Loblolly Cove, one correspondent writes at some length that it must have
been the progeny of the two seen playing together, who were doubtless
the parents.
Fortunately for the cause of science, there was at the time an
association of naturalists called "The Linnaean Society of New England,"
whose prompt action caused the various reports about the matter to be
carefully sifted, and the result placed before the public in an
authentic manner. This society met at Boston on the 18th of August, and
appointed a committee to collect evidence in regard to the existence and
appearance of the strange animal.
The committee consisted of the Hon. John Davis, Jacob Bigelow, M.D., and
Francis C. Gray, Esq., all men of the highest respectability, and of
undoubted fitness and capacity for the work they were to undertake, and
the result of their labors was published in a pamphlet of fifty-two
pages, the title of which cautiously states that the report is "relative
to a large marine animal, supposed to be a serpent, seen near Cape Ann,
Massachusetts, in August, 1817." It was accompanied by an engraving of
the "_Scoliophis Atlanticus_," the small snake captured near Loblolly
Cove, representing the animal at full length, about three feet, and also
in parts after dissection, with full explanations.
From this pamphlet it appears that on the 19th the committee wrote to
Hon. Lonson Nash, a magistrate of Gloucester, asking him to examine upon
oath some of those who had seen the animal, not allowing them to
communicate with each other the substance of their respective statements
till they were all committed to writing, and proposing certain rules
with regard to the method of conducting the examination, as well as a
list of twenty-five carefully prepared questions to be put to the
persons examined.
Eight depositions received from Mr. Nash, and three others taken in
Boston, all read before the Society on the 1st of September, are given
in full, as well as further correspondence with Mr. Nash, and various
accounts of similar appearances in former years and at other places. The
committee seem to have no doubt but that the depositions were truthful
and accurate, and suggest that the small serpent which they describe may
have been of the same species as the larger one, and possibly its
progeny.
The eight depositions taken at Gloucester were those of Amos Story,
mariner; Solomon Allen, 3d, shipmaster; Epes Ellery, shipmaster; William
H. Foster, merchant; Matthew Gaffney, ship carpenter; James Mansfield,
merchant; John Johnston, Jr., a boy of seventeen; and William B.
Pearson, merchant. The deponents were selected for their probity; each
of them saw the serpent at different times and under different
circumstances, and their very interesting statements, too long to be
here given in full, are briefly summarized, so far as description is
concerned, in the following extracts:--
This is what they say as to the length of the monster: "eighty to ninety
feet," "forty feet at least," "forty to sixty feet in length," "fifty
feet at least," "nothing short of seventy feet," "seventy feet at
least," "not surprised if one hundred feet," "at least a hundred feet."
And this as to his size: "size of a man's body," "size of a half
barrel," "joints from head to tail," "joints about the size of a
two-gallon keg," "large as a barrel," "bunches on his back about a foot
in height," "two and a half feet in circumference."
His movements are thus described: "slow, plunging about in circles, and
sometimes moving nearly straight forward," "sunk directly down and
appeared two hundred yards distant in two minutes," "did not turn down
like a fish, but settled directly down like a rock," "moved at the rate
of a mile in two or three minutes," "turned short and quick till his
head came parallel with his tail," "sinuosities vertical," "in different
directions, leaving on the water marks like those made by skating on the
ice," "a mile in a minute," "vertical, like a caterpillar," "turns short
and quick, head and tail moving in opposite directions and almost
touching," "a mile in five or six minutes," "a mile in three minutes,"
"turned short, head and tail moving in opposite directions, and not more
than two or three yards apart," "twelve or fourteen miles an hour,"
"swifter than any whale," "rising and falling as he moved," "head moving
from side to side," "a mile in four minutes."
His head is "like the head of a sea-turtle," "carried ten to twelve
inches above the water," "larger than the head of any dog," "like the
head of a rattlesnake, but nearly as large as the head of a horse,"
"head two feet above the surface of the water," "top of his head flat,"
"a prong or spear about twelve inches long which might have been his
tongue," "as large as a man's head," "large as a four-gallon keg,"
"about a foot above the water," "eye dark and sharp," "tongue like a
harpoon thrown out two feet from his jaws," "mouth open ten inches,"
"like a serpent."
And his color is "dark brown," "black or very dark," "white beneath,"
"head, top brown; under part nearly white."
In some respects more interesting than the report of the Linnaean society
are the statements published in New York in the fall of 1817, under the
title of "Letters from the Hon. David Humphreys, F.R.S., to the Rt. Hon.
Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, London, containing
some account of the Serpent of the Ocean frequently seen in Gloucester
Bay."
Mr. Humphreys, a citizen of Connecticut apparently, visited Gloucester
repeatedly in August, and, though he did not succeed in getting a look
at the great snake, had many interviews with those who did, and was
present when the depositions were taken.
The narrative of his experience at Gloucester, with some letters from
Mr. Nash, a detailed account of efforts to catch the serpent, and some
statements in regard to its visit to Long Island Sound later in the
year, make eighty-six pages of pleasant reading, which those curious to
know about the matter will find well worth their attention.
His version of the depositions is also interesting, varying somewhat as
it does from that published by the Linnaean Society, and he goes at
length into the reasons for believing the small captured serpent to have
been the offspring of the large one.
It is easy to account for the variations in the evidence taken before
Mr. Nash, when we find from the statements of the parties that the
distance at which the serpent was seen varied from thirty feet to one
hundred and fifty yards. But there is agreement in the important points
which clearly separate the animal described from all well-known fishes.
The undulating vertical motion producing the appearance of humps upon
the back, the small size of the body compared with its length, the sharp
turns when the head and tail moved in opposite directions, the elevated
head, and the protruding tongue, are more or less recognized in every
description.
Let us now return to our friends, whom we have left at the old mill. It
was the curiosity of Col. Perkins, who was already familiar with the
water-snakes of the Indian Ocean, and strongly inclined to believe in
the existence of the monster serpent, which led him, at the first
reports from Gloucester, to plan this visit to the scene of the
excitement. And in good truth he had planned it well, and had selected
his time with that rare good luck which attended most of his mercantile
operations. It had been a "field-day," so to speak, in Gloucester
Harbor, the serpent having been visible, more or less, all the morning.
Looking out over the water, where boats were moving cautiously about,
Rocky Neck and Ten-Pound Island on one side and the old fort on the
other, our friends found that most of the points from which a good view
could be obtained were occupied by spectators waiting for the sinuous
monster, who was not long in making his appearance, and seemed to enjoy
the occasion as well as his company.
Sometimes playing in wide circles, sometimes moving rapidly in a
straight line, leaving a long wake behind him, he at length approached
so near the lookout of our travellers that, with the Colonel's
field-glass, they could easily see his snaky head, his open mouth, his
gleaming eyes, and his protruding tongue.
One adventurous boatman, Mr. Matthew Gaffney, getting within some thirty
feet, fired at him with his gun, carrying an eighteen-to-the-pound ball,
and aiming full at his head. The monster turned, and sinking down like a
rock, went directly under the boat, making his appearance a hundred rods
off, apparently unhurt. He continued his playful gambols as before,
finally moving off out of the harbor till he was lost in the distance.
Our friends now found themselves the objects of attention on the part of
several gentlemen, who, hearing of their visit, had sought them out, in
order to pay due respect to such distinguished visitors. Among them
were Mr. Lonson Nash, the eminently respectable lawyer of the town,
before whom were made the affidavits to which we have already alluded;
Capt. Jack Beach, an eccentric gentleman of leisure, whose drawing of
Gloucester harbor, with the serpent occupying a prominent position, was
afterward enlarged into a painting, and subsequently engraved; and Col.
William Tappan, landlord of the tavern where our friends were to dine.
The meeting between this last gentleman and Mr. Webster was one of
unusual interest. Col. Tappan had been the instructor of Mr. Webster's
youth at Salisbury in his native State, and was greeted with unaffected
and hearty cordiality by his now eminent pupil. The future statesman had
been the brightest boy in his school, so Master Tappan said, and among
other well-earned rewards obtained a new jackknife for committing to
memory a large number of verses from the Bible. After hearing sixty or
seventy, with several chapters yet in mind, his instructor gave up the
trial, and afterwards told the boy's father that he "would do God's work
injustice if he did not send him to college."
In company with Col. Tappan and the other gentlemen, our travellers
repaired to the tavern, which was near at hand, and enjoyed not only a
good dinner, but much pleasant conversation in regard to the events of
the week, varied with reminiscences of school days by the master and
pupil.
But the waning afternoon soon warned them that an early departure was
necessary if they were to reach their homes before dark. Their carriage
was ordered, leave taken of their new acquaintances, as well as of the
landlord, and with lingering looks at the now quiet scene of the day's
excitement, they passed rapidly out of the town over the same road by
which they entered it in the early part of the day.
Seen from the opposite side, each point in the home journey presented
new beauties to add to the pleasant remembrances of the morning. The
afternoon shadows gave a tender touch to the landscape, and a serious
tone to the conversation, which, dealing reverently with the great
problems of life and immortality, continued till the friends arrived at
their homes in the early dusk.
Sixty-eight years have passed since the events which have been narrated,
and the two friends whom we have followed through that beautiful August
day have long since passed to their reward.
The shrewd, far-seeing, and successful merchant and public-spirited
citizen, completing at the extreme old age of ninety a well-developed
life, and leaving a reputation, not only without a stain, but adorned
with the memory of numerous philanthropic and benevolent acts.
The able lawyer, after rising to the highest fame as a statesman and
orator, passing away at threescore and ten, his latest years
overshadowed by the grief of a disappointed ambition.
A few weeks before his death at Marshfield, in 1852, Mr. Webster
presented to Colonel Perkins a copy of his published speeches, with the
following written therein:--
"MY DEAR SIR,--If I possessed anything which I might suppose
likely to be more acceptable to you as a proof of my esteem
than these volumes, I should have sent it in their stead. But I
do not; and therefore ask your acceptance of a copy of this
volume of my speeches. I have long cherished, my dear sir, a
profound, warm, affectionate, and I may say a filial regard for
your person and character. I have looked upon you as one born
to do good, and who has fulfilled his mission; as a man without
a spot or blemish, as a merchant known and honored over the
whole world; a most liberal supporter and promoter of science
and the arts; always kind to scholars and literary men, and
greatly beloved by them all; friendly to all the institutions
of religion, morality, and education; and an unwavering and
determined supporter of the constitution of his country, and of
those great principles of civil liberty which it is so well
calculated to uphold and advance. These sentiments I inscribe
here in accordance with my best judgment, and out of the
fulness of my heart: and I wish here to record, also, my deep
sense of the many personal obligations under which you have
placed me in the course of our long acquaintance. Your ever
faithful friend,
DANIEL WEBSTER."
Should this dedication, truly as it portrays the excellent character of
the person to whom it was addressed, seem to be redundant and
overstated, let us remember that the writer, feeble and sorrowful, was
penning his last words to his old and perhaps best friend, and its very
extravagance at once assumes a childish pathos. The critical eye as it
scans the record becomes dim with the sympathetic tear, and reads
between the blurred lines only the passionate tribute of a broken
spirit.
In the ample stairway of the Boston Athenaeum hang portraits of the two
men,--that of Colonel Perkins, painted by Sully in 1833, is an
exceedingly graceful presentation, and represents him at full length,
carefully dressed, and seated in an easy attitude. The accessories are
skilfully introduced, especially the large and exquisitely shaped china
pitcher, which doubtless represents some gift received through his
commercial relations with the East. The picture of Mr. Webster, also
full length, was painted by Harding in 1849, and is an excellent
likeness as well as a painting of much merit, though lacking the
charming qualities of the other portrait.
During these sixty-eight years, great changes have come upon the little
village of Gloucester, now grown to a city of more than twenty thousand
people; its houses, then few and rude, have increased in number till the
rocky hills are covered almost to their summits with the neat dwellings
of its still hardy and adventurous population.
The old wind-mill, from whose vicinity our friends saw the monster
snake, has given way to a summer hotel, whose occupants look out upon
the beautiful bay and watch the incoming and outgoing of the fishing
fleet of five hundred staunch schooners, manned by the bold mariners who
seek their prey on "Georges," the Grand Banks, or the far waters of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence; while the old fort, which never succumbed to a
foe, has given way to the invasion of industry, till its grounds are
covered and its walls obscured by buildings intended for occupation or
labor.
And what during these sixty-eight years has befallen the enormous
reptile, whose visit to Cape Ann called our friends to examine for
themselves his claim to be the real Sea Serpent?
In what waters plays the sportive monster to-day? Did he return to the
coast of Norway, where, according to the naturalists of the country,
such as he live at the bottom of the sea, rising sometimes to the
surface in summer, but plunging again as soon as the wind raises the
least wave? Or did the bullet of Matthew Gaffney inflict a wound of
which he afterwards perished in some submarine retreat?
The most cautious naturalists, while endeavoring to explain on various
hypotheses the authentic appearances of marine monsters resembling
serpents,--one theory being that they are abnormal cases of unusual
growth of ordinary marine animals, and another that they are individuals
of an almost extinct race,--are compelled to admit that the time may
come when, with further evidence, scientific examination will accurately
determine the question, and the Sea Serpent take its place among the
acknowledged dwellers in the sea.
ATTLEBORO, MASS.
BY C. M. BARROWS.
When the Puritans removed from Charlestown to Trimountain in search of
wholesome water-springs they found the ground preoccupied by Motley's
"Hermit of Shawmut;" and when the godly people who discarded the musical
Wannamoisett and gave their plantation a homely Bible name, joined to
their borders the tract of wilderness lying between them and the Bay
line, they found the same whimsical anchoret snugly domiciled in his
"Study Hall" beside a stream that bounded their new possessions. Thus it
happened that the first English inhabitant of Boston and the pioneer
settler in the wilds of Rehoboth North Purchase were one and the same
person.
For years this piece of unimproved real estate waited for a name, until,
at length, for some unaccountable reason, it was christened after the
English town where George Eliot attended Miss Lathom's school when a
child, and caught a chronic cold, from the effects of which she seemed
never to have quite recovered, and it was called Attleborough. The
original purchase included a much larger area than that comprised in the
present township; and, like the then adjacent domain of Dorchester,
Attleboro parted with one section of land and then another, until its
acreage to-day is but a fraction of that perambulated by the colonial
surveyors. On the west side a triangle, locally known as the Gore, was
set off in 1746 to form the town of Cumberland, R. I., while from the
south and east sides were taken generous slices to piece out the towns
of old Rehoboth, Mansfield, and Norton.
The history of Attleboro, like that of so many other New England towns,
naturally divides itself into two widely different epochs, each
interesting to the modern reader. From the year 1661, when Wamsetta,
chief sachem of Pokanokett, made the original conveyance of the
territory to Capt. Thomas Willett, representing the town of Rehoboth,
until the close of the last war between this country and Great Britain,
is a period rich in annals of men and deeds, whose records live on musty
parchments and crumbling gravestones. It is crowded with tales of
hardship, struggle, and heroism out of which some local Scott or Cooper
with wizard hand might fashion many books of poetry or fiction:--
"And so, by some strange spell, the years,
The half-forgotten years of glory,
That slumber on their dusty biers,
In the dim crypts of ancient story,
Awake with all their shadowy files,
Shape, spirit, name in death immortal,
The phantoms glide along the aisles,
And ghosts steal in at every portal."
Then, after the primeval wilderness had been subdued under the patient
tillage of more than one generation of sturdy farmers, there opens a
second period extending to the present date,--busy years of modern
industry, when the nervous spirit of enterprise and the restless fever
for gain have stimulated brain and brawn to ceaseless endeavor.
It would be difficult for the present dwellers in the thriving villages
of Attleboro to imagine a time when but a single white inhabitant had a
fixed abode within the limits of Capt. Willett's extensive purchase,
when Ten-Mile River had never reflected a pale face or turned a
mill-wheel, and when the site of humming Robinsonville was occupied by a
clump of Indian wigwams in a beaver clearing. The historic elm on the
Carpenter estate, under which Whitefield preached so eloquently, had not
yet sprouted from the seed; the falling leaves had scarcely obliterated
the footprints of persecuted Roger Williams, making his toilsome retreat
from the new settlement on the Bay to the headwaters of the
Narragansett; and the Bay road was only an uncertain path blazed through
a dense forest, along which not a hundred pairs of Anglo-Saxon feet had
ever trudged.
In this vast solitude the intrepid William Blaxton had spent thirty
lonely years before the original purchase was made. He built his rude
house on the extreme western frontier of Attleboro Gore, beside the
river which now bears his name with altered spelling, made friends with
his Indian neighbors, planted the first apple-orchard in North America,
and trained an imported bull to serve him as a saddle-horse. There, like
Thoreau in his Walden hut, the old divine encountered nature in her
rougher aspects and studied her wonderful book untrammelled by even the
slight social conventionalities that obtained in colonial Boston.
The first settlement within the limits of the present town was made
beside a stream which crossed the Bay road, on the site of the Hatch
tavern, opposite Barden's building in North Attleboro; and because this
stream marked a journey of ten miles from Seekonk, the early travellers
named it Ten-Mile River. Here the famous John Woodcock took up his abode
in 1663 or 1664, and established a garrison which afterwards formed one
of a chain of strongholds extending from Boston to Rhode Island. An
avowed foe of the red race who surrounded him, he found them hostile and
treacherous, and had no recourse but to fortify himself behind his
stockades, and keep the stealthy warriors at bay with his musket. At
this dangerous outpost Woodcock bravely defended his little family for
many years, until quite a community of white people had placed
themselves under his protection, and he became a sort of feudal lord,
into whose rude castle they might retreat in time of danger. He was a
restless spirit, fond of hazardous adventure, to whom civilized life was
unendurably tame, and many are the current traditions of his prowess and
bloody encounters with the savage aborigines. In 1670 he opened a
licensed ordinary on his premises, the first public house in the
country; and from that time a hostelry was kept on that spot for nearly
two centuries.
Other settlements were naturally made in the open meadows easily
accessible from the Bay road; and so we find the next community growing
up in what is now the Falls Village, where a corn mill was erected in
1686. Then a few new families, immigrating from Rehoboth, made
themselves a home in the south part of the town; and near the close of
the century settlers found their way down the winding Ten-Mile River,
and built houses at Mechanics.
For obvious reasons the east precinct, as Attleboro-bred people are wont
to call it, is the newest part of the town; the north and the south
sections were traversed by the one thoroughfare then open as a highway
between the home of the Puritans and the shores of Narragansett Bay, and
for years after these began to number a very respectable colonial
population, the now thickly settled area in the east village bounded by
Peck, Pleasant, Pine, Capron, and Main streets, contained no buildings
except the Balcom Tavern with its contiguous barn, a small
dwelling-house near the present site of the old straw shop, and another
house about forty rods further to the south.
Lying in the very heart of the Narragansett country, this town was
constantly menaced by King Philip and his braves during the period of
the Indian wars, and two of the bloodiest fights occurred within the
limits of Attleboro Gore. The settlers found it necessary to go about
their daily work armed, lest some red man skulking in the borders of the
forest should attack and slay them. John Woodcock, the leading spirit
among them, was a special object of savage hatred, and in the summer of
1676 he and his sons were surprised while at work in a field, and,
before they could retreat within the garrison, one son was killed
outright, and another was severely wounded.