. K. Bolton, The Real Founders of New England (1929); I. S. Proper, Monhegan the Cradle of New England (1930); Frances Rose-Troup, John White the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930) and The Massachusetts Bay Company and its Predecessors (1930); C. K. Shipton, Roger Conant of Massachusetts (1945); and William Vaughan, The Golden Fleece (London, 1626), Part III.
Footnotes
[1]Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Treasurer (chief executive) of the Virginia Company of London, 1620-24.
[2]Thomas Jones, Captain of the Discovery, the ship in the service of the Virginia
Company on which Pory was traveling. (Not to be confused with Christopher Jones,
master of the Mayflower in 1620.)
[3]Sandys was Treasurer of the Virginia Company, 1619-20, a notable Puritan and
opponent of royal absolutism, influential in granting a patent to the Pilgrims and
their backers permitting them to establish a “particular plantation” in Virginia,
which then extended as far north as 41°, thus including the mouth of the Hudson
River. John Ferrar was Deputy to the Treasurer in 1620. Sir George Yeardley,
knighted and sent out as Governor to Virginia in 1619, was the candidate of Sandys’s
party.
[4]Christopher Jones or John Clarke, a pilot experienced in the northern route to
Virginia (on which a ship sighted land at or near Cape Cod and proceeded down the
coast to Chesapeake Bay).
[5]Provincetown, Mass.
[6]Gloucester or Annisquam, Mass.
[7]“Anna” in the manuscript.
[8]Englishmen tended to translate Indian customs into feudal law. Plymouth and
the territory around it had been the home of a tribal group of which Squanto was the
only survivor. Neighboring Indians traditionally had no rights there. The Pilgrims
interpreted the claims of Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief, as feudal overlordship
over southeastern Massachusetts, so the vacant parts of it which they took up logically
had to be a feudal domain of some kind.
[9]Bermudas.
[10]Romans 11:16.
[11]William Bradford.
[12]Alewives.
[13]Town Brook.
[14]The whole passage reads: “Naturam expelles furca licet, tamen usque recurret,
et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.” “You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork,
yet she will ever hurry back, and, ere you know it, will burst through your
foolish contempt in triumph.” Horace, “Epistles, Book I, Epistle x,” Satires, Epistles
and Ars Poetica with English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb Classical
Library, 1932), 316, 317.
[15]Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1286-1331, formally beatified in the eighteenth century)
was a Franciscan friar and missionary who traveled widely in the Far East. The
story of his travels became popular in the fourteenth century, but fell from favor as it
gained a reputation for embroidery. The phenomenon to which Pory refers occurred
at a place described as “Moumoran” in the printed version with which Pory was
probably familiar, that in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1599), II, 57.
[16]A stream running from the Smelt Pond to Plymouth Bay, entering it at the
mouth of the Jones River, about two miles northwest of Plymouth.
[17]“Skeines” in the manuscript.
[18]High tide in tidal streams.
[19]“Muskles and slammes” in the manuscript.
[20]Virginia.
[21]Delicacies.
[22]Chief town on Terceira, one of the Azore Islands, where Pory was detained a
prisoner on his way to England.
[23]Raspberries.
[24]The “musky” flavor common to the muscat grape varieties. “Muskadell” in
the manuscript.
[25]Pory was wrong; it is north of 41°.
[26]“Conahassit,” an old form, in the manuscript.
[27]Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag or Pocanocket Indians, who lived in the
territory around present-day Bristol, R. I., which was then called Pocanocket.
[28]Pamet is present-day Truro, Nauset is the area from Eastham to the Denises,
both on Cape Cod. Capawack is the island, Martha’s Vineyard.
[29]Capt. Thomas Hunt took two dozen Indians captive in 1614, some at Plymouth,
some on Cape Cod, and sold several as slaves at Málaga. While Hunt’s deeds
were not excusable, they were merely the worst of several such incidents. Capt. John
Smith pointed out that Hunt could not be responsible for the special hostility of the
Capawack Indians toward the English. Rather, their ill will may be traced to the kidnaping
of Epenow and Coneconam by Capt. Harlow, in 1614 or earlier; the series of
degrading experiences which Epenow underwent at the hands of English captors;
his influence on his countrymen after his return to Capawack; and the somewhat
mysterious friction between him and Capt. Dermer in 1620, in which the latter was
mortally wounded. The Capawack Indians probably feared reprisal for this and related
incidents. Capt. John Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the
Summer Isles (1632), 204-205; Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His
Pilgrimes (1625), IV, 1778, 1828, 1841, 1849; James P. Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges
and His Province of Maine (Prince Society, 1890), I, 104n-106n; W. F. Gookin,
Capawack alias Martha’s Vineyard (1947), 8-17.
[30]Canonicus, the Narragansett sachem.
[31]Netherlanders who traded around the mouth of the Hudson River before the
actual founding of New Amsterdam in 1626.
[32]Whenever the king might come.
[33]“Combotant” in the manuscript.
[34]Squanto, the Pilgrims’ friend and sole survivor of the Patuxet natives, had
been one of the Indians gathered by Sir Ferdinando to get information about New
England. Gorges sent him back to America in 1618 or 1619 as guide to Capt. Dermer.
[35]“Monhaccke” in the manuscript. In the early seventeenth century, Iroquois
Indians ranged as far east as New Hampshire.
[36]Hip-length coats of some protective strength.
[37]Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, where Pory had held land.
[38]Charts.
[39]Pacific Ocean. The French knew about the Great Lakes.
[40]Indians, quite powerful in Pory’s day, living in the lower part of the river
valley of the same name.
[41]The letter was written at the fishing grounds off northern New England, probably
Monhegan.
[42]In 1628 John Gibbs was master of the Marmaduke in the service of the New Plymouth
Adventurers.
[43]Virginia Company of London.
[44]William Vengham. He was living and selling cured fish at Monhegan (probably
by arrangement with the island’s owners) in 1624, and perhaps when Pory was in
the region.
[45]“Tlemmish” in the manuscript.
[46]In 1622, the Council for New England made Sir Samuel Argall its “Admiral”
with the duty of excluding unlicensed operators from the Council’s territory, North
America from 40° to 48°. American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, Apr. 1867,
66-83.
[47]Possibly an illusion, possibly Block Island. It appears as Cabeleaus Eyleut (?) on
the “Carte Figurative” (1616), reproduced in T. A. Janvier, The Dutch Founding of
New York (1903), between pages 20 and 21.
[48]Pory was mixed up.
Boston Bay was Graaf Hendrycks Bay; Casco Bay (or sometimes
the water between Cape Ann and Portsmouth, N. H.), Graaf Willem’s; Port
Royal is now Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia. The Dutch names in the text have been
left in the half-translated state in which Pory wrote them. In modern Dutch, “States
Hooke” would be Staten Hoek.
[49]Aquamachukes on the “Figurative Map” (1616), Aquauachuques on map by
Vander Donck (1656), reproduced in J. Winsor (ed.), Narrative and Critical History
of America (1884), IV, 433, 438.
[50]Weston’s rowdy crew at Wessagussett.
[51]Damariscove Island, off Boothbay, Me.
[52]Plymouth, England.
[53]Huckleberries.
[54]“Hugh” in the manuscript.
[55]This river is not identifiable. It may be an error in copying “Pentagoet,” the
French name for the Penobscot.
[56]Flat, open.
[57]Gloucester or Annisquam.
[58]“Anna” in the manuscript.
[59]The Bona Nova was a ship often employed in the Virginia trade. Nothing
further is known about Swabber and the dead man.
[60]Indians.
[61]Goods for barter.
[62]Indians who performed the massacre of 1622 in Virginia.
[63]Edward Winslow, who left Plymouth for England on the Anne, Sept. 10, 1623.
[64]The other ship was the Anne, of 140 tons, William Peirce, master. The Company
of Adventurers for New Plymouth (sometimes called by variants of this name) was
the organization of merchants who helped finance the Plymouth settlement. They
“adventured” their money; the Pilgrims were “planters,” although in modern estimation
they were more adventurous.
[65]The only passenger known to have a name similar to Jennings was John Jenny,
who lived to be an important man in the Plymouth Colony. This woman may have
been one in his series of wives.
[66]Indian name for Plymouth.
[67]Double his money.
[68]Monhegan and Damerill’s Cove (Damariscove) are islands off the coast of
Maine, each with a well-protected small harbor. Pemaquid is the peninsula east of
Boothbay, Me.; Sagadahoc is the extension of the Kennebec River below its junction
with the Androscoggin. Anquam is Gloucester or Annisquam on Cape Ann, Mass.
The Isles of Shoals are off New Hampshire.
[69]A fishing stage, built over rock ledges near some convenient harbor, was a scaffold
or “wharf built of spruce trees, boards, and beach stones where the fish could be
cleaned,” salted and cured in the sun. The fishermen raced from Europe to get the
best places, so a ship already in New England waters could hope to beat them all.
S. E. Morison, The Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth (1956), 122. The new
year began on March 25 in the Old Style dating system.
[70]“Alcerme” in the manuscript. Both Altham and Capt. John Smith believed that
alkermes berries existed in North America. Perhaps they thought cranberries were
the same things. Actually, alkermes berries are insects (species coccus ilicis) which
live in the bark of the kerm oak, a tree found around the Mediterranean Sea. The
pregnant females have a bright red color, and juice squeezed from them was used as a
dye and a cordial, especially in times when they were still thought to be a vegetable.
[71]A master salter went over on the Anne, but he proved a better talker than practitioner
of his business. The Pilgrims gave him a lot of help, but he made no salt. In
spite of the logic of the idea, saltmaking never became important in the Plymouth
Colony.
[72]Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
[73]“Bowle alminact” in the manuscript. The term had many variants, but referred
to an astringent earth found in Armenia, used as a styptic.
[74]Capt. Thomas Dermer made two voyages of exploration along the Atlantic
coast between Monhegan and Virginia in 1619 and 1620, employed by Sir Ferdinando
Gorges and others interested in developing New England. He learned much and tried
to establish peace with the Indians, but in his dealings with those near Narragansett
Bay (where he liberated some French mariners) and Martha’s Vineyard, he may have
stirred up fear of the English. He was mortally wounded in a fight with Epenow, an
Indian who had once been a captive of Sir Ferdinando and shown off as a curiosity in
England. W. F. Gookin, Capawack alias Martha’s Vineyard, 14-17.
[75]This is not impossible with Indian corn, but exceedingly unlikely.
[76]Hobomok was a Wampanoag, from west of Plymouth; Squanto, the last of the
Indians formerly living around Patuxet, had died in 1622.
[77]William Bradford married his second wife, Alice, daughter of Alexander Carpenter,
widow of Edward Southworth, Aug. 14, 1623.
[78]Saw. “Say” is an obsolete equivalent.
[79]Thomas Weston, the London merchant who originally promoted the Company
of Adventurers for New Plymouth in 1620. He wanted profit from the business and,
when his patience wore thin with a complete settlement, sent out the private all-male
colony which Altham here refers to. Without family considerations, the men were
expected to stick to money-making activities like trade with the Indians and grow
food for themselves in their spare time. The colony was planted at Wessagusset in
present Weymouth, Mass., after sixty or so “lusty men” had lived at the charge of the
Pilgrims during the summer of 1622. Weston was devoted to America as well as profit
and shady deals, though, and went to Virginia and Maryland as a planter for several
years before dying in England, deep in debt. C. M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American
History (1934), 1, 261-265, 330-331.
[80]Capt. Standish and his company went to the Wessagusset settlement to warn
the men of the conspiracy. After days of cautious waiting and veiled exchange of
threats with some of the leading Massachusetts Indians, Standish got four of them
into a room with about an equal number of his men and assassinated three, including
Pecksuot and Wituwamat, whose head he took to Plymouth. In other ambuscades,
with some aid by Weston’s men, the Pilgrim expeditionary force killed several others.
The Wessagusset settlers, who had been reduced to great want and dependence on
the Indians, abandoned their place, most going to the Maine coast to work for the
fishermen and get passage back to England. The story is told most fully in Edward
Winslow, “Winslow’s Relation,” in Young (ed.), Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers
(“Everyman’s Library,” 1936), 313-332, or some other edition of Winslow’s Good
News from New England.
[81]Flag.
[82]Adventurers and Planters were both members of the Company under the terms
of the agreement made in 1620. Settlers were accounted as having put in the value of
a £10 share.
[83]Ralph Hawtry, husband of Altham’s sister Mary.
[84]Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (London,
1625), 4 vol. The books had been announced as early as 1621.
[85]The Leventhorpes were neighbors and close friends of the Althams. Sir Edward
Altham married one of Sir John’s daughters. Sir John Fowle had married another
daughter. “My brother Thomas” was the son and heir of Sir John Leventhorpe.
Mary Leventhorpe was another daughter.
[86]Margaret Wolley at least had him in her will, proved in 1635, eight months before
Altham’s death.
[87]Mr. Denn was rector in Latton, a man of Puritanical leanings. Stracy was a
tenant of the Althams; Mr. Bland, a minister and family friend; Watson, a London
gunsmith; Wells, a tenant of the Althams.
[88]James Sherley, goldsmith and treasurer of the Company of Adventurers.
[89]On this voyage, Altham went as far as the Narragansett Indians; that is, at least
to western Rhode Island of today.
[90]Before experience showed the falsity of the idea, promoters of colonies
in America thought of the settlements as glorified trading posts. This plan did work
in Asia
and logically ought to have in America if, as men like Altham or other Adventurers
thought, profit was to be gained by trade and farming be only a spare-time adjunct.
[91]Not all went back. Nor was the damage so great; three or four houses burned
down. The common store house and its contents were saved by means of good organization
and wet cloths, although the fire started in an adjoining shed. Bradford said
the blaze was started by some sailors from a ship in the service of the Council for New
England. The men, who wanted a cheerful atmosphere for a carousal, built a big fire
which may have gone out of control. Evidence also turned up to show that the storehouse
was deliberately lit. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 136-137.
Furthermore, the town was more than restored quite soon. Captain John Smith
printed a description of Plymouth in 1624 which, in addition to information about
the government and economy of the settlement, reported that “At New Plymouth is
about 180 persons, some cattle and goats, but many swine and poultry; thirty-two
dwelling houses, whereof seven were burnt the last winter, and the value of five hundred
pounds in other goods. The town is impaled about half a mile in compass. In the
town upon a high mount they have a fort well built with wood, loam and stone, where
is planted their ordnance; also a fair watchtower, partly framed, for the sentinel.”
This passage, in original spelling, may be found in “Generall Historie of Virginia,
New England, and the Summer Isles,” edition of 1624, reprinted in Edward Arber
and A. G. Bradley (eds.), Travels and Works of Captain John Smith (1910), II, 782.
[92]Plymouth. The ship was anchored outside Plymouth harbor when the storm
blew up and almost drove her on the flats called Brown’s Islands.
[93]Englishmen of the seventeenth century thought life barely possible without
beer.
[94]Altham’s nephews, sons of Sir Edward.
[95]See notes 21, 23, 25 to preceding letter.
[96]Old family servants. See preceding letter.
[97]On the Charity.
[98]The troublemaker probably was one of the men drowned in the wreck of the
Little James (see below). The sailors of the pinnace, however, had been discontented
since early in the voyage. They believed they had signed on for privateering, to get
their pay in shares of prize ships. After a near mutiny at Plymouth, Gov. Bradford
helped arrange regular wages for them, and kept them on the ship for the exploration
of southern New England, but they still insisted that they would not go on a fishing
voyage. “A Letter of William Bradford and Isaac Allerton, 1623,” American Historical
Review, VIII (1902-03), 296.
[99]William Peirce was to be shipmaster of the Charity on her return voyage. Edward
Winslow had returned from England on that ship.
[100]In 1624 all goods in the general storehouse at Plymouth belonged to the Company.
[101]Probably they took supplies from the trading post near the mouth of the Piscataqua
River (near modern Portsmouth, N. H.) kept by David Thompson. In his will,
Altham left 40s. to a mistress Thomson in New England, presumably the man’s
widow, as repayment of a debt she did not know of.
[102]At Damariscove Island, off Maine. The harbor usually gave ships good protection
in rough weather.
[103]“A sentence written lengthways in the margin, and not completed.” J. F. Jameson,
in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, XLIV, 184n.
[104]’Ere.
[105]From Plymouth.
[106]Probably master of a fishing vessel from Barnstaple, Devonshire, England.
“Bastable,” however, is to be found on Cape Ann on Capt. John Smith’s map of New
England (1614 and later versions), and there were more or less permanent residents
on Cape Ann by 1624.
[107]Bradford, who wrote over twenty years after the event, remembered the salvage
episode as though Altham had not been involved: “... some of the fishing masters
said it was a pity so fine a vessel should be lost and sent them [i.e., the Plymouth
settlers] word that if they would be at the cost, they would both direct them how to
weigh her and let them have their carpenters to mend her. They thanked them and
sent men about it, and beaver to defray the charge, without which all had been in
vain. So they got coopers to trim I know not how many tun of cask, and being made
tight and fastened to her at low water, they buoyed her up; and then with many
hands hauled her on shore in a convenient place where she might be wrought upon.
And then hired sundry carpenters to work upon her, and other to saw plank, and at
last fitted her and got her home.” Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 163.
[108]One of the passengers on the Mayflower, “Richard Gardiner became a seaman
and died in England or at sea.” Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 447.
[109]La Rochelle. This meant that the ship was owned and manned by French
Protestants. La Rochelle was a Huguenot stronghold under the Edict of Nantes and
became the center of resistance to royal attempts to revise the privileges of Protestants.
English public opinion backed the Huguenots and tended to regard the people
of La Rochelle as partners in an international religious struggle. When it came to
national rights over trade, however, French Protestants were to be treated as foreigners,
though with more consideration than Catholics.
[110]Codfish “caught close to shore, landed within a couple of days, and lightly
salted and cured largely in the sun.” Morison, Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth,
122.
[111]Letter of marque.
[112]To seek profit in fishing.
[113]Dawson, surgeon on the Little James, used language
such that Altham “and others durst not go to sea with [him]; ...
such that we were constrained to dismiss
him,” and replace him with a man from the Anne. “A Letter of William Bradford and
Isaac Allerton, 1623,” Am. Hist. Rev., VIII, 300.
[114]Peirce and the Charity had gone to the fishing areas about the time of the
wreck.
[115]Oil extracted from fat-fleshed fish by heat or pressure. Fish other than cod had
little market in Europe. In later centuries, the term, “train-oil,” was given to whale
oil.
[116]Of Gibraltar.
[117]Besides Robert Cushman, several of these men were probably Adventurers for
New Plymouth—Thomas Brewer, William Collier, John Thornell, John Pocock.
[118]English opinion, including Gov. Bradford’s at this time, agreed that profit
from New England would come by fishing. Many made money in this way, but the
New Plymouth Company lost heavily by it.
[119]Mr. Pemberton, apparently a New Plymouth Adventurer and merchant, sent his
ship under the sponsorship of the Dorchester Adventurers, the company founded
under the inspiration of Rev. John White of Dorchester, which became the ancestor
of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Pemberton probably was a close relative of another
Adventurer, John Pemberton, a minister and enemy of the Leyden congregation
Separatist element among the Plymouth settlers. John Pemberton received letters
from John Lyford against the religious practices and government at Plymouth,
and was a leader in the factional strife in the Company of Adventurers which led to
its big split in 1625 after a debate over Lyford.
[120]At Gloucester on Cape Ann, Mass.
[121]Hopewell, William Peirce, master.
[122]Lyford and Oldham, whose letters of complaint Bradford seized in 1624, continued
their machinations against the Pilgrim church and government. Lyford had
repented spectacularly after his first exposure, but went back to work, still believing
he had more friends in the colony than dared speak up. He called down a list of complaints
from the Pemberton party among the Adventurers, but only as they withdrew
from the Company. Lyford and Oldham were exiled by the colonial government, Lyford
leaving after a second exposure and Oldham after a period of near insanity, on
the day when Altham arrived the second time.
[123]The fools merely wanted to draw more capital to the sinking enterprise; the
knaves had ulterior motives, probably inspired by Lyford’s suggestion that every man
sent to the settlement at Plymouth be given rights as an Adventurer (by juggling the
accounts) in order to outvote the Bradford regime.
[124]Argall, formerly associated with the Virginia Company, had become a leading
member of the Council for New England. Other Council members took grants of land
for themselves; Argall may have planned to, but he died on an English expedition to
attack Cadiz in 1626.
[125]Because of the debts contracted in their name by their agents and the London
merchants, the Plymouth settlers had to remain in the Company as reorganized by a
minority of the Adventurers headed by James Sherley. Between July and October,
1626, Isaac Allerton, as the colony’s agent, arranged a deal to buy the interests of the
remaining Adventurers (including Altham) on an installment plan. Bradford, Of
Plymouth Plantation, 182-186; Bradford, “Letter Book,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections,
1st ser., III, 48.
[126]Wary, circumspect.
[127]Hawtry’s son-in-law, a lawyer.
[128]Plymouth, England.
[129]Blommaert was a merchant in Amsterdam and a director of the West India Company, 1622-29, 1636-42.
[130]The official name of the Hudson River for several years (named after Maurice,
Prince of Orange). “Mauritse” in the original.
[131]Sandy Hook. [J. F. J.]
[132]Sandy Hook Bay. [J. F. J.]
[133]The Narrows, between Staten Island and Brooklyn.
[134]Long Island.
[135]Montauk Point.
[136]Wampum.
[137]The Siwanoys lived north of Long Island Sound, from the Bronx to Norwalk,
Conn.; the Shinnecocks inhabited the east end of Long Island. “Souwenos,” in the
original, is a name applied promiscuously by early Dutch cartographers.
[138]No doubt in the missing portion; the Pequots are apparently meant.
[J. F. J.] The Pequots lived to the west of Narragansett Bay, in the eastern
part of Connecticut.
[139]Probably the Kill van Kull and the Passaic or Hackensack River was thought to
connect with the Wallkill River and Rondout Creek.
[140]Delaware River.
[141]In Holland. [J. F. J.]
[142]A morgen is about two acres. [J. F. J.]
[143]East River. The West India Company’s six farms lay east of the present Bowery,
and extended from a fresh-water swamp occupying the site of the present Roosevelt
and James Streets northward to Eighteenth or Twentieth Street. [J. F. J.]
[144]Governor’s Island.
[145]I.e., both Fort Amsterdam and the little island itself. Blommaert’s Vly was a
low, damp depression running northeast and southwest about on the line of the
present Broad Street. [J. F. J.]
[146]This name applies more properly to one of the Indian dialects spoken in the
vicinity of Manhattan. J. G. Wilson (ed.), The Memorial History of the City of New
York (1892), I, 49.
[147]The fish. [J. F. J.]
[148]Blackstone River, Upper Narragansett Bay, and Sakonnet River.
[149]The short cut across the base of Cape Cod, now taken by ships through the
Cape Cod Canal, was used by the Plymouth settlers and the Indians, who went up
Scusset creek on the north side and down the Manomet River on the southwest. The
site of the trading post built on the Manomet, near Buzzard’s Bay, has been excavated
and the house restored. It is in the town of Bourne and can be reached as follows:
“after crossing the Bourne Bridge over the Canal [heading toward Cape Cod], turn
sharp right; next, bear left at a fork and follow Shore Road to signs indicating the
Post; turn right under the railroad bridge and follow a dirt road through woods to
the Post.” Morison, Story of the “Old Colony” of New Plymouth, 131n.
[150]Narragansett Bay.
[151]Cape Cod, especially Monomoy Point.
[152]In New Netherland and western New England, especially the Connecticut
valley.
[153]De Rasieres, however, protested to Gov. Bradford that he had not walked “so
far this three or four years, wherefore I fear my feet will fail me; so I am constrained
to entreat you to afford me the easiest means” to get from the Aptucxet trading post
to Plymouth. So the Governor sent a boat to pick him up at Scusset. Bradford, “Letter
Book,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 1st ser., III, 54.
[154]On an east-and-west line from the outer tip of Cape Cod.
[155]Plymouth Beach. [J. F. J.]
[156]The Gurnet and Saquish Head.
[157]He reverses the actual bearings; and the street first mentioned was longer,
1,150 feet. [J. F. J.]
[158]A double share. [J. F. J.]
[159]In 1626, Isaac Allerton on behalf of the Plymouth settlers, agreed to buy the
interests of the remaining London Adventurers for £1800, which De Rasieres translated
into guilders by a simple formula. In July 1627, though De Rasieres may not
have been well informed of the event, a group of leading men in the Colony, led by
Bradford, became “Undertakers” for six years to pay this debt (and about £600 in
other debts owed by the Colony) by means of a monopoly on the external trade of the
settlement, including all dealings with the Indians. According to the agreement, each
colonist who was a Freeman of the Company (i.e., had agreed to the purchase in 1626
and acquired rights to a share in the division of lands) made an annual payment to
the Undertakers of three bushels of corn or six pounds of tobacco as they might
specify. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 184-188, 194-196.