FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK.
"A shipman was there, wonned far by west;
For aught I wot, he was of Dartemouth."
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.
[Illustration: OLD WRECKS ON THE BEACH.]
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 tete-a-tete. 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 debris 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.
[Illustration: THE MORNING ROUND]
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 43-1/2,
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 appercumes un cap a la grande terre
au su quart de suest de nous ou il pouvoit avoit six lieues; a l'est
deux lieues appercumes 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Colonel Storer kept up the stockades and one or more of the
flankarts until after the year 1760, as a memorial rather than a
defense.
[64] This relationship is disputed by Mr. Joseph L. Chester, the eminent
antiquary. Winthrop, it would seem, ought to have known; Eliot and Allen
repeat the authority, the latter giving the full name of Mary
Hutchinson.
[65] Both sides have been ably presented by Dr. N. Bouton and Hon.
Charles H. Bell.
[66] Once, and much better, Arundel, from the Earl of Arundel.
[67] An old sea-chart says, "Saco River bear place at low water."
[Illustration: WHAT THE SEA CAN DO.]