AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY.
"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.
The Great Charter of New England was surrendered to the crown in April,
1635, and the territory embraced within it was parceled out among the
patentees, Gorges receiving for his share a tract of sixty miles in
extent, from the Merrimac to the Kennebec, reaching into the country one
hundred and twenty miles. This tract was called the province of Maine.
It was divided by Gorges into eight bailiwicks or counties, and these
again into sixteen hundreds, after the manner of the Chiltern Hundreds,
a fief of the English crown. The Hundreds were subdivided into parishes
and tithings.
It would fatigue the reader to enter into the details of the government
established by Gorges within what he calls "my province of Maine." It
was exceedingly cumbrous, and the few inhabitants were in as great
danger of being governed too much as later communities have often been.
An annual rental was laid on the lands, and no sale or transfer could be
made without consent of the Council. This distinction, as against the
neighboring colony of Massachusetts, where all were freeholders, was
fatal. The crown, in confirming the grant to Gorges, vested him with
privileges and powers similar to those of the lords palatine of the
ancient city of Durham. Under this authority the plantation at
Agamenticus was raised to the dignity of a city, and a _quasi_
ecclesiastical government founded in New England.
Belknap says further that there was no provision for public
institutions. Schools were unknown, and they had no minister till, in
pity of their deplorable state, two went thither from Boston on a
voluntary mission.
[Illustration: YORK MEETING-HOUSE.]
There are yet some interesting objects to be seen in York, though few of
the old houses are remaining at the harbor. These few will, however,
repay a visit. Prominent among her antiquities is the meeting-house of
the first parish. An inscription in the foundation records as follows:
"Founded A.D. 1747.
The Revd. Mr. Moody, Pas."
The church is placed on a grassy knoll, with the parsonage behind it.
Its exterior is plain. If such a distinction may be made, it belongs to
the third order of New England churches, succeeding to the square
tunnel-roofed edifice, as that had succeeded the original barn-like
house of worship. Entering the porch, I saw two biers leaning against
the staircase of the bell-tower, and noticed that the bell-ringer or his
assistants had indulged a passion for scribbling on the walls, though
not, as might be inferred, from Scripture texts. The interior is as
severe as the exterior. Besides its rows of straight-backed pews, it was
furnished at one end with a mahogany pulpit, communion-table, and sofa
covered with black hair-cloth. Hanging in a frame against the pulpit are
fac-similes of letters from the church at York to that of Rowley,
bearing the date of 1673. The tower is an ingenious piece of joinery
that reminded me of Hingham church.
Shubael Dummer, the first minister of this parish, was killed in 1692,
at the sacking of the place by the Indians. He was shot down in the act
of mounting his horse at his own door, a short distance toward the
harbor. Mather, in his "Magnalia," indulges in a strain of eulogy toward
this gentleman that we should now call _hifalutin_. Dummer's successor
was Samuel Moody, an eccentric but useful minister, still spoken of as
"Parson Moody." He was Sir William Pepperell's chaplain in the Louisburg
expedition, and noted for the length and fervor of his prayers.
After the capitulation Sir William gave a dinner to the superior
officers of the army and fleet. Knowing the prolixity of his chaplain,
he was embarrassed by the thought that the parson's long-winded grace
might weary the admiral and others of his guests. In this dilemma, he
was astonished to see the parson advance and address the throne of grace
in these words: "O Lord, we have so many things to thank thee for, that
time will be infinitely too short for it; we must therefore leave it for
the work of eternity."
A second parish was formed in York about 1730. Rev. Joseph Moody, the
son of Samuel, was ordained its first pastor, in 1732. At the death of
his wife he fell into a settled melancholy, and constantly appeared with
his face covered with a handkerchief. From this circumstance he was
called "Handkerchief Moody." He was possessed of wit, and some dreary
anecdotes are related of him. Mr. Hawthorne has made the incident of the
handkerchief the frame-work of one of his gloomiest tales. I know of no
authority other than tradition to support the statement made in a note
accompanying the tale, that "in early life he (Moody) had accidentally
killed a beloved friend."[79]
It is only a short distance from the church to the old burying-ground,
and I was soon busy among the inscriptions, though I did not find them
as interesting as I had anticipated. The place seemed wholly uncared
for. The grass grew rank and tangled, making the examination difficult,
and at every step I sank to the knee in some hollow. The yard is ridged
with graves, and must have received the dust of many generations, "going
back even to those who acknowledged the first James for their dread lord
and sovereign." As usual, the older stones, when I had found them, were
too much defaced to be deciphered, and I remarked that the slate
grave-stone of Parson Moody preserved but few of its original lines.
Beside him lay the remains of his wife. The following is his own
epitaph:
"Here lies the body of the
REV'D SAMUEL MOODY, A.M.
The zealous, faithful, and successful pastor of the
First Church of Christ in York.
Was born in Newbury, January 4th, 1675.
Graduated 1697. Came hither May 16th,
Died here November 13th, 1747.
For his farther character read the 2d Corinthians,
3d chapter and first six verses."
In the corner of the ground next the main street is the monumental
tablet of Hon. David Sewall. A plain slab of slate at his side marks the
resting-place of his wife. On this are enumerated some of the public
offices held by her husband, and the two monuments might furnish the
reader with materials for a biography.
Mr. Adams, in his "Diary," notes meeting his "old friend and classmate"
at York, when he was going the circuit in 1770. Sewall had just returned
from a party of pleasure at Agamenticus, and the talk was of erecting a
beacon upon it. At this time he was looked upon as a Tory, but became a
zealous Whig before hostilities with the mother country began.
In 1640, says Lechford, nothing was read nor any funeral sermon made at
a burial, but at the tolling of the bell all the neighborhood came
together, and after bearing the dead solemnly to the grave, stood by
until it was closed. The ministers were commonly, but not always,
present. In these few and simple rites our fathers testified
"The emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man."
[Illustration: JAIL AT OLD YORK.]
On a rising ground opposite the town-house is the old jail of York. I
have deemed it worthy a passing notice. It is a quaint old structure,
and has held many culprits in former times, when York was the seat of
justice for the county, though it would not keep your modern burglar an
hour. It is perched, like a bird of ill omen, on a rocky ledge, where
all might see it in passing over the high-road. Thus, in the early day,
the traveler on entering the county town encountered, first, the stocks
and whipping-post; continuing his route, he in due time came to the
gallows, at the town's end. The exterior of the jail is not especially
repulsive, now that it is no longer a prison; but the inside is a relic
of barbarism--just such a place as I have often imagined the miserable
witchcraft prisoners might have been confined in. The back wall is of
stone. The doors are six inches of solid oak, studded with heavy nails;
the gratings secured with the blades of mill saws, having the jagged
teeth upward; the sills, locks, and bolts are ponderous, and unlike any
thing the present century has produced.
[Illustration: PILLORY.]
The dungeons, of which there are two, admitted no ray of light except
when the doors were opened; and these doors were of two thicknesses of
oaken planks banded between with plates of iron, and on the outside with
rusty blades of mill saws, as were also the crevices through which the
jailer passed bread and water to the wretched criminals. The gloom and
squalor of these _cachots_ oppressed the spirits of even the casual
visitor, free to come and go at pleasure; what must it, then, have been
to the wretches condemned to inhabit them? Above these dungeons were two
or three cells, secured by precautions similar to those below; while
other apartments were reserved for the jailer's use. The house was
inhabited, and children were playing about the floor. I fancied their
merry laughter issuing from solitary dungeons where nothing but groans
and imprecations had once been heard. Perchance there have been Hester
Prynnes and Cassandra Southwicks immured within these walls.
[Illustration: STOCKS.]
As I never feel quite at home within a prison, I made haste to get into
the open air again. I noticed, what is common in the country, that an
underpinning of boards had been placed around the foundation at the
distance of a foot, the space within being filled with earth. "That,"
said a whimsical fellow, "is to keep the coarsest of the cold out."
They have a jail at Alfred hardly more secure than the old. I was told
of a prisoner who coolly informed the jailer one morning that if he did
not supply him with better victuals he would not stay another day. He
was as good as his word, making his escape soon after. Wagner, the Isles
of Shoals murderer, also broke jail at Alfred, but was recaptured.
I should have liked to devote a few moments to the old court-house, its
eminent and distinguished judges and barristers of the provincial
courts, not forgetting its crier and constables. I should, I repeat,
like to open the court, and marshal the jurors, witnesses, and even the
idlers to their places in the king's name. I should like to hear some of
those now antiquated, but then oft-quoted, scraps of law from the
statutes of Richard II. or Sixth Edward. But it is all past. Bag-wigs,
black gowns, and silver buckles are no more seen, except in family
portraits of the time, and the learned counsel of to-day no more address
each other as "Brother A----" or "B----." There do remain, however, in
front of the old court-house four beautifully spreading elms, planted by
David Sewall in 1773. To look at them now, it is not easy to fancy they
could be grasped with the hand when the battle of Lexington was fought.
I passed on by the old tavern-stand where Woodbridge, in 1770, swung his
sign of "Billy Pitt," and underneath, the words "Entertainment for the
Sons of Liberty"--a hint to Tories to take their custom elsewhere. I
should have enjoyed a pipe with that landlord, as John Adams says he
did.
In Old York they have a precinct known as Scotland, said to have been
first settled by some of the prisoners of Cromwell's victory at Dunbar,
and shipped over seas to be sold as apprentices for a term of years. I
was bound thither to see the garrison houses that had withstood the
onset of the Indians in King William's war.
It is four miles from the village to Scotland parish, the road passing
through broad acres of cleared land or ancient orchards, with now and
then a by-way of green turf leading to a farm-house on the river, or a
gleam of the stream itself winding through the meadows as you mount the
rocky hills in your route.
Cider Hill is a classic locality, which the traveler must pass through.
It is well named, I should say, the trees, though old, being laden with
apples, fit only for the cider-press. I was struck with the age of the
orchards, and indeed with the evidences on all sides of the long
occupancy of the land. In going up and down the traveled roads of York
the impression is everywhere gained of an old settled country.
By the side of the road is the withered trunk of an ancient tree, said
to have been brought from England in a tub more than two hundred years
ago. Nothing remains but the hollow shell, which still puts forth a few
green shoots. Next to the rocks, it is the oldest object on the road. At
a little distance it has sent up an offshoot, now a tree bearing fruit,
and has thus risen again, as it were, from its own ashes. This tree
deserves to be remembered along with the Stuyvesant and Endicott
pear-trees. There is, or was another apple-tree of equal age with this
in Bristol.
"You have a good many apples this year," I said to a farmer.
"Oh, a marster sight on 'em, sir, marster sight; but they don't fetch
nothing."
"Is the cool summer injuring your corn?" I pursued.
"Snouted it, sir; snouted it."
[Illustration: OLD GARRISON-HOUSE.]
The Junkins's garrison is the first reached. It is on the brow of a high
hill overlooking the river meadows, where, if good watch were kept, a
foe could hardly have approached unseen. It can not survive much longer.
It is dilapidated inside and out to a degree that every blast searches
it through and through. The doors stood ajar; the floors were littered
with corn-fodder, and a hen was brooding in a corner of the best room.
Having served as dwelling and castle, it embodies the economy of the one
with the security of the other. The chimney is of itself a tower; the
floor timbers of the upper story project on all sides, so as to allow it
to overhang the lower. This was a type of building imported from England
by the early settlers, common enough in their day, and of which
specimens are still extant in such of our older towns as Boston, Salem,
and Marblehead. Its form admitted, however, of a good defense. The walls
are of hewn timber about six inches thick, and bullet-proof. On the
north-east, and where the timbers were ten inches thick, they have
rotted away under their long exposure to the weather. I observed a
loop-hole or two that had not been closed up, and that the roof frame
was of oak, with the bark adhering to it.[80]
In one room was an old hand-loom; in another a spinning-wheel lay
overturned; and in the fire-place the iron crane, blackened with soot,
was still fixed as it might have been when the garrison was beset in
'92. Between the house and the road is the Junkins's family
burying-ground. The house attracts many curious visitors, though it
lacks its ancient warlike accessories, its lookouts, palisades, and
flankarts.
A few rods farther on, in descending the hill, is the M'Intire garrison.
It is on the opposite side of the Berwick road from the house through
which I have just hurried the reader; and, except that a newer addition
has been joined to the garrison part, does not materially differ from
it. Mr. M'Intire, now the owner of both houses, showed me an opening in
the floor of the projection through which, according to the family
tradition, boiling water was poured upon the heads of any who might try
to force an entrance.
It has been supposed that these two garrisons were erected as early as
1640 or 1650. As no motive existed for building such houses at that
time, the tradition is not entitled to credit. Few of the Indians were
possessed of fire-arms, as the sale to them was strictly prohibited in
the English colonies. The digging up of the hatchet by the eastern
Indians, in 1676, during Philip's war, probably first led to the
building of fortified houses in all the sea-coast towns. During the
attack of 1692, the four garrisons in York saved the lives of those they
sheltered, while fifty of the defenseless inhabitants were killed
outright, and one hundred and fifty were led prisoners to Canada.
It is not my purpose to pursue farther the history of ancient
Agamenticus. The state of the settlement five years after its
destruction by the Indians appears in a memorial to the French minister,
prepared in order to show the feasibility of a thorough wiping out of
the English settlements from Boston to Pemaquid:
"From Wells Bay to York is a distance of five leagues. There is a fort
within a river. All the houses having been destroyed five years ago by
the Indians, the English have re-assembled at this place, in order to
cultivate their lands. The fort is worthless, and may have a garrison of
forty men."
As a memorial of the dark days when settler fought with savage, the
Junkins's garrison-house appeals for protection in its decrepit old age.
Its frame is still strong. A few boards and a kindly hand should not be
wanting to stay its ruin. I left it as for nearly two hundred years it
has stood,
"On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,
And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid."
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[68] "Massachusetts Historical Collections," 1792, vol. i.
[69] An Irishman, Darby Field by name.
[70] Purchas, vol. iv., 1647.
[71] In England there is a cockle called the purple, from the coloring
matter it contains, believed to be one of the sources from which the
celebrated Tyrian dye was obtained. The discovery is attributed in
mythical story to a dog. The Tyrian Hercules was one day walking with
his sweetheart by the shore, followed by her lap-dog, when the animal
seized a shell just cast upon the beach. Its lips were stained with the
beautiful purple flowing from the shell, and its mistress, charmed with
the color, demanded a dress dyed with it of her lover.
[72] Situated on Stage Neck, a rocky peninsula connected with the main
shore by a narrow isthmus, on which is a beach. There was formerly a
fort on the north-east point of the Neck.
[73] Sir F. Gorges's own relation.
[74] About 1647 the settlements at Agamenticus were made a town by the
name of York, probably from English York.
[75] Confederation of the colonies for mutual protection.
[76] Elizabeth died while Martin Pring was preparing to sail for
America; and Essex and Raleigh both went to the block.
[77] The insertion of the lengthy title in full appears unnecessary.
[78] The celebrated commentator.
[79] We are warranted in the belief that the first services held in this
plantation were those of the Church of England. The first, or borough,
charter mentions the church chapel. Robert Gorges, in 1623, brought over
an Episcopal chaplain, William Morrell, and with him also came, as is
supposed, Rev. William Blackstone, the first inhabitant of Boston.
[80] Hutchinson says: "In every frontier settlement there were more or
less garrison houses, some with a flankart at two opposite angles,
others at each corner of the house; some houses surrounded with
palisadoes; others, which were smaller, built with square timber, one
piece laid horizontally upon another, and loop-holes at every side of
the house; and besides these, generally in any more considerable
plantation there was one garrison house capable of containing soldiers
sent for the defense of the plantation, and the families near, whose
houses were not so fortified. It was thought justifiable and necessary,
whatever the general rule of law might be, to erect such forts, castles,
or bulwarks as these upon a man's own ground, without commission or
special license therefor."--"History of Massachusetts," vol. ii., p. 67.
[Illustration: PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM KITTERY BRIDGE.]