This was the first success that had befallen the American navy since the loss of the Chesapeake. It revived, in a measure, the confidence that disaster had shaken. The Boxer went into action with her colors nailed to the mast—a useless bravado that no doubt cost many lives. Her ensign is now among the trophies of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, while that of the Enterprise has but lately been reclaimed from among the forgotten things of the past, to array its tattered folds beside the flags of the Bonhomme Richard and of Fort M'Henry.[62]
Among the recollections of his "Lost Youth," the author of "Evangeline," a native of Portland, tells us:
"I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves o'erlooking the tranquil bay,
Where they in battle died."
"A shipman was there, wonned far by west;
For aught I wot, he was of Dartëmouth."
Chaucer.
One hot, slumberous morning in August I found myself in the town of Wells. I was traveling, as New England ought to be traversed by every young man of average health and active habits, on foot, and at leisure, along the beautiful road to Old York. Now Wells, as Victor Hugo says of a village in Brittany, is not a town, but a street, stretching for five or six miles along the shore, and everywhere commanding an extensive and unbroken ocean view.
The place itself, though bristling with history, has been stripped of its antiques, and is in appearance the counterpart of a score of neat, thrifty villages of my acquaintance. I paused for a moment at the site of the Storer garrison, in which Captain Converse made so manful a defense when Frontenac, in 1692, let slip his French and Indians on our border settlements.[63] Some fragments of the timbers of the garrison are preserved in the vicinity, one of which I saw among the collections of a village antiquary. In the annals of Wells the names of John Wheelwright and of George Burroughs occur, the former celebrated as the founder of Exeter, the latter a victim of the witchcraft horror of '92.
John Wheelwright, the classmate and friend of Cromwell, fills a large space in the early history of the Bay Colony. A fugitive, like John Cotton, from the persecutions of Laud, he came to Boston in 1636, and became the pastor of a church at Braintree, then forming part of Boston. He was the brother-in-law of the famous Ann Hutchinson, who was near creating a revolution in Winthrop's government,[64] and shared her Antinomian opinions. For this he was banished, and became the founder of Exeter in 1638. In 1643, Massachusetts having claimed jurisdiction over that town, Wheelwright removed to Wells, where he remained two years. Becoming reconciled to the Massachusetts government, he removed to Hampton, was in England in 1657, returning to New England in 1660. He became pastor of the church in Salisbury, and died there in 1679; but the place of his burial, Allen says, is not known. He was the oldest minister in the colony at the time of his death, and a man of pronounced character. The settlement of the island of Rhode Island occurred through the removal of William Coddington and others at the same time, and for the same reasons that caused the expulsion of Wheelwright from Boston, as Roger Williams had been expelled from Salem seven years before.
"Wheelwright's Deed" has been the subject of a long and animated controversy among antiquaries; some, like Mr. Savage, pronouncing it a forgery because it is dated in 1629, the year before the settlement of Boston. This deed was a conveyance from the Indian sagamores to Wheelwright of the land on which stands the flourishing town of Exeter; and although copies of it have been recorded in several places, the original long ago disappeared. Cotton Mather, who saw it, testifies to its appearance of antiquity, and the advocates of its validity do not appear as yet to have the worst of the argument.[65]
George Burroughs, who fell fighting against terrorism on Gallows Hill—a single spot may claim in New England the terrible distinction of this name—was, if tradition says truly, apprehended by officers of the Bloody Council at the church door, as he was leaving it after divine service. A little dark man, and an athlete, whose muscular strength was turned against him to fatal account. An Indian, at Falmouth, had held out a heavy fowling-piece at arms-length by simply thrusting his finger in at the muzzle. Poor Burroughs, who would not stand by and see an Englishman outdone by a redskin, repeated the feat on the spot, and this was the most ruinous piece of evidence brought forth at his trial. A man could not be strong then, or the devil was in it.
The road was good, and the way plain. As the shores are for some miles intersected by creeks intrenched behind sandy downs, the route follows a level shelf along the high land. There are pleasant strips of beach, where the sea breaks noiselessly when the wind is off shore, but where it comes thundering in when driven before a north-east gale. Now and then a vessel is embayed here in thick weather, or, failing to make due allowance for the strong drift to the westward, is set bodily on these sands, as the fishermen say, "all standing." While I was in the neighborhood no less than three came ashore within a few hours of each other. The first, a timber vessel, missing her course a little, went on the beach; but at the next tide, by carrying an anchor into deep water and kedging, she was floated again. Another luckless craft struck on the rocks within half a mile of the first, and became a wreck, the crew owing their lives to a smooth sea. The third, a Bank fisherman, was left by the ebb high up on a dangerous reef, with a hole in her bottom. She was abandoned to the underwriters, and sold for a few dollars. To the surprise even of the knowing ones, the shrewd Yankee who bought her succeeded at low tide in getting some empty casks into her hold, and brought her into port.
Notwithstanding these sands are hard and firm as a granite floor, they are subject to shiftings which at first appear almost unaccountable. Many years ago, while sauntering along the beach, I came across the timbers of a stranded vessel. So deeply were they imbedded in the sand, that they had the appearance rather of formidable rows of teeth belonging to some antique sea-monster than of the work of human hands. How long the wreck had lain there no one could say; but at intervals it disappeared beneath the sands, to come to the surface again. I have often walked over the spot where it lay buried out of sight; and yet, after the lapse of years, there it was again, like a grave that would not remain closed.
A few years ago, an English vessel, the Clotilde, went ashore on Wells Beach, and remained there high and dry for nearly a year. She was deeply laden with railway iron, and, after being relieved of her cargo, was successfully launched. During the time the ship lay on the beach, she became so deeply buried in the sand that a person might walk on board without difficulty. Ways were built underneath her, and, after a terrible wrenching, she was got afloat. Heavy objects, such as kegs of lead paint, and even pigs of iron, have been exposed by the action of the waves, after having, in some instances, been twenty years under the surface. I have picked up whole bricks, lost overboard from some coaster, that have come ashore with their edges smoothly rounded by the abrasion of the sand and sea. There is an authentic account of the re-appearance of a wrecked ship's caboose more than a hundred and seventy years after her loss on Cape Cod. After a heavy easterly gale, the beach is always sprinkled with a fine, dark gravel, which disappears again with a few days of ordinary weather.
Besides being the inexhaustible resource of summer idlers, the beach has its practical aspects. The sand, fine, white, and "sharp," is not only used by builders—and there is no fear of exhausting the supply—but is hauled away by farmers along shore, and housed in their barns as bedding for cattle, or to mix with heavy soils. The sea-weed and kelp that comes ashore in such vast quantities after a heavy blow is carefully harvested, and goes to enrich the lands with its lime and salt. It formerly supplied the commercial demand for soda, and was gathered on the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, France, and Spain for the purpose. It is the varec of Brittany and Normandy, the blanquette of Frontignan and Aigues-mortes, and the salicor of Narbonne. After being dried, it was reduced to ashes in rude furnaces. Iodine is also the product of sea-weed. You may sometimes see at high-water mark winrows of Irish moss (carrageen) bleaching in the sun, though for my blanc-mange I give the preference to that cast up on the shingle, as more free from sand. This plant grows only on the farthest ledges. The pebble usually heaped above the line of sand, or in little coves among the ledges, is used for ballast, and for mending roads and garden-walks. Turning to the sandy waste that skirts the beach, I seldom fail of finding the beach-pea, with its beautiful blossoms of blue and purple. In spring the vine is edible, and has been long used for food by the poorer people.
The beach is much frequented after a storm by crows in quest of a dinner al fresco. They haunt it as persistently as do the wreckers, and seldom fail of finding a stranded fish, a crab, or a mussel. They are the self-appointed scavengers of the strand, removing much of the offal cast up by the sea. The crow is a crafty fellow, and knows a thing or two, as I have had reason to observe. The large sea-mussel is much affected by him, and when found is at once pounced upon. Taking it in his talons, the crow flies to the nearest ledge of rocks, and, calculating his distance with mathematical eye, lets his prize fall. Of course the mussel is dashed in pieces, and the crow proceeds to make a frugal meal. I have seen this operation frequently repeated, and have as often scared the bird from his repast to convince myself of his success.
His method of taking the clam is equally ingenious. He walks upon the clam-bank at low tide, and seizes upon the first unlucky head he finds protruding from the shell. Then ensues a series of laughable efforts on the crow's part to rise with his prey, while the clam tries in vain to draw in its head. The crow, after many sharp tugs and much flapping of his wings, finally secures the clam, and disposes of him as he would of a mussel. The Indians, whose chief dependence in summer was upon shell-fish, complained that the English swine watched the receding tide as their women were accustomed to do, feeding on the clams they turned up with their snouts.
In the olden time the beach was the high-road over which the settlers traveled when, as was long the case, it was their only way of safety. It was often beset with danger; so much so that tradition says the mail from Portsmouth to Wells was for seven years brought by a dog, the pouch being attached to his collar. This faithful messenger was at last killed by the savages. For miles around this bay the long-abandoned King's Highway may be traced where it hugged the verge of the shore, climbing the roughest ledges, or crossing from one beach to another by a strip of shingle. Here and there an old cellar remains to identify its course and tell of the stern lives those pioneers led.
When the tide is out, I also keep at low-water mark, scrambling over ledges, or delving among the crannies for specimens. It does not take long to fill your pockets with many-hued pebbles of quartz, jasper, or porphyry that, in going a few rods farther, you are sure to reject for others more brilliant. At full sea I walk along the shore, where, from between those envious little stone walls, I can still survey the Unchanged.
After all that has been printed since the "Tractatus Petri Hispani," it is a question whether there are not as many popular superstitions to-day among plain New England country-folk as at any time since the settlement of the country. The belief in the virtue of a horseshoe is unabated. At York I saw one nailed to the end of a coaster's bowsprit. To spill salt, break a looking-glass, or dream of a white horse, are still regarded as of sinister augury. A tooth-pick made from a splinter of a tree that has been struck by lightning is a sure preventive of the toothache. Exceeding all these, however, is the generally accepted superstition that has led to the practice of bathing on Saco Beach on the 26th of June in each year. On this day, it is religiously believed that the waters, like Siloam of old, have miraculous power of healing all diseases with which humanity is afflicted. The people flock to the beach from all the country round, in every description of vehicle, to dip in the enchanted tide. A similar belief existed with regard to a medicinal spring on the River Dee, in Scotland, called Januarich Wells, one author gravely asserting that so great was the faith in its efficacy that those afflicted with broken legs have gone there for restoration of the limb.
I have found it always impracticable to argue with the pilgrims as to the grounds of their belief. They are ready to recount any number of wonderful cures at too great a distance for my investigation to reach, and may not, therefore, be gainsaid. It is a custom.
All this time I was nearing Ogunquit, a little fishing village spliced to the outskirts of Wells, being itself within the limits of York. At my right I caught a glimpse of the green bulk of Mount Agamenticus, and on the other hand, almost at my elbow, was the sea. So we marched on, as it were, arm in arm; for I was beginning to feel pretty well acquainted with a companion that kept thus constantly at my side. This morning it was Prussian blue, which it presently put off for a warmer hue. There it lay, sunning itself, cool, silent, impenetrable, like a great blue turquoise on the bare bosom of Mother Earth, nor looking as if a little ruffling of its surface could put it in such a towering passion.
My sachel always contains a luncheon, a book, and a telescopic drinking-cup. At noon, having left eight miles of road behind me, I sought the shelter of a tree by the roadside, and found my appetite by no means impaired by the jaunt. At such a time I read, like Rousseau, while eating, in default of a tête-à-tête. I alternately devour a page and a piece. While under my tree, a cow came to partake of the shade, of which there was enough for both of us. She gazed at me with a calm, but, as I conceived also, a puzzled look, ruminating meanwhile, or stretching out her head and snuffing the air within a foot of my hand. Perhaps she was wondering whether I had two stomachs, and a tail to brush off the flies.
From the village of Ogunquit there are two roads. I chose the one which kept the shore, in order to take in my way Bald Head Cliff, a natural curiosity well worth going some distance to see. The road so winds across the rocky waste on which the village is in part built that in some places you almost double on your own footsteps. Occasionally a narrow lane issues from among the ledges, tumbling rather than descending to some little cove, where you catch a glimpse of brown-roofed cottages and a fishing-boat or two, snugly moored. The inhabitants say there is not enough soil in Ogunquit with which to repair the roads, a statement no one who tries it with a vehicle will be inclined to dispute. Literally the houses are built upon rocks, incrusted with yellow lichens in room of grass. Wherever a dip occurs through which a little patch of blue sea peeps out, a house is posted, and I saw a few carefully-tended garden spots among hollows of the rock in which a handful of mould had accumulated. The wintry aspect is little short of desolation: in storms, from its elevation and exposure, the place receives the full shock of the tempest, as you may see by the weather-stained appearance of the houses.
A native directed me by a short cut "how to take another ox-bow out of the road," and in a few minutes I stood on the brow of the cliff. What a sight! The eye spans twenty miles of sea horizon. Wells, with its white meeting-houses and shore hotels, was behind me. Far up in the bight of the bay Great Hill headland, Hart's and Gooch's beaches—the latter mere ribbons of white sand—gleamed in the sunlight. Kennebunkport and its ship-yards lay beneath yonder smoky cloud, with Cape Porpoise Light beyond. There, below me, looking as if it had floated off from the main, was the barren rock called the Nubble, the farthest land in this direction, with Cape Neddoek harbor in full view. All the rest was ocean. The mackerel fleet that I had seen all day—fifty sail, sixty, yes, and more—was off Boon Island, with their jibs down, the solitary gray shaft of the light-house standing grimly up among the white sails, a mile-stone of the sea.
There are very few who would be able to approach the farthest edge of the precipice called the Pulpit, and bend over its sheer face without a quickening of the pulse. As in all these grand displays in which Nature puts forth her powers, you shrink in proportion as she exalts herself. For the time being, at least, the conceit is taken out of you, and you are thoroughly put down. Here is a perpendicular wall of rock ninety feet in height (as well as I could estimate it), and about a hundred and fifty in length, with a greater than Niagara raging at its foot—a rock buttress, with its foundations deeply rooted in the earth, breasting off the Atlantic; and the massy fragments lying splintered at its base, or heaved loosely about the summit, told of many a desperate wrestling-match, with a constant gain for the old athlete. The sea is gnawing its way into the coast slowly, but as surely as the cataract is approaching the lake; and the cliff, though it may for a thousand years oppose this terrible battering, will at last, like some sea fortress, crumble before it.
Underneath the cliff is one of those curious basins hollowed out almost with the regularity of art, in which a vessel of large tonnage might be floated. On the farther side of this basin, the ledges, though jagged and wave-worn, descend with regular incline, making a sort of platform. On the top of the cliff the rock débris and line of soil show unmistakably that in severe gales the sea leaps to this great height, drenching the summit with salt spray. At such a time the sea must be superb, though awful; for I doubt if a human being could stand erect before such a storm.
The exposed side of Bald Head Cliff faces south of east, and is the result of ages of wear and tear. The sea undermines it, assails it in front and from all sides. Here are dikes, as at Star Island, in which the trap-rock has given way to the continual pounding, thus affording a vantage-ground for the great lifting power of the waves. The strata of rock lie in perpendicular masses, welded together as if by fire, and injected with crystal quartz seams, knotted like veins in a Titan's forehead. Blocks of granite weighing many tons, honey-combed by the action of the water, are loosely piled where the cliff overhangs the waves; and you may descend by regular steps to the verge of the abyss. The time to inspect this curiosity is at low tide, when, if there be sea enough, the waves come grandly in, whelming the shaggy rocks, down whose sides a hundred miniature cascades pour as the waters recede.
Beneath the cliff the incoming tides have worn the trap-rock to glassy smoothness, rendering it difficult to walk about when they are wetted by the spray. From this stand-point it is apparent the wall that rises before you is the remaining side of one of those chasms which the sea has driven right into the heart of the crag. The other face is what lies scattered about on all sides in picturesque ruin. If the view from the summit was invigorating, the situation below was far from inspiring. It needed all the cheerful light and warmth the afternoon sun could give to brighten up that bleak and rugged shore. The spot had for me a certain sombre fascination; for it was here, more than thirty years ago, the Isidore, a brand-new vessel, and only a few hours from port, was lost with every soul on board. Often have I heard the tale of that winter's night from relatives of the ill-fated ship's crew; and as I stood here within their tomb, realizing the hopelessness of human effort when opposed to those merciless crags, I thought of Schiller's lines:
"Oh many a bark to that breast grappled fast
Has gone down to the fearful and fathomless grave;
Again, crashed together the keel and the mast,
To be seen tossed aloft in the glee of the wave!
Like the growth of a storm, ever louder and clearer,
Grows the roar of the gulf rising nearer and nearer."
Over there, where the smoke lies above the tree-tops, is Kennebunkport,[66] where they build as staunch vessels as float on any sea. The village and its ship-yards lie along the banks of a little river, or, more properly speaking, an arm of the sea. It is a queer old place, or rather was, before it became translated into a summer resort; but now silk jostles homespun, and for three months in the year it is invaded by an army of pleasure-seekers, who ransack its secret places, and after taking their fill of sea and shore, flee before the first frosts of autumn. The town then hibernates.
The Isidore was built a few miles up river, where the stream is so narrow and crooked that you can scarce conceive how ships of any size could be successfully launched. At a point below the "Landing" the banks are so near together as to admit of a lock to retain the full tide when a launch took place. A big ship usually brings up in the soft ooze of the opposite bank, but is got off at the next flood by the help of a few yoke of oxen and a strong hawser. Besides its ship-building, Kennebunkport once boasted a considerable commerce with the West Indies, and the foundations of many snug fortunes have been laid in rum and sugar. The decaying wharves and empty warehouses now tell their own story.
I was one afternoon at the humble cottage of a less ancient, though more coherent, mariner than Coleridge's, who, after forty years battling with storms, was now laid up like an old hulk that will never more be fit for sea. Together we rehearsed the first and last voyage of the Isidore.
"Thirty years ago come Thanksgiving," said Ben, in a voice pitched below his usual key, "the Isidore lay at the wharf with her topsails loose, waiting for a slant of wind to put to sea. She was named for the builder's daughter, a mighty pretty gal, sir; but the boys didn't like the name because it sounded outlandish-like, and would have rather had an out-an'-out Yankee one any day of the week."
"There is, then," I suggested, "something in a name at sea as well as ashore?"
"Lor' bless your dear soul, I've seen them barkeys as could almost ship a crew for nothing, they had such spanking, saucy names. Captain R—— was as good a sailor as ever stepped, but dretful profane. He was as brave as a lion, and had rescued the crew of an Englishman from certain death while drifting a helpless wreck before a gale. No boat could live in the sea that was running; but Captain R—— bore down for the sinking ship, and passed it so close that the crew saved themselves by jumping aboard of him. Seven or eight times he stood for that wreck, until all but one man were saved. He had the ill-luck afterward to get a cotton ship ashore at Three Acres, near where the Isidore was lost, and said, as I've heard, 'he hoped the next vessel that went ashore he should be under her keel.' He had his wish, most likely.
"The Isidore was light, just on top of water, and never ought to have gone to sea in that plight; but she had been a good while wind-bound, and all hands began to be impatient to be off. Her crew, fifteen as likely lads as ever reefed a topsail, all belonged in the neighborhood. One of 'em didn't feel noways right about the v'y'ge, and couldn't make up his mind to go until the ship was over the bar, when he had to be set aboard in a wherry. Another dreamed three nights running the same dream, and every blessed time he saw the Isidore strike on a lee shore with the sea a-flying as high as the maintop. Every time he woke up in a cold sweat, with the cries of his shipmates ringing in his ears as plain as we hear the rote on Gooch's Beach this minute. So, when the Isidore set her colors and dropped down the river, Joe, though he had signed the articles and got the advance, took to the woods. Most every body thought it scandalous for the ship to unmoor, but Captain R—— said he would go to sea if he went to h—l the next minute. Dretful profane man, sir—dretful.
"The weather warn't exactly foul weather, and the sea was smooth enough, but all the air there was was dead ahead, and it looked dirty to wind'ard. The ship slipped out through the piers, and stood off to the east'ard on the port tack. I recollect she was so nigh the shore that I could see who was at the wheel. She didn't work handy, for all the ropes were new and full of turns, and I knew they were having it lively aboard of her. Early in the afternoon it began to snow, first lightly, then thick and fast, and the wind began to freshen up considerable. The ship made one or two tacks to work out of the bay, but about four o'clock it closed in thick, and we lost her.
"I saw the Nubble all night long, for the snow come in gusts; but it blowed fresh from the no'th-east; fresh," he repeated, raising his eyes to mine and shaking his gray head by way of emphasis. "I was afeard the ship was in the bay, and couldn't sleep, but went to the door and looked out between whiles."
It was, indeed, as I have heard, a dreadful night, and many a vigil was kept by wife, mother, and sweetheart. At day-break the snow lay heaped in drifts in the village streets and garden areas. It was not long before a messenger came riding in at full speed with the news that the shores of Ogunquit were fringed with the wreck of a large vessel, and that not one of her crew was left to tell the tale. The word passed from house to house. Silence and gloom reigned within the snow-beleaguered village.
It was supposed the ship struck about midnight, as the Ogunquit fishermen heard in their cabins cries and groans at this hour above the noise of the tempest. They were powerless to aid; no boat could have been launched in that sea. If any lights were shown on board the ship, they were not seen; neither were any guns heard. The ropes, stiffened with ice, would not run through the sheaves, which rendered the working of the ship difficult, if not impossible. No doubt the doomed vessel drove helplessly to her destruction, the frozen sails hanging idly to the yards, while her exhausted crew miserably perished with the lights of their homes before their eyes.
All the morning after the wreck the people along shore were searching amidst the tangled masses of drift and sea-wrack the storm had cast up for the remains of the crew. They were too much mangled for recognition, except in a single instance. Captain G——, a passenger, had by accident put on his red-flannel drawers the wrong side out the morning the Isidore sailed, observing to his wife that, as it was good luck, he would not change them. One leg was found encased in the drawers. The mutilated fragments were brought to the village, and buried in a common grave.
Some of the old people at the Port declare to this day that on the night of the wreck they heard shrieks as plainly as ever issued from human throats; and you could not argue it out of them, though the spot where the Isidore's anchors were found is ten miles away. As for Joe B——, the runaway, he can not refrain from shedding tears when the Isidore is mentioned.
"But, Ben, do you believe in dreams?" I asked, with my hand on the latch.
"B'leeve in dreams!" he repeated; "why, Joe's a living man; but where's his mates?"
Perhaps they
"Died as men should die, clinging round their lonely wreck,
Their winding-sheet the sky, and their sepulchre the deck;
And the steersman held the helm till his breath
Grew faint and fainter still;
There was one short fatal thrill,
Then he sank into the chill
Arms of Death."
I turned away from the spot with the old sailor's words in mind: "A wicked place where she struck; and the sea drove right on. A ragged place, sir—ragged."
Leaving the cliff, I struck across the pastures to the road, making no farther halt except to gather a few huckleberries that grew on high bushes by the roadside. The fruit is large, either black or blue, with an agreeable though different flavor from any of the low-bushed varieties. The local name for the shrub is "bilberry." It frequently grows higher than a man's head, and a single one will often yield nearly a quart.
It was a year of plenty, and I had seen the pickers busy in the berry pastures as I passed by. The fruit, being for the time a sort of currency—not quite so hard, by-the-bye, as the musket-bullets of the colonists—is received in barter at the stores. Whole families engage in the harvest, making fair wages, the annual yield exceeding in value that of the corn crop of the State. Maine grows her corn on the Western prairies, and pays for it with canned fish and berries.
At the village store I saw a woman drive up with a bushel of huckleberries, with which she bought enough calico for a gown, half a pound of tobacco, and some knickknacks for the children at home. Affixed in a conspicuous place to the wall was the motto, "Quick sales and small profits." Half an hour was spent in beating the shop-keeper down a cent in the yard, and another quarter of an hour to induce him to "heave in," as she said, a spool of cotton. The man, after stoutly contesting the claim, finally yielded both points. "The woman," thought I, "evidently only half believes in your seductive motto."
All along the road I had met women and children, going or returning, with pails or baskets. One man, evidently a fast picker, had filled the sleeves of his jacket with berries, after having first tied them at the wrists. Another, who vaulted over the stone wall at my side, when asked if he was going to try the huckleberries, replied,
"Wa'al, yes; think I'll try and accumulate a few."
Descending the last hill before reaching Cape Neddock Harbor, I had a good view of the Nubble, which several writers have believed was the Savage Rock of Gosnold, and the first land in New England to receive an English name. The reliable accounts of the early voyagers to our coasts are much too vague to enable later historians to fix the points where they made the land with the confidence with which many undertake to fix them. A careful examination of these accounts justifies the opinion that Gosnold made his landfall off Agamenticus, and first dropped anchor, since leaving Falmouth, at Cape Ann. The latitude, if accurately taken, would of itself put the question beyond controversy; but as the methods of observing the exact position of a ship were greatly inferior to what they became later in the seventeenth century, I at first doubted, and was then constrained to admit, that the reckoning of Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain ought to be accepted as trustworthy. Gabriel Archer, who was with Gosnold, says, "They held themselves by computation well neere the latitude of 43 degrees," or a little northward of the Isles of Shoals. John Brereton, also of Gosnold's company, says they fell in with the coast in thick weather, and first made land with the lead. By all accounts the Concord, Gosnold's ship, was to the northward of Cape Ann. Land was sighted at six in the morning of the 14th of May, 1602, and Gosnold stood "fair along by the shore" until noon, which would have carried him across Ipswich Bay, even if the Concord were a dull sailer. In 1603 Martin Pring sailed over nearly the same track as Gosnold. It is by comparing these two voyages that Savage Rock appears to be located at Cape Ann.
Pring, says Gorges, observing his instructions (to keep to the northward as high as Cape Breton), arrived safely out and back, bringing with him "the most exact discovery of that coast that ever came to my hands since; and indeed he was the best able to perform it of any I met withal to this present." Pring's relation wrought such an impression on Sir F. Gorges and Lord Chief-justice Popham that, notwithstanding their first disasters, they resolved on another effort. He had no doubt seen and talked with Gosnold after his return; perhaps had obtained from him his courses after he fell in with the coast.
The Speedwell, Pring's vessel, also made land in forty-three degrees. It proved to be a multitude of small islands. Pring, after anchoring under the lee of the largest, coasted the main-land with his boats. The narrative continues to relate that they "came to the mayne in 43½, and ranged to south-west, in which course we found several inlets, the more easterly of which was barred at the mouth. Having passed over the bar, we ran up into it five miles. Coming out and sailing south-west, we lighted upon two other inlets; the fourth and most westerly was best, which we rowed up ten or twelve miles." Between forty-three and forty-three and a half degrees are the Saco, then barred at the mouth,[67] the Mousam, York, and the Piscataqua, the "most westerly and best."
"We (meeting with no sassafras)"—to follow the narrative—"left these places and shaped our course for Savage's Rocks, discovered the year before by Captain Gosnold." Savage Rock, then, was by both these accounts (Archer and Pring) to the southward of forty-three degrees, while the Nubble, or rather Agamenticus, is in forty-three degrees sixteen minutes.
"Departing hence, we bare into that great gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year before." This could be no other than Massachusetts Bay, for Gosnold, according to Brereton, after leaving Savage Rock, shaped his course southward ("standing off southerly into the sea") the rest of that day and night (May 15th), and on the following morning found himself "embayed with a mighty headland," which was Cape Cod. Pring, on the contrary, steered into the bay, "coasting, and finding people on the north side thereof." If my conjecture be correct, he was the first English mariner in Boston Bay.
It is hardly possible that a navigator falling in with the New England coast in forty-three or forty-three and a half degrees, and steering south-west, should not recognize in Cape Ann one of its remarkable features, or pass it by unperceived in the night. He would have been likely to find Savage Rock and end his voyage at the same moment. Champlain and Smith are both in evidence. The former, who examined the coast minutely two years after Pring (June, 1605), has delineated "Cap des Isles" on his map of 1612, which accompanied the first edition of his voyages. The account he gives of its position is as clear as that of Archer is obscure. Says the Frenchman, in his own way:
"Mettant le cap au su pour nous esloigner afin de mouiller l'ancre, ayant fait environ deux lieux nous apperçumes un cap a la grande terre au su quart de suest de nous ou il pouvoit avoit six lieues; a l'est deux lieues apperçumes trois ou quatre isles assez hautes et a l'ouest un grand cu de sac."
Here are the bearings of Cape Ann, the Isles of Shoals, and of Ipswich Bay defined with precision. Champlain also puts the latitude of Kennebunk River at forty-three degrees twenty-five minutes, which shows Pring could hardly have explored to the eastward of Cape Elizabeth. Smith, in 1614, described Cape Ann and Cape Cod as the two great headlands of New England, giving to the former the name of Tragabigzanda; but Champlain had preceded him, as Gosnold had preceded Champlain. On the whole, Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain agree remarkably in their latitude and in their itinerary.
At Cape Neddoek I "put up," or rather was put up—an expression applied alike to man and beast in every public-house in New England—at the old Freeman Tavern, a famous stopping-place in by-gone years, when the mail-coach between Boston and Portland passed this way. Since I knew it the house had been brushed up with a coat of paint on the outside, the tall sign-post was gone, and nothing looked quite natural except the capacious red barn belonging to the hostel. The bar-room, however, was unchanged, and the aroma of old Santa Cruz still lingered there, though the pretty hostess assured me, on the word of a landlady, there was nothing in the house stronger than small beer. It was not so of yore, when all comers appeared to have taken the famous Highgate oath: "Never to drink small beer when you could get ale, unless you liked small beer best."
The evening tempted me to a stroll down to the harbor, to see the wood-coasters go out with the flood. Afterward I walked on the beach. The full moon shone out clear in the heavens, lighting up a radiant aisle incrusted with silver pavement on the still waters, broad at the shore, receding until lost in the deepening mystery of the farther sea. The ground-swell rose and fell with regular heaving, as of Old Ocean asleep. As a breaker wavered and toppled over, a bright gleam ran along its broken arch like the swift flashing of a train. Occasionally some craft crossed the moon's track, where it stood out for a moment with surprising distinctness, to be swallowed up an instant later in the surrounding blackness. Boon Island had unclosed its brilliant eye—its light in the window for the mariner. It had been a perfect day, but the night was enchanting.
"Land of the forest and the rock,
Of dark-blue lake and mighty river,
Of mountains reared aloft to mock
The storm's career, the lightning's shock—
My own green land forever."
Whittier.
Ho for Agamenticus! It is an old saying, attributed to the Iron Duke, that when a man wants to turn over it is time for him to turn out. As there are six good miles to get over to the mountain, and as many to return, I was early astir. The road is chiefly used by wood teams, and was well beaten to within half a mile of the hills. From thence it dwindled into a green lane, which in turn becomes a foot-path bordered by dense undergrowth. Agamenticus is not a high mountain, although so noted a landmark. There are in reality three summits of nearly equal altitude, ranging north-east and south-west, the westernmost being the highest. At the mountain's foot is a scattered hamlet of a few unthrifty-looking cabins, tenanted by wood-cutters, for, notwithstanding the axe has played sad havoc in the neighboring forests, there are still some clumps of tall pines there fit for the king's ships. You obtain your first glimpse of the hills when still two miles distant, the road then crossing the country for the rest of the way, with the mountain looming up before you.
Along shore, and in the country-side, the people call the mount indifferently "Eddymenticus" and "Head o' Menticus." Some, who had lived within a few miles of it since childhood, told me they had never had the curiosity to try the ascent. One man, who lived within half a mile of the base of the western hill, had never been on any of the others. The name is unmistakably of Indian origin. General Gookin, in his "Historical Collections of the Indians in New England," written in 1674, has the following in relation to the tribes inhabiting this region: "The Pawtuckett is the fifth and last great sachemship of Indians. Their country lieth north and north-east from the Massachusetts, whose dominion reacheth so far as the English jurisdiction, or colony of the Massachusetts, now doth extend, and had under them several other small sagamores, as the Pennacooks, Agawomes, Naamkeeks, Pascatawayes, Accomintas, and others."[68]
The climb is only fatiguing; it is not at all difficult. The native forest has disappeared, but a new growth of deciduous trees, with a fair sprinkling of evergreens, is fast replacing it. In some places the slender stems of the birch or pine shoot up, as it were, out of the solid rock. Following the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and turning at every step to wonder and admire, in half an hour I stood on the top. The summit contains an acre or more of bare granite ledge, with tufts of wiry grass and clumps of tangled vines growing among the crevices. Some scattered blocks had been collected at the highest point, and a cairn built. I seated myself on the topmost stone of the monument.
A solitary mountain lifting itself above the surrounding country is always impressive. Agamenticus seems an outpost of the White Hills, left stranded here by the glacier, or upheaved by some tremendous throe. The day was not of the clearest, or, rather, the morning mists still hung in heavy folds about the ocean, making it look from my airy perch as if sky and sea had changed places. Capes and headlands were revealed in a striking and mystical way, as objects dimly seen through a veil. Large ships resembled toys, except that the blue space grasped by the eye was too vast for playthings. Cape Elizabeth northward and Cape Ann in the southern board stretched far out into the sea, as if seeking to draw tribute of all passing ships into the ports between. Here were the Isles of Shoals, lying in a heap together. That luminous, misty belt was Rye Beach. And here was the Piscataqua, and here Portsmouth, Kittery, and Old York, with all the sea-shore villages I had so lately traversed. As the sun rose higher, the murky curtain was rolled away, and the ocean appeared in its brightest azure.
The sea is what you seldom tire of, especially where its nearness to the chief New England marts shows it crowded with sails bearing up for port. Craft of every build, flags of every nation, pass Agamenticus and its three peaks in endless procession—stately ships
"That court'sy to them, do them reverence
As they fly by on their woven wings."
Old Ocean parts before the eager prow. You fancy you see the foam roll away and go glancing astern. Here is a bark with the bottom of the Tagus, and another with the sands of the Golden Horn, sticking to the anchor-fluke; and here a smoke on the horizon's rim heralds a swifter messenger from the Old World—some steamship climbing the earth's rotundity; and yet water, they say, will not run up hill! When I looked forth upon this moving scene my lungs began to "crow like chanticleer." I waved my hat, and shouted "a good voyage" to sailors that could not hear me. I had no fear of listeners, for the Old Man of the Mountain tells no tales. To stand on a mountain-top is better, to my mind, than to be up any distance in a balloon. You have, at least, something under you, and can come down when you like. What a fulcrum Agamenticus would have made for the lever of Archimedes!
Landward, the horizon is bounded by the White Hills—the "Crystal Mountains, daunting terrible," of the first explorer.[69] They look shadowy enough at this distance—seventy miles as the crow flies—Mount Washington, grand and grim, its head muffled in a mantle of clouds, overtopping all. The lofty ranges issuing from these resemble a broken wall as they stretch away to the Connecticut, with Moosehillock towering above.
"To me they seemed the barriers of a world,
Saying, 'Thus far, no farther!'"
The busy towns of Dover and Great Falls, with the nearer villages of Eliot and Berwick, are grouped about in picturesque confusion, a spire peeping out of a seeming forest, a broad river dwindling to a rivulet.
After feasting for an hour upon this sight, I became more than ever persuaded that, except in that rare condition of the atmosphere when the White Hills are visible far out to sea, Agamenticus must be the first land made out in approaching the coast anywhere within half a degree of the forty-third parallel. Juan Verazzani, perchance, certainly Masters Gosnold and Pring, saw it as plainly as I now saw the ships below me, where they had sailed.
I thought it fitting here, on the top of Agamenticus, with as good a map of the coast spread before me as I ever expect to see, to hold a little chat with the discoverers. If Hendrik Hudson haunts the fastnesses of the Catskills—and a veracious historian asserts that he has been both seen and spoken with—why may not the shade of Captain John Smith be lurking about this headland, where of yore he trafficked, and, for aught I know, clambered as I have done?
Right over against me, though I could not see them, were the Basque provinces, whose people the Romans could not subdue, and whose language, says the old French proverb, the devil himself could not learn. Cape Finisterre was there, with its shoals of sardines and its impotent conclusion of a name, as if it had been the end of the world indeed! Archer says, in his relation of Gosnold's voyage,[70] that the day before they made the land they had sweet smelling of the shore as from the southern cape and Andalusia, in Spain. It was, says Brereton, "a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple and a kettle of copper, came boldly aboard of us." In 1578 there were a hundred sail of Spanish fishermen on the Banks of Newfoundland to fifty English. Spanish Biscay sent twenty or thirty vessels there to kill whales; France sent a hundred and fifty; and Portugal fifty craft of small tonnage to fish for cod. The Indians who boarded Gosnold could name Placentia and Newfoundland, and might have come from thence in their shallop, since they so well knew how to use it. But if Brereton's surmise was right, then some of those daring fellows from the Basse Pyrenees were first at Savage Rock. He says, "It seemed, by some words and signs they made, that some Basques, or of St. John de Luz, have fished or traded in this place, being in the latitude of 43 degrees."
Because there was no sassafras, it is not much we know about Savage Rock. The root of this aromatic tree was worth in England three shillings the pound, or three hundred and thirty-six pounds the ton, when Gosnold found store of it on the Elizabeth Islands; but as he was informed, "before his going forth that a ton of it would cloy England," few of his crew, "and those but easy laborers," were employed in gathering it. "The powder of sassafras," says Archer, "in twelve hours cured one of our company that had taken a great surfeit by eating the bellies of dog-fish, a very delicious meat."
That the medicinal qualities of sassafras were highly esteemed may be inferred from what is said of it in "An English Exposition," printed at Cambridge (England), in 1676, by John Hayes, printer to the University.
"Sassafras.—A tree of great vertue, which groweth in Florida, in the West Indies; the rinde herof hath a sweete smell like cinnamon. It comforteth the liver and stomach, and openeth obstructions of the inward parts, being hot and dry in the second degree. The best of the tree is the root, next the boughs, then the body, but the principal goodnesse of all resteth in the rinde."
One Master Robert Meriton, of Gosnold's company, was "the finder of the sassafras in these parts," from which it would appear that the shrub in its wild state was little known to these voyagers.
Coming down from my high antiquarian steed, and from Agamenticus at the same time, I walked back to the tavern by dinner-time, having fully settled in my own mind the oft-repeated question, the touch-stone by which even one's pleasures must be regulated, "Will it pay?" And I say it will pay in solid nuggets of healthful enjoyment, even if no higher aspirations are developed, in standing where at every instant man and his works diminish, while those of the Creator expand before you.
Douglass remarks that "Aquamenticus Hills were known among our sailors as a noted and useful land-making for vessels that fall in northward of Boston or Massachusetts Bay."
Leaving my comfortable quarters at Cape Neddock, I pursued my walk to Old York the same afternoon, taking the Long Sands in my way. It was farther by the beach than by the road, but as I was in no haste I chose the shore. I noticed that the little harbor I had quitted was so shallow as to be left almost dry by the receding tide, the channel being no more than a rivulet, easily forded within a few rods of the sea. Between this harbor and Wells Bay I had passed several coves where, in a smooth sea and during a westerly wind, small vessels were formerly hauled ashore, and loaded with wood at one tide with ease and safety. York Beach is about a mile across. I did not find it a long one.
It being low tide and a fine afternoon, the beach was for the time being turned into a highway, broader and smoother than any race-course could be, over which all manner of vehicles were being driven, from the old-fashioned gig of the village doctor to the aristocratic landau, fresh from town. The sands are hard and gently shelving, with here and there a fresh-water brooklet trickling through the bulk-head of ballast heaped up at the top by the sea. These little streams, after channeling the beach a certain distance, disappeared in the sand, just as the Platte and Arkansas sink out of sight into the plain.
There was a fresh breeze outside, so that the coasters bowled merrily along with bellying sails before it, or else bent until gunwale under as they hugged it close. The color of the sea had deepened to a steely blue. White caps were flying, and the clouds betokened more wind as they rose and unrolled like cannon-smoke above the horizon, producing effects such as Stanfield liked to transfer to his canvas. Mackerel gulls were wheeling and circling above the breakers with shrill screams. Down at low-water mark the seas came bounding in, driven by the gale, leaping over each other, and beating upon the strand with ceaseless roar.
The beach, I saw, had been badly gullied by the late storm, but the sea, like some shrewish housewife, after exhausting its rage, had set about putting things to rights again. I found shells of the deep-sea mussel, of quahaug and giant sea clam, bleaching there, but did not see the small razor-clam I have picked up on Nahant and other more southerly beaches.
The sea-mussel, as I have read, was in the olden time considered a cure for piles and hemorrhoids, being dried and pulverized for the purpose. William Wood speaks of a scarlet mussel found at Piscataqua, that, on being pricked with a pin, gave out a purple juice, dying linen so that no washing would wear it out. "We mark our handkerchiefs and shirts with it," says this writer.[71] The large mussel is very toothsome. Like the oyster and clam, it was dried for winter use by the Indians.
The giant or hen clam-shell, found in every buttery within fifty miles of the coast, was the Indian's garden hoe. After a storm many clams would be cast up on the beaches, which the natives, taking out of the shells, carried home in baskets. A large shell will hold a plentiful draught of water, and is unequaled for a milk-skimmer. Only a part of the fish is used for food, as there is a general belief that a portion is poisonous, like the head of a lobster. Mourt's relation of the landing of the pilgrims at Cape Cod says they found "great mussels, and very fat and full of sea-pearle, but we could not eat them, for they made us all sicke that did eat, as well saylers as passengers." As they are only found on the beach after an easterly storm, they become well filled with sand, and require thorough cleansing before cooking, while those taken from the water near the shore are better, because free from sand. The common clam is not eaten along shore during the summer, except at the hotels and boarding-houses, not being considered wholesome by the resident population in any month that has not the letter R. The same idea is current with respect to the oyster. In either case the summer is inferior to the winter fish, and as Charles XII. once said of the army bread, "It is not good, but may be eaten."
There was but little sea-weed or kelp thrown up, though above high-water mark I noticed large stacks of it ready to be hauled away, containing as many varieties as commonly grow among the rocks hereaway. But there were innumerable cockles and periwinkles lately come ashore, and emitting no pleasant odor. The natives used both these shells to manufacture their wampum, or wampumpeag, the delicate inner wreath of the periwinkle being preferred. Now and then I picked up a sea-chestnut, or "whore's egg," as they are called by the fishermen. But the sand roller, or circle, is the curiosity of the beach as a specimen of ocean handicraft. I passed many of them scattered about, though a perfect one is rarely found, except on shallow bars beyond low-water mark. Looking down over the side of a boat, I have seen more than I was able to count readily, but they are too fragile to bear the buffeting of the surf. In appearance they are like a section taken off the top of a jug where the cork is put in, and as neatly rounded as if turned off a potter's lathe. Naturalists call them the nest of the cockle.
Going down the sands as far as the sea would allow, I remarked that the nearest breakers were discolored with the rubbish of shredded sea-weed, and by the particles of sand they held in solution. As I walked on, countless sand-fleas skipped out of my path, as I have seen grasshoppers in a stubble-field out West. The sandpipers ran eagerly about in pursuit, giving little plaintive squeaks, and leaving their tiny tracks impressed upon the wet sand. Little sprites they seemed as they chased the refluent wave for their food, sometimes overtaken and borne off their feet by the glancing surf. I remember having seen a flock of hens scratching among the sea-moss for these very beach-fleas in one of the coves I passed.
Old Neptune's garden contains as wonderful plants as any above high-water mark, though the latter do well with less watering. I have thought the botany of the sea worth studying, and, as it is sometimes inconvenient to pluck a plant or a flower when you want it, the beach is the place for specimens. Some years ago delicate sea-mosses were in request. They were kept in albums, pressed like autumn leaves, or displayed in frames on the walls at home. It was a pretty conceit, and employed many leisure fingers at the sea-side, but appears to have been discarded of late.
One day, during a storm, I went down to the beach, to find it encumbered with "devils' apron" and kelp, whitening where it lay. I picked up a plant having a long stalk, slender and hollow, of more than ten feet in length, resembling a gutta-percha tube. The root was firmly clasped around five deep-sea mussels, while the other end terminated in broad, plaited leaves. It had been torn from its bed in some sea-cranny, to be combined with terrestrial vegetation; but to the mussels it was equal whether they died of thirst or of the grip of the talon-like root of the kelp. There were tons upon tons of weed and moss, which the farmers were pitching with forks higher up the beach, out of reach of the sea, the kelp, as it was being tossed about, quivering as if there were life in it. I found the largest mass of sponge I have ever seen on shore—as big as a man's head—and was at a loss how to describe it, until I thought of the mops used on shipboard, and made of rope-yarns; for this body of sponge was composed of slender branches of six to twelve inches in length, each branching again, coral-like, into three or four offshoots. The pores were alive with sand-fleas, who showed great partiality for it.
What at first seems paradoxical is, that with the wind blowing directly on shore, the kelp will not land, but is kept just beyond the surf by the under-tow; it requires an inshore wind to bring it in. One who has walked on the beach weaves of its sea-weed a garland:
"From Bermuda's reefs, from edges
Of sunken ledges,
On some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador:"
"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main."
I had before walked round the cape one way, and now, passing it from a contrary direction, had fairly doubled it. After leaving York Beach I pushed on for Old York, finding little to arrest my steps, until at night-fall I arrived at the harbor, after a twenty-mile tramp, with an appetite that augured ill for mine host.
It was not my first visit to Old York, but I found the place strangely altered from its usual quiet and dullness. The summer, as Charles Lamb says, had set in with its usual severity, and I saw fishers in varnished boots, boatmen in tight-fitting trowsers, and enough young Americans in navy blue to man a fleet by-and-by. Parasols fluttered about the fields, and silks swept the wet floor of the beach. I had examined with a critical eye as I walked the impressions of dainty boots in the sand, keeping step with others of more masculine shape, and marked where the pace had slackened or quickened, and where the larger pair had diverged for a moment to pick up a stone or a pebble, or perchance in hurried self-communing for a question of mighty import. Sometimes the foot-prints diverged not to meet again, and I saw the gentleman had walked off with rapid strides in the opposite direction. For hours on the beach I had watched these human tracks, almost as devious as the bird's, until I fancied I should know their makers. Not unfrequently I espied a monogram, traced with a stick or the point of a parasol, the lesser initials lovingly twined about the greater. Faith! I came to regard the beach itself as a larger sort of tablet graven with hieroglyphics, easy to decipher if you have the key.
The hotel[72] appeared deserted, but it was only a seclusion of calculation. After supper the guests set about what I may call their usual avocations. Not a few "paired off," as they say at Washington, for a walk on the beach, springing down the path with elastic step and voices full of joyous mirth. One or two maidens I had seen rowing on the river showed blistered hands to condoling cavaliers. Young matrons, carefully shawled by their husbands, sauntered off for a quiet evening ramble, or mingled in the frolic of the juveniles going on in the parlor. The dowagers all sought a particular side of the house, where, out of ear-shot of the piano, they solaced themselves with the evening newspapers, damp from presses sixty miles away. A few choice spirits gathered in the smoking-room, where they maintained a frigid reserve toward all new-comers, their conversation coming out between puffs, as void of warmth as the vapor that rises from ice. On the beach, and alone with inanimate objects, I had company enough and to spare; here, with a hundred of my own species, it was positively dreary. I took a turn on the piazza, and soon retired to my cell; for in these large caravansaries man loses his individuality and becomes a number.
Old York, be it remembered, is one of those places toward which the history of a country or a section converges. Thus, when you are in Maine all roads, historically speaking, lead to York. Long before there was any settlement it had become well known from its mountain and its position near the mouth of the Piscataqua. Its first name was Agamenticus. Says Smith, "Accominticus and Pascataquack are two convenient harbors for small barks, and a good country within their craggy cliffs:" this in 1614. He could not have sounded, perhaps not even ascended, the Piscataqua.
Christopher Levett, in his voyage, begun in 1623 and ended in 1624, says of this situation: "About two leagues farther to the east (of Piscataqua) is another great river, called Aquamenticus. There, I think, a good plantation may be settled; for there is a good harbor for ships, good ground, and much already cleared, fit for planting of corn and other fruits, having heretofore been planted by the savages, who are all dead. There is good timber, and likely to be good fishing; but as yet there hath been no trial made that I can hear of." Levett was one of the Council of New England, joined with Robert Gorges, Francis West, and Governor Bradford. From his account, Agamenticus appears to have been a permanent habitation of the Indians, who had been stricken by the same plague that desolated what was afterward New Plymouth.
The first English settlement was begun probably in 1624, but not earlier than 1623, on both sides of York River, by Francis Norton, who had raised himself at home from the rank of a common soldier to be a lieutenant-colonel in the army. This was Norton's project, and he had the address to persuade Sir Ferdinando Gorges to unite in the undertaking. Artificers to build mills, cattle, and other necessaries for establishing the plantation, were sent over. A patent passed to Ferdinando Gorges, Norton, and others, of twelve thousand acres on the east to Norton, and twelve thousand on the west of Agamenticus River to Gorges. Captain William Gorges was sent out by his uncle to represent that interest.[73]
The plantation at Agamenticus was incorporated into a borough in 1641, and subsequently, in 1642, into a city, under the name of Gorgeana. Thomas Gorges, cousin of Sir F. Gorges, and father of Ferdinando, was the first mayor. It was also made a free port. Though Gorgeana was probably the first incorporated city in America, it was in reality no more than an inconsiderable sea-coast village, with a few houses in some of the best places for fishing and navigation. Its territory was, however, ample, embracing twenty-one square miles. There was little order or morality among the people, and in one account it is said "they had as many shares in a woman as a fishing boat."[74] All the earlier authorities I have seen agree in giving Gorgeana an indifferent character, and I was not surprised to find a couplet still extant, expressive of the local estimate in which its villages were once held.
"Cape Neddock and the Nubble,
Old York and the d—l."
Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, made, in 1643, the following entry in his "Journal:" "Those of Sir Ferdinando Gorge his province beyond Piscat were not admitted to the confederation,[75] because they ran a different course from us, both in their ministry and civil administration; for they had lately made Accomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Mr. Hull, an excommunicated person, and very contentious, for their minister." A Boston man, and a magistrate, stood thus early on his dignity.
Sir F. Gorges makes his appearance in that brilliant and eventful period when Elizabeth ruled in England, Henry IV. in France, and Philip II. in Spain. He is said to have revealed the conspiracy of Devereux, earl of Essex, to Sir Walter Raleigh, after having himself been privy to it.[76] This act, a bar-sinister in the biography of Gorges, sullies his escutcheon at the outset. History must nevertheless award that he was the most zealous, the most indefatigable, and the most influential of those who freely gave their talents and their wealth to the cause of American colonization. Gorges deserves to be called the father of New England. For more than forty years—extending through the reigns of James I. and of Charles I., the Commonwealth, and the Restoration—he pursued his favorite idea with a constancy that seems almost marvelous when the troublous times in which he lived are passed in review. In a letter to Buckingham on the affairs of Spain, Gorges says he was sometimes thought worthy to be consulted by Elizabeth.
Sir Ferdinando commanded at Plymouth, England, with his nephew William for his lieutenant, when Captain Weymouth returned to that port from New England. On board Weymouth's ship were five natives, of whom three were seized by Gorges. They were detained by him until they were able to give an account of the topography, resources, and peoples of their far-off country. From this circumstance dates Gorges's active participation in New England affairs.
He was interested in Lord John Popham's ineffectual attempt. Finding the disasters of that expedition, at home and abroad, had so disheartened his associates that he could no longer reckon on their assistance, he dispatched Richard Vines and others at his own charge, about 1617, to the same coast the Popham colonists had branded, on their return, as too cold to be inhabited by Englishmen. Vines established himself at or near the mouth of the Saco. Between the years 1617 and 1620, Gorges sent Captains Hobson, Rocroft, and Dermer to New England, but their voyages were barren of results. In 1620 Gorges and others obtained from the king a separate patent, with similar privileges, exemption from custom, subsidies, etc., such as had formerly been granted the Virginia Company.
By this patent the adventurers to what had heretofore been known as the "Northern Colony in Virginia," and "The Second Colony in Virginia," obtained an enlargement of territory, so as to include all between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels, and extending westward to the South Sea or Pacific Ocean. This was the Great Charter of New England, out of which were made the subsequent grants within its territory. The incorporators were styled "The Council of Plymouth."[77]
The Virginia Company, whose rights were invaded, attempted to annul the Plymouth Company's patent. Defeated before the Lords, they brought the subject the next year, 1621, before Parliament, as a monopoly and a grievance of the Commonwealth. Gorges was cited to appear at the bar of the House, and made his defense, Sir Edward Coke[78] being then Speaker. After hearing the arguments of Gorges and his lawyers on three several occasions, the House, in presenting the grievances of the kingdom to the throne, placed "Sir Ferd. Gorges's patent for sole fishing in New England" at the head of the catalogue; but Parliament, having made itself obnoxious to James, was dissolved, and some of its members committed to the Tower. The patent was saved for a time.
Before this affair of the Parliament the Pilgrims had made their ever-famous landing in New England. Finding themselves, contrary to their first intention, located within the New England patent, they applied through their solicitor in England to Gorges for a grant, and in 1623 they obtained it. This was the first patent of Plymouth Colony; in 1629 they had another, made to William Bradford and his associates.
In 1623 the frequent complaints to the Council of Plymouth of the abuses and disorders committed by fishermen and other intruders within their patent, determined them to send out an officer to represent their authority on the spot. Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, was fixed upon, and became for a short time invested with the powers of a civil magistrate. According to Belknap, he was styled "Lieutenant-general of New England." George Popham was the first to exercise a local authority within her limits.