[237] Weymouth also describes the Indian manner of taking whales: "One especial thing is their manner of killing the whale, which they call powdawe; and will describe his form; how he bloweth up the water; and that he is twelve fathoms long; and that they go in company of their King, with a multitude of their boats, and strike him with a bone made in the fashion of a harping-iron, fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, which they veer out after him; that all their boats come about him, and as he riseth above water, with their arrows they shoot him to death. When they have killed him and dragged him to shore, they call all their chief lords together, and sing a song of joy; and these chief lords, whom they call sagamores, divide the spoil, and give to every man a share, which pieces so distributed they hang up about their houses for provision; and when they boil them, they blow off the fat, and put to their pease, maize, and other pulse which they eat."—"Weymouth's Voyage."

[238] Nantucket in 1744 had forty sloops and schooners in the whale-fishery. The catch was seven thousand to ten thousand barrels of oil per annum. There were nine hundred Indians on the island of great use in the fishery.—Douglass, vol. i., p. 405.

[239] State papers.

[240] Gordon, vol. i., p. 463.

[241] Records of Congress.

[242] Of Macy it is known that he fled from the rigorous persecution of the Quakers by the government of Massachusetts Bay. The penalties were ordinarily cropping the ears, branding with an iron, scourging, the pillory, or banishment. These cruelties, barbarous as they were, were merely borrowed from the England of that day, where the sect, saving capital punishment, was persecuted with as great rigor as it ever was in the colonies. The death-penalty inflicted in the Bay Colony brought the affairs of the Friends to the notice of the reigning king. Thereafter they were tolerated; but as persecution ceased the sect dwindled away, and in New England it is not numerous. The Friends' poet sings of Macy, the outcast:

"Far round the bleak and stormy Cape
The vent'rous Macy passed,
And on Nantucket's naked isle
Drew up his boat at last."

[243] Thurloe, vol. v., p. 422.

[244] The nine were Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain, and William Pile, who afterward sold his tenth to Richard Swain.

[245] John Smith, Nathaniel Starbuck, Edward Starbuck, Thomas Look, Robert Barnard, James Coffin, Robert Pike, Tristram Coffin, Jun., Thomas Coleman, and John Bishop.

[246] Of three hundred and fifty-eight Indians alive in 1763, two hundred and twenty-two died by the distemper.

[247] Hutchinson.

[248] Zaccheus Macy, in his account of the island, written in 1792, says none had been taken up to that time—"a great loss to the islanders."

[249] The Indian name Tuckanuck signifies a loaf of bread.

[250] Rev. F. C. Ewer, of New York.

[251] Judah Touro, the philanthropist, was born here in Newport, in 1775, the year of American revolt. His father, the old rabbi, Isaac, came from Holland, officiating as preacher in 1762 in Newport. When still a young man, Judah Touro removed to New Orleans, where he acquired a fortune. He was a volunteer in the battle of 1815, and was wounded by a cannon-ball in the hip. Though a Jew, Judah Touro was above sect, generously contributing to Christian church enterprises. Bunker Hill Monument, toward which he gave ten thousand dollars, is a memorial of his patriotic liberality.

[252] At Naples the summer temperature is seldom above 73°; in winter it does not fall below 47°.

[253] Point Judith is named from Judith Quincy, the wife of John Hull, coiner of the rare old pine-tree shillings of 1652.

[254] Beaver Tail is a peninsula at the southern extremity of Canonicut Island, so named from its marked resemblance, on the map, to the appendage of the beaver.

[255] Fort Adams is situated at the upper (northern) end of a point of land which helps to form the harbor of Newport; it also incloses a piece of water called Brenton's Cove.

[256] By our American Grace Darling, Miss Ida Lewis.

[257] Goat Island was the site of a colonial fortress. During the reign of King William, Colonel Romer advised the fortification of Rhode Island, which he says had never been done "by reason of the mean condition and refractoriness of the inhabitants." In 1744 the fort on Goat Island mounted twelve cannon. At the beginning of the Revolution General Lee, and afterward Colonel Knox, marked out defensive works; but they do not appear to have been executed when the British, on the same day that Washington crossed the Delaware, took possession of the island. The Whigs, in 1775, removed the cannon from the batteries in the harbor. Major L'Enfant, the engineer of West Point, was the author of Fort Wolcott.

[258] There should be added to the detail of maps given in the initial chapter that of Jerome Verrazani, in the College de Propaganda Fide, at Rome, of the supposed date of 1529. This map is described and discussed, together with the detail of Giovanni Verrazani's letter to Francis I., dated at Dieppe, July 8th, 1524, in "Verrazano, the Navigator," by J. C. Brevoort. A reduced copy of the map or "Planisphere" is there given. The author adopts the theory, not without plausibility, that Verrazani passed fifteen days at anchor in Narraganset Bay. As I have before said, there is something of fact in these early relations; but if tested by the only exact marks given (latitude, distances, and courses), they establish nothing.

[259] Harrison, the first architect of his day in New England, was the author of many of the older public buildings in Newport, Trinity Church and Redwood Library among others. He also designed King's Chapel, Boston, and did what he could to drag architecture out of the mire of Puritan ugliness and neglect.

[260] He owned, besides his house and garden in Boston, lands at Mount Wollaston, now Quincy, Massachusetts. Coddington is mentioned in Samuel Fuller's letter to Bradford, June, 1630. "Mrs. Cottington is dead," he also says.

[261] It may be found at length in Hutchinson, appendix, vol. ii. Governor Hutchinson was a relative of the schismatic Anne.

[262] This was called an appeal to the country. A judge would hardly, at the present day, permit such an expression in court.

[263] William Wanton, 1732 to 1734; John Wanton, 1734 to 1741; Gideon Wanton, 1745 to 1746, and from 1747 to 1748; Joseph Wanton, from 1769 to 1775. The last named left Newport with the British, in 1780, and died in New York. His son Joseph, junior, commanded the regiment of loyalists raised on the island.

[264] One of the most curious chapters of Rhode Island's political history was the "Dorr Rebellion" of 1842, growing out of a partial and limited franchise under the old charter.

[265] A fund bequeathed by Abraham Touro, who died in Boston in 1822, secures this object.

[266] It was incorporated 1747: the same year Mr. Redwood gave five hundred pounds sterling, in books, or about thirteen hundred volumes. The lot was the gift of Henry Collins, in 1748; building erected 1748-'50; enlarged in 1758; and now (1875) a new building is erecting. Abraham Redwood was a native of Antigua. When the library sent its committee to Stuart, with a commission to paint a full-length portrait of Mr. Redwood, Stuart refused, for reasons of his own, to execute it.

[267] Dr. Ezra Stiles was librarian for twenty years.

[268] The discovery of any portion of the coast of New England by Northmen belongs to the realms of conjecture. It is not unreasonable to suppose that they may have fallen in with the continent; but what should have brought them so far south as Rhode Island, when Nova Scotia must have appeared to their eyes a paradise? The vine grows there. Champlain called Richmond's Island Isle de Bacchus, on account of its grapes.

[269] "Travels in New England and New York:" New Haven, 1822, vol. iii., p. 56.

[270] Among the records of Newport was found one of 1740, in which Edward Pelham bequeathed to his daughter eight acres of land, "with an Old Stone Wind Mill thereon standing and being, and commonly called and known as the Mill Field." The lane now called Mill Street appears to have been so named from its conducting up the hill to the mill. The wife of Pelham was granddaughter of Governor Benedict Arnold. In the governor's will, dated in 1677, he gives direction for his burial in a piece of ground "being and lying in my land in or near y^e line or path from my dwelling-house, leading to my stone-built Wind Mill in y^e town of Newport above mentioned."

[271] I incline to the opinion that the Indians had here, as at Plymouth, cleared a considerable area. There the carpenters had to go an eighth of a mile for timber suitable for building.

[272] Within five miles of Boston is standing an ancient stone windmill, erected about 1710. It had been so long used as a powder-magazine that no tradition remained in the neighborhood that it had ever been a windmill. They still call it the Old Powder-house.

[273] The keys are compound, and, though rude, are tolerably defined. No two are alike; they are generally of a hard gray stone, instead of the slate used in the structure.

[274] This building may have been mentioned by Church in his account of Philip's War, when, after some display of aversion on the part of a certain captain to a dangerous enterprise, he was advised by the Indian fighter to lead his men "to the windmill on Rhode Island, where they would be out of danger."

[275] Many of these so-called cottages cost from $50,000 to $200,000. For the season, $2000 is considered a moderate rental, and $5000 is frequently paid.

[276] "R. Goodloe Harper's Speeches, p. 275."

[277] By smashing their frigates, L'Insurgente, La Vengeance, Berceau, and making it generally unpleasant for them.

[278] Duke de Feltre, French minister of war.

[279] He afterward returned to France, and was made minister of war.

[280] Fort Morgan was constructed by him with twelve posterns, a statement significant to military engineers. General Totten closed six of them, and the Confederates, when besieged, all but two.

[281] Canonicut is about seven miles long, its longest axis lying almost north and south. It includes a single township, incorporated 1678, by the name of Jamestown. The island was purchased from the Indians in 1657. Prudence Island, six miles long, is also attached to Jamestown.

[282] At this time four British frigates and several smaller craft were destroyed. The French forced the passage on the west of Canonicut, and raised the blockade of Providence.

[283] The chasm is one hundred and sixty feet in length, with an average depth of about sixty feet.

[284] Smibert planned the original Faneuil Hall, Boston. Trumbull painted in the studio left vacant by Smibert.

[285] British ambassador at St. Petersburg, afterward Lord Malmesbury.

[286] Massachusetts Files.

[287] Heath then commanded at Providence: he was ordered to meet Rochambeau on his arrival, and extend any assistance in his power.

[288] The manner and matter of his reception of Mr. Adams were equally those of gentleman and king. Contrast him with the Prince Regent, and his remark to the French ex-minister, Calonne, during his father's sudden illness, in 1801: "Savez-vous, Monsieur de Calonne, que mon père est aussi fou que jamais?" (Do you know, Monsieur de Calonne, that my father is as crazy as ever?) Thackeray could not do him justice.

[289] The fellow-prisoner of Count Christian Deux-Ponts was an Irishman, named Lynch, who belonged also to Rochambeau's army. Fearful that his nationality might be discovered, he begged the count to be on his guard. When at table, and heated with wine, the secret was divulged by the count; but Nelson, as Ségur relates, pretended not to have heard it.

[290] That of Major Galvan, who pistoled himself on account of unrequited love.

[291] Rally, Auvergne! here is the enemy!

[292] William Ellery Channing, the pastor of "Old Federal Street," Boston, was one of the most gifted and eloquent men the American pulpit has produced. His mother was the old signer's daughter.

[293] The other faces of Commodore Perry's monument recite his age, birthplace, etc. He was born at South Kingston in 1785, and died at Port Spain, Trinidad, 1819. According to a resolve of Congress his remains were conveyed, in 1826, in an armed vessel to the United States.

[294] When appealed to by the United Colonies in 1657 to punish Quakers, Rhode Island objected that no law of that colony sanctioned it. The president, Benedict Arnold, however, replied that he (and the other magistrates) conceived the Quaker doctrines tended to "very absolute cutting down and overturning relations and civil government among men." He urged as a measure of public policy that the Quakers should not be molested, as they would not remain where the civil authority did not persecute them. This has, in fact, been the history of this sect in New England.—See Arnold's letter, Hutchinson, vol. i., appendix.

[295] George Fox was in Rhode Island in 1672. On arriving at Newport, he went to the house of Nicholas Easton, who was then governor, and remained there during his sojourn. A yearly meeting of all the Friends in New England was held while he remained in Newport.—"George Fox his Journal," London, 1709.

[296] Josselyn mentions the sect: "Narraganset Bay, within which bay is Rhode Island, a harbor for the Shunamitish Brethren, as the saints errant, the Quakers, who are rather to be esteemed vagabonds than religious persons." He also attributes to them dealings in witchcraft. Whittier, the Quaker poet, has depicted in stirring verse the persecutions of this people. Cassandra Southwick is from real life.

[297] Stones giving simply the name and date of decease are now allowed.

[298] In 1708 M. de Subercase solicited of his Government the means of attempting an enterprise against the island of Rhode Island. He says, "Cette isle est habitée par des Coakers qui sent tous gens riches."

[299] Here also is the grave of Governor Henry Bull, who died in 1693, and whose ancient stone house is now standing in Spring, near Sherman Street.

[300] Stuart was in Boston at the time of the battle of Lexington, and managed to escape a few days after Bunker Hill. His obituary in the Boston Daily Advertiser, a very noble tribute from one man of genius to another, was written by Allston.

[301] It was the fortress of the British left wing. Two large and elegant country houses at its base, included within the lines, were occupied by the officers.

[302] He was the son of John, the son of Godfrey Malbone.

[303] The first bridge spanning what was known as Howland's Ferry was completed in 1795. It was of wood, destroyed and swept to sea by a storm; rebuilt, and again destroyed by worms. The present stone structure was built in 1809-'10, and, though injured by the gale of 1815, stands firm.

[304] The battle was fought in the valley below Quaker, sometimes called Meeting-house, Hill. Sullivan commanded in chief, though Greene is entitled to a large share of the credit of repulsing the British attack. It was a well-fought action. Pigot, by British accounts, had six thousand regular troops. Lafayette was mad as a March hare at their fighting without him.

[305] Lechford, writing between 1637 and 1641, says: "At the island called Aquedney are about two hundred families. There was a church where one Master Clark was elder: the place where the church was is called Newport, but that church, I hear, is now dissolved. At the other end of the island there is another town called Portsmouth, but no church. Those of the island have a pretended civil government of their own erection without the king's patent."

[306] To be exact, the shores adjacent to the rock are in the town of Berkeley, formerly part of Dighton.

[307] A copy of the inscription, made by Professor Sewall, is deposited in the Museum at Cambridge. There is another copy, by James Winthrop; see plate in vol. iii., "Memoir American Academy," and description of method of taking it, vol. ii., part ii., p. 126. Many others have been taken, more or less imperfect; the best one recollected is in the hall of the Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

[308] Watch Hill, in the town of Westerly and near Stonington, is the south-western extremity of Rhode Island.

[309] Named from Captain Adrian Blok, a Dutch navigator. Its Indian name was Manisses. There are about twelve hundred inhabitants on this island, all native-born, of whom two hundred and seventy-five are voters. There are also six schools, two Baptist churches, and two windmills, a hotel, and several summer boarding-houses. Two hundred fishing-boats are owned by the islanders. In 1636 John Oldham, mentioned in our ramble in Plymouth, was murdered here by the Pequots. Block Island in 1672 was made a township, by the name of New Shoreham.

[310] The two forts, Trumbull and Griswold, are named from governors of Connecticut. They date from the Revolution. Fort Trumbull in its present form was completed in 1849, under the supervision of General G. W. Cullum, U. S. A. In passing through New London in April, 1776, General Knox, by Washington's direction, examined the harbor with the view of erecting fortifications, and reported, by letter, that it would, in connection with Newport, afford a safe retreat to the American navy or its prizes in any wind that blew.

[311] Son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts. He passed his first winter on Fisher's Island, which remained in his family through six generations. The valuable manuscript collection known as the Winthrop papers was found some years ago on the island, which belongs to New York in consequence of the grants to the Earl of Sterling and the Duke of York. The origin of its present name is uncertain, though so called as early as 1636. Governor Winthrop relates to Cotton Mather a singular incident which happened on Fisher's Island the previous winter. During the severe snow-storms hundreds of sheep, besides cattle and horses, were buried in the snow. Even the wild beasts came into the settlements for shelter. Twenty-eight days after the storm alluded to, the tenants of Fisher's Island, in extricating the bodies of a hundred sheep from one bank of snow in the valley, found two alive in the drift, where they had subsisted by eating the fleeces of those lying dead near them.

[312] In 1834 New London employed thirty-six vessels in whaling and sealing. A few are still engaged in the latter fishery, in the extreme navigable waters of the Arctic and Antarctic seas.

[313] During the unexampled cold of the past winter (1874-'75), the light-boat off New London was, in fact, carried away from her moorings by an ice-field, and many others all along the coast were stranded.

[314] At the light-houses I have visited in cold weather, the unvarying complaint is made of the poor quality of the oil furnished by the Light-house Board. One keeper told me he was obliged to shovel the congealed lard-oil out of the tank in the oil-room, and carry it into the dwelling, some rods distant, to heat it on his stove; sometimes repeating the operation frequently during the night, in order to keep his light burning.

[315] It is shown in the view of New London in 1813, at the head of this chapter.

[316] Bishop Seabury was born in 1728, and died in 1796, aged 68. In person he was large, robust, and vigorous; dignified and commanding in appearance, and loved by his parishioners of low estate. After consecration he discharged the functions of bishop of the diocese of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

[317] The months of January and February, 1875, will be long remembered in New England for the intense and long-continued cold weather. Long Island Sound was a vast ice-field, which sealed up its harbors. For a time navigation was entirely suspended, the boats usually plying between Newport, Stonington, New London, and New York being obliged to discontinue their voyages. Gardiner's Bay was completely closed. The shore of Long Island, on its ocean side, was strewed with great blocks of ice. An unusual number of disasters signalized the ice embargo throughout the whole extent of the New England coast.

[318] In all, the British destroyed one hundred and forty-three buildings, sixty-five of which were dwellings, and including the court-house, jail, and church.

[319] In the Wadsworth Museum, Hartford, the vest and shirt worn by Ledyard on the day of his death, are still shown to the visitor. Lafayette, when attacking the British redoubt at Yorktown, ordered his men, it is said with Washington's consent, to "remember New London." The continental soldiers could not or would not execute the command on prisoners who begged their lives on their knees.

[320] Soon after the surrender a wagon loaded with wounded Americans was set in motion down the hill. In its descent it struck with great force against a tree, causing the instant death of several of its occupants.—"Gordon's Revolution," vol. iv., p. 179.

[321] Captain Mason, with the Connecticut and Massachusetts forces, numbering in all only ninety men, together with about four hundred Narragansets and Mohegans, attacked the Pequot fortress on the morning of May 26th, 1637. His Indian allies skulked in the rear. Mason's onset was a complete surprise; but he would not have succeeded had he not fired the fort, which created a panic among the enemy, and rendered them an easy prey to the English and friendly Indians surrounding it. Between six and seven hundred Pequots perished.

[322] The English in these early wars fought in armor, that is to say, a steel cap and corselet, with a back and breast piece, over buff coats, the common equipment everywhere of that day for a horse or foot soldier.

[323] Mr. John Quincy Adams accompanied his father to France, and was placed at school near Paris.

[324] Miss E. S. Quincy's "Memoir."

[325] In 1835, when President Jackson demanded twenty-five millions of France on account of French spoliations, the claim of Beaumarchais was allowed, after deducting a million livres which had been advanced by Vergennes. Deane's heirs did not obtain an adjustment of his claims by Congress until 1842.

[326] Ledyard proceeded no farther than Cairo, where he died, in 1788, of a bilious fever.

[327] Decatur offered to match the United States and Macedonian with the Endymion and Statira. Sir Thomas declined the proposal as made, but consented to a meeting between the Statira and Macedonian alone.

[328] Nelson commended almost with his latest breath Lady Hamilton and his daughter as a legacy to his country. Lady Hamilton, however, died in exile, sickness, and actual want at Calais, France, in 1815.

[329] The falls were very beautiful, and have been celebrated by Trumbull's pencil and Mrs. Sigourney's verse. There still remain some curious cavities, worn in the rock by the prolonged rotary motion of loose stones. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, the most celebrated writer in prose or poetry of her day in New England, was a native of Norwich.

[330] Before the battle with the Narragansets, Uncas is said to have challenged Miantonimo to single combat, promising for himself and his nation to abide the result. Miantonimo refused. This chief, in his flight from the field, was overtaken by Mohegan warriors, who impeded him until Uncas could come up. When Uncas laid his hand on Miantonimo's shoulder, the latter sat down in token of submission, maintaining a sullen silence. Uncas is said to have eaten a piece of his flesh.

[331] The proprietors numbered thirty-five. Uncas received about seventy pounds for nine square miles. The settlement of Norwich is considered to have begun in 1660, when Rev. James Fitch removed from Saybrook to Norwich (town).

[332] The following inscriptions are from the royal burial-ground of the Mohegans:

"Here lies y^e body of Pompi Uncas, son of Benjamin and Ann Uncas, and of y^e royal blood, who died May y^e first, 1740, in y^e 21st year of his age."

"Here lies Sam Uncas, the 2d and beloved son of his father, John Uncas, who was the grandson of Uncas, grand sachem of Mohegan, the darling of his mother, being daughter of said Uncas, grand sachem. He died July 31st, 1741, in the 28th year of his age."

"In memory of Elizabeth Joquib, the daughter of Mahomet, great-grandchild to y^e first Uncas, great sachem of Mohegan, who died July y^e 5th, 1750, aged 33 years."

[333] The hereditary chieftainship was extinct as long ago as the beginning of the century. The Mohegans occupied a strip of land containing two thousand seven hundred acres, lying on the Thames between Norwich and New London, above the mouth of Stony Brook, and between the river and Montville. In 1633 the Indian population of Connecticut was computed at eight persons to the square mile; the earliest enumeration of the Mohegans made their number one thousand six hundred and sixty-three souls; in 1797 only four hundred remained. By 1825 the nation was reduced to a score or two, a portion having emigrated to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The Mohegan reserve was divided in 1790 among the remaining families of the nation. The Mohegans were probably a distinct nation, though Uncas was a vassal of the Pequots.

[334] On the Colchester road, or Town Street, near the junction of a street leading toward the Falls. The estate is now locally known as the Ripley Place.

[335] The general was appointed collector of New London by Washington. His first wife was a daughter of Governor Trumbull.

[336] The term "Brother Jonathan" originated with Washington, who applied it to Governor Jonathan Trumbull, of Connecticut. When any important matter was in agitation the general would say, "We must consult Brother Jonathan."

[337] General William Hart, an old soldier of the Revolution, was a wealthy and highly esteemed citizen of Saybrook. In 1795, with Oliver Phelps and others, he purchased the tract in Ohio called the Western Reserve. The Commodores Hull, uncle and nephew, married sisters belonging to this family. Commodore Andrew Hull Foote was also a nephew of Commodore Isaac Hull, whose widow was still living when I visited Saybrook in 1874.