Boston City (part 24 of 67)

Very different was the effect of European immigration, and the occupation of the land by an agricultural, trading, and manufacturing people. Yet, with all the change, it is not certain that any species of tree, shrub, or herb has been extirpated from eastern Massachusetts, although many which must have been common have become rare and local, and their continuation precarious ; and the distribution and relative proportions of the land flora, and even that of the streams, have been largely altered.

Regarded simply as to number of species, no doubt an increase in the variety has been the net result, even after leaving all cultivated and pur-

' Palfrey, in his History of Neio England^ acteristicalness was soon expressed in the pinei. i6, enumerates the characteristic trees of New tree money, its effigy being impressed upon their posely introduced plants out of view. For while it is doubtful if any species has been entirely lost from the environs of Boston (taking these to include the counties of Norfolk, Middlesex, and Essex), a very considerable number has been acquired, although the gain has not always been an advantage. Some of the immigrant plants, indeed, are ornamental or useful ; others are the pests of the fields and gardens, showy though several of them are ; and perhaps all of them are regarded by the botanist with dislike when they mix themselves freely or predominantly with the native denizens of the soil, as if " to the manner born," since their incoming tends to confuse the natural limits and characteristics of floras.

The influx of European weeds was prompt and rapid from the first, and has not ceased to flow ; for hardly a year passes in which new comers are not noticed in some parts of the country.

The earliest notices of the plants of this vicinity which evince any botanical knowledge whatever are contained in John Josselyn's New Englands Rarities discovered^ published in 1672,' and in his Voyages^ published in 1674. The next - after a long interval - are by Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich (Hamilton), in his "Account of Some of the Vegetable Productions naturally growing in this part of America, botanically arranged," published in the first volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1785. Next in order was Dr. Bigelow's /%?ri^& Bostoniensis^ issued in 18 14.

More interesting to us than his account of the indigenous vegetation of the country is Josselyn's list " of such plants as have sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New England." Twenty-one of such plants are mentioned by their popular English names, and most of them are to be identified. And the list of '* garden herbs " comprises several plants - among them sorrel, purslane, spearmint, ground-ivy, elecampane, and tansy - which have since beconie naturalized weeds. Moreover, several herbs are mentioned as indigenous both to New England and to the mother country which are certainly not of American origin, but manifest introductions from the Old World.

There is no need to specify the numerous plants of the Old World which, purposely or accidentally imported by European settlers, have been added to the flora not only of Boston, but of the Atlantic United States generally. They are conspicuous in all our manuals and catalogues, and indeed are even more familiar to people in general than are most of the indigenous plants. Yet attention may be called to those which are somewhat peculiarly denizens of Boston, - that is, which have thoroughly established themselves in this vicinity, yet have manifested a disinclination to spread beyond eastern New England. Some of them, however, occur in the seaboard districts of the Middle States.

^ Reprinted and carefully edited, with an 1638, and came again in July, 1663, then reintroduction and commentaries, very important maining eight years. He passed most of for the botany, by Professor Edward Tucker- his time at his brother's plantation at Black man. Josselyn first arrived in Boston in July, Point, Scarborough, Maine.

If Josselyn is to be trusted, various introduced plants must have taken wonderfully prompt possession of the new soil ; for (as just mentioned) he enumerates St. John's wort, catmint, toad-flax, Jerusalem oak (Chenopodium Botrys), and ** wood-wax, wherewith they dye many pretty colors," as indigenous to the country. But most of these could assert no such claiifi in much later times ; and it is probable that either the memory or the judgment of Josselyn may have been at fault. However this may be, the last-mentioned plant may head the list of those introduced plants which are somewhat characteristic of the environs of Boston.

Woad-waxen, or dyer's green weed {Gettista tinctorid)^ which covers the sterile hills between Salem and Lynn with a full glow of yellow at flowering-time, is very local at a few other stations, and is nearly or quite unknown beyond eastern New England. According to Tuckerman there is a tradition that it was introduced here by Governor Endicott, which may have been forty years before Josselyn finished his herborizing, - enough to account for its naturalization at that period, but not enough to account for its being then regarded as indigenous.

Bulbous buttercup {Ranunculus bulbosus)^ whose deep yellow blossoms give^ a golden tinge to our meadows and pastures in the latter part of spring, has hardly spread beyond New England, and abounds only in eastern Massachusetts, - unlike the tall buttercup {R. acris) in this respect, which is diffused throughout the Northern and Middle States.

Succory, or chichory {Cichorium Intybus), which adorns our roadsides and many fields with cerulean blue at midsummer, is of rare occurrence beyond this neighborhood, and when met with out of New England shows little disposition to spread.

Bladder campion {Silene inflata)^ if not confined to this district, is only here abundant or conspicuous ; and the list of such herbs could be considerably extended.

Barberry {Berberis vulgaris) is the leading shrub of the same class. It is a surprise to most Bostonians to be told that it is an intruder. Beyond New England it is seldom seen, except as planted or as spontaneous in the neighborhood of dwellings, or near their former sites.

Privet, or prim {Ligustrum vulgare)^ is somewhat in the same case; but it has obtained its principal foothold in the sea-board portion of the Middle States.

The only trees which tend to naturalize themselves are one or two European willows, perhaps the Abele tree or white poplar, and the locust, - the last a native of the United States farther south.

It would much exceed our limits to specify the principal trees and shrubs which, by being extensively planted for shade or ornament, have con- spicuously supplemented our indigenous vegetation. Most of these are of comparatively recent introduction, and the number is still rapidly increasing. One of the earliest accessions of this kind must have been the English elm, - some trees of which, in the Boston Mall and elsewhere, may have been only a century younger than the celebrated American elm, which was until recently the pride of Boston Common. Perhaps the very first introduced trees were the white willow and the Lombardy poplar, both

' [This cut follows a photograph taken about a score of years since, and before the tree \ras shorn of all its majestic proportions. The gate of the surrounding fence bore this inscription : " This Tree has been standing here for an unknown period. It is believed to have existed before the settlement of Boston, being full-grown in 1722, exhibited marks of old age in 1792, and was nearly destroyed by a storm in 1832. Protected by an iron inclosure in 1854." The tree was again seriously dismembered in a storm, June 29, i86a One of the remaining large limbs fell in another storm in September, 1869. Its final destruction took place Feb. 16, 1876, when it was broken off near the ground. Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston ^ p. 335, says it is reasonable to believe it was growing before the arrival of the first colonists. A vague tradition, on the other hand, assigns its setting out to Hczekiah Henchman about 1670, or to his father Daniel, of a somewhat earlier day. No. Amer, Rev*^ July, 1844, p. 204. One hundred and ninety rings were counted in the great branch which fell in i86a Dr. Holmes, Autocrat of the Breakfast TabUy p. 5, puts the tree in the second rank of large elms, those measuring, at five feet from the ground, from fourteen to eighteen feet in girth. The measurements recorded are: In 1825, sixty-fivfe feet high ; twenty-one feet eight inches girth, at two feet and a half from the ground ; diameter of spread, eighty-six feet. Mr. George B. Emerson, in his Trees and Shrubs growing naturally in the forests of AfassachusettSf 2d ed., 1875, vol. ii. p. 326, says: "The great elm on Boston Common was measured by Professor Gray and myself in June of 1844- At the ground it measures twenty-three feet six inches ; at three feet, seventeen feet eleven inches ; and at five feet, sixteen feet one inch. The largest branch, towards the southeast, stretches fifty-one feet." In 185s ^* ^^* measured by City Engineer Chesborough, giving a height of seventy-two feet and a half, and sixteen and a half feet to the lowest branch ; girth, twenty-two feet and a half at one foot from the ground, seventeen feet at four; average spread of the largest branches, one hundred and one feet. In i860 its measure was taken by Dr. Shurtleff, twenty-four feet girth at the ground, eighteen feet and a quarter at three feet, and sixteen and a half at five feet. After its destruction a chair was made of its wood, and is now in the Public Library. Pictures of it on veneer of the wood were made by the city, and one of them is now in the Historical Society's library. Dr. J. C. Warren printed an account of The Great TVee in 1855 ; this and the account in ShurtlefPs Desc, of Boston, p. 332, tell the essentials of the story. The Rev. R. C. Waterston reviewed its associations in the " Story of the Old Elm " in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1876. Pictures of it since the application of photography are numerous; of the earlier ones may be mentioned those in the Boston Book, 1836; in Boston Common, 1838; in the view of the Common in Snow's Boston, 1824; in the Boston Book^ 1850, drawn by Billings, &c. Shurtleff says there exists a picture of it painted by H. C. Pratt in 1825. - En.]

readily brought over in the form of cuttings, both of rapid growth, and more valued in the days of our great grandfathers than at present. The smallleaved variety or species of the European linden, or lime-tree, must also have been planted in colonial times. The horse-chestnut, the ailantus, the Norway maple, and the European larch are of more recent introduction. The earliest Norway spruces - not yet very old - were imported by Colonel Perkins, and planted upon the grounds around what was then his country residence at Brookline.

The common lilac and the snowball were planted in door-yards, where these for a long time were almost the only ornamental shrubs, as they still are around New England farm-houses. Fruit trees were of more account, and in greater variety. But their consideration belongs rather to the chapter on horticulture.^

By George Dexter

THE earliest European visitors to New England, of whose alleged voyages any account is preserved, were the Northmen, who had rediscovered and colonized Iceland toward the close of the ninth century. The following is a brief outline of the story.

Erik, surnamed the Red, was driven from Norway with his father, on account of a murder, and removed to Iceland. From thence Erik sailed to the westward and found Greenland, which he colonized about 985. Among his companions was one Herjulf, who also made a settlement in Greenland. The son of this Herjulf, by name Bjarni, or Biarne, was absent in Norway when his father left Iceland, and upon his return resolved to follow him to Greenland. Starting about the year 990, he was driven from his course by northerly winds, and reached his destination only after having seen new and strange lands at three distinct times.*

Leif, the son of Erik, excited by the relation of the new lands seen by Biarne, prepared for a voyage of discovery about the year 1000. The first land he reached was the one seen last by Biarne on his return northward after his rough handling by the northerly storm. Leif landed, and **saw there no grass. Great icebergs were over all up the country; but like a plain of flat stones was all from the sea to the mountains, and it appeared to them that this land had no good qualities." ^ To this country they gave the name of Helluland (flat stone land). The second land seen by Leif is described as " flat and covered with wood, and white sands first European to see the New England coast, Maine (2 Maine Hist, Soc. Coll. i.), pp. 62, 63. and the three lands he sighted may have been * Voyages of the Northmen (Prince Society), were far around where they went, and the shore was low.'*^ This they called Markland (woodland). Thence they sailed with a northeast wind two days, and arrived at an island to the eastward of the main-land, where they found sweet dew upon the grass. They sailed from this island west through a sound or bay, and, landing, decided to build huts and spend the winter. This place, called Leifsbtidir in the story, is thus described : " The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland, for on the shortest day was the sun above the horizon from halfpast seven in the forenoon till half-past four in the afternoon."^ Among Leif's crew was a German, named Tryker, who was missing one day, and who, returning ** not in his right senses," announced the discovery of vines and grapes. From this discovery Leif called the country ViNLAND. The party returned to Greenland not long afterward.

Thorvald, Leifs brother, was anxious to explore Vinland furtner, and, starting about the year 1002, spent two years there. The second summer of his stay he went from Leifsbudir eastward, and round the land to the north. His vessel encountered a storm when off a ness or promontory, was driven ashore, and her keel broken. Thorvald called the place where this happened KjALARNESS. Thence he sailed ** round the eastern shores of the land, and into the mouths of the friths which lay nearest thereto, and to a point of land which stretched out, and was covered all over with wood."* Here he had an encounter with the natives, and received a mortal wound. He gave his men directions to bury him, setting up crosses at his head and feet, and to call the place Krossaness. Thorvald's companions, after another winter spent at Leifsbiidir, returned home in the spring.

Thorfinn Karlsefne prepared an expedition which started probably in 1008, and was absent about three years. It was an important one, comprising three vessels and one hundred and sixty persons, and was planned to establish a colony in Vinland. There are three accounts of it, with some variations in details and some repetitions of parts of the story, just narrated, of Leif. Helluland and Markland are reached and named ; a promontory, on which a keel of a boat is found, is called KjALARNESS, - the name which had been previously given to it by Thorvald, - and the sandy beaches along it FURDUSTRANDS. An island covered with a vast number of eider-ducks* eggs is named Straumsey, and at last Thorfinn builds winter quarters not far from Leifsbiidir, but on the opposite side of the bay, at a place which he calls H6p. After some traffic with the natives and some expeditions of exploration, the Northmen, in the third winter, find ** that although the land had many good qualities, still would they be always exposed there to the fear of hostilities from the earlier inhabitants,*' * and the settlement is abandoned.

Early European Voyagers In Mass. Bay

Other voyages to Vinland took place, and it is supposed that there were several settlements, and even regular trade with Greenland and Iceland ; but in time all knowledge of the new country was lost.

The accounts of these voyages of the Northmen remained the subject of oral tradition for nearly two centuries. They were handed down, however, as precious heirlooms, and were preserved by successions of professional skalds and saga-men. Whatever variations and additions may have been incorporated into their stories by successive narrators, a foundation of facts and real events is supposed to have remained unchanged.

Although known in a somewhat general way, it was not until 1837 that these Sagas were published. In that year the Sagas of Erik the Red and of Thorfinn Karlsefne, with other homogeneous materials, were printed at Copenhagen in the original Icelandic, and in two translations, - Danish and Latin, - by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries under the able editorship of Professor Charles Christian Rafn. ^ An English translation of the portions relating to America was published in London in 1 84 1 by Mr. North Ludlow Beamish; and this translation, with Professor Rafn's synopsis of evidence, and his attempts to identify the places visited, was incorporated among the publications of the Prince Society in 1877, under the care of the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter. Mr. De Costa had already collected in an English dress the various narratives of these voyages in his Pre-Colnmbian Discovery of America, published at Albany in 1868.

The accounts of these voyages of the Northmen have been rejected by a few writers as unworthy of serious consideration,^ and accepted by others as true and accurate in their minute particulars.^ Helluland has been identified with Newfoundland; Markland with Nova Scotia; Kjalarness with Cape Cod. Krossaness is to some Gurnet Point, to others Point Allerton. Leifsbtidir and Furdustrands, Straumsey, and H6p have been assigned definite locations on the map.

A Norse Ship

' As by the Danish antiquaries and their followers. A project is on foot to erect in Boston a statue to Leif as the discoverer of this region.

The Memorial History Of Boston

Two kinds of evidence have been brought forward to support the stories of these voyages. The first - that furnished by supposed remains of the Northmen still extant in New England - is not now often advanced. It is generally conceded that no vestiges of their visits remain. The famous Dighton Rock and the Newport Mill, offered once as positive proofs of the truth of these stories, are no longer thought to be works of the Northmen.^ The evidence upon which modern defenders of the narratives rely is that offered by the Sagas themselves. I have no space here to discuss the character of these documents.^ It is possible only now to say that, while they are accepted generally as historical narratives by most historians, the data which they offer for the identification of places are considered by many scholars as too slight to warrant the conclusions sometimes drawn from them. The direction of the wind and the time occupied in sailing from point to point are not enough to prove the exact position of the place reached. The descriptions of the countries are not thought by all to be applicable to New England. The astronomical observation of the length of the winter day, on which so much stress has been laid, is still obscure, and capable of more than one interpretation.* Some argument has been based on the supposed similarity of Indian and Norse names of places, but no great stress has been laid upon it* While, then, it is very probable that the Northmen reached, America, it is not safe to assert that they discovered Massachusetts Bay, much less so to say that Thorvald, Erik's son, was killed at the mouth of Boston Harbor.*

It is not my purpose to recount all the supposed pre-Columbian discoveries of America. Only the voyagers who are thought to have visited New England claim notice here.® I pass by, therefore, the story of the discoveries of the Welsh Prince Madoc ap Owen Gwyneth. He is supposed to have reached

« The interested reader may be referred to Wheaton's History of the Northmen^ ch. v. ; Laing's Heimskringla^ introduction ; Sir George W. Dasent's introduction to his Njal^s Saga^ Story of Burnt Njal; Slafter's introduction to the Prince Society's Voyages of the Northmen ; and to the Prolegomena to Vigfussen's Stnrlunga Saga,

- See Laing's Heiniskringla^ i. 172; Foreign Quarterly Review^ xxi. 109, no; Palfrey's New Engtandf i. 55, note; Cleasby and Vigfussen's Icelandic-English Dictionary^ s. v. Eykt. The arguments of Finn Magnusen and Rafn are in the Af/moires oi tht Danish Antiquaries' Society, 1836-39, p. 165, and 1840-44, p. 128. The following extract from a letter written by the great philologist, Erasmus Rask, in 1831, to Mr. Henry Wheaton is not without interest. I have printed the whole letter in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for April, 1880 : " Then [when the text of the Sagas shall have been published critically] I fancy a person who knows the natural appearance of the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, &c., will be able to ascertain the places tolerably correctly from the descriptions given of each of them in the Sagas ; never from the length of the shortest day, it being liable to so different interpretation."

* Krossaness, the place of Thorvald's death and grave, has l^een identified with Point AUerton by Rafn {Antiquitates Ainericante^ pp. 430, 431), who leans more, however, toward Gurnet Point, and by Dr. Kohl {Discovery of Maine^ p. 69). See also Bryant's Popular History of the United States, i. 44, note. The French translation of Wheaton's History of the Northmen, made by Paul Guillot and sanctioned by \fr. Wheaton, leans also toward this view.

* Mr. Major's introduction to the Select Letters of Columbus (Ilakluyt Society, 2d edition, 1870), contains a good account of the earliest voyages to America.

Early European Voyagers In Mass. Bay

only the southern parts of the United States, or perhaps Mexico. I come next to the story of the Zeni brothers, which is briefly as follows : -

Nicol6 Zeno, a Venetian of noble family and considerable wealth, started on a northern voyage - perhaps the not uncommon one to Flanders - late in the fourteenth century.* He was driven out of his course, and Anally cast away on the island of Frislanda (Faroe Islands). Here he was rescued from the rude inhabitants by a chieftain named Zichmni,* who received him into his service as pilot, and in time entertained a great regard for him. Nicol6 sent a letter home to Venice, urging his brother Antonio to join him in Zichmni's dominions, which he did. Four years after his arrival Nicol6 died, and ten years later Antonio returned to his native city.

Meantime the brothers had accompanied Zichmni in an attack on the Shetland Islands, on one of which, according to the narrative, Nicol6 Zeno was left after the victory. The following summer he sailed from the island on a voyage of discovery toward the north, and reached a country called Engroneland (Greenland). A settlement which he discovered there, supposed to have been one founded many years before by the Northmen, is described at length in the story, with its monastery and church, its volcanic mountain, and hot springs whose waters served for all domestic purposes. The climate proved too severe for the Italian, and he returned to Frislanda, where he died.

The other brother, Antonio Zeno, was detained in the service of Zichmni, who desired to make use of his nautical skill and daring to ascertain the correctness of the stories of some fishermen who had reported the discovery of rich and populous countries in the west. The Zeni narrative gives the fishermen's story at some length. Twenty-six years before this time, four fishing boats had been driven helplessly for many days, and found themselves, on the tempest abating, at an island a thousand miles west from Frislanda. This island they called ESTOTILAND. The fishermen were carried before the king of the island, who, after getting speech with them with difficulty through the medium of an interpreter who spoke Latin, commanded them to remain in the country. They dwelt in Estotiland five years, and a description of it and of its inhabitants is preserved. From Estotiland they were sent in a southerly direction to a country called Drogeo, where they fared very badly. They were made slaves, and some of them were murdered by the natives, who were cannibals. The lives of the remainder were saved by their showing the savages how to take fish with the net. The chief of the fishermen became very famous in this occupation, and proved a bone of contention among the native kings. He was fought for, and transferred from one to another as the spoils of war, not less than twenty-five times in the thirteen years which he is supposed to have passed in Drogeo. In this way he saw much of the country, which he says became more refined in climate and in people as he travelled toward the southwest. At last the fisherman escaped back through the length of the land, and over the sea to Estotiland, where he amassed a fortune in trading, and whence he returned finally to Frislanda with his wonderful story.

The narrative goes on to tell how Antonio Zeno accompanied his patron Zichmni on a voyage of discovery to find Estotiland and Drogeo ; how the fisherman, who was to have been their guide, died just as the expedition was ready to sail ; how the vessels encountered a severe storm, and were driven to an island called Icaria,* where they were refused shelter by the inhabitants. After six days' further sail westward the wind shifted to the southwest, and four days' journey with the wind aft brought the fleet to Greenland. Here Zichmni decided to establish a settlement, but some of his followers having become anxious to return home, he agreed to send them back under the charge of Antonio Zeno, who brought them safely to Frislanda.

I have given a full outline of the story of the Zeni, suppressing none of its exaggerations. The narrative was published with a map, on which much reliance is placed in the identification of places. The countries called Estotiland and Drogeo are supposed with some probability, if the story is not an absolute fabrication, to have been part of America. Dr. Kohl thinks the former Nova Scotia, and Drogeo New England. Mr. Major prefers Newfoundland for Estotiland, and considers Drogeo, "subject to such sophistications as the word may have undergone in its perilous transmission from the tongues of Indians vid the northern fisherman's repetition to the ear of the Venetian, and its subsequent transfer to paper," a native name for a large part of North America.^ Many historians reject the narrative entirely. The difficulties attending the identification of particular places are certainly great.

The bibliography of the controversy about the Zeni voyages is given by Mr. Winsor in the Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, No. 37, for April, 1876. The strongest opponent of the narrative has been perhaps Admiral Zahrtmann ; ^ its strongest upholders Cardinal Zurla, John Reinhold Forster,

Mr. Major, following Mr. Forster, identifies it " Second. That the said chart has been comwith Kerry in Ireland, and gives some reasons piled from hearsay information, and not by any mann*s essay is taken from Mr. J. Winter Jones's fiction that it cannot be looked to for any inforintroduction to the Hakluyt Society's reprint of mation whatever as to the state of the north at and Mr. Major. Nothing of importance has appeared, I think, since the Hakluyt Society of London reprinted tKe original narrative, with an English translation and an elaborate introduction by Mr. Major, in 1873. Mr. Major contributed a risumi of his editorial labors in this work to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is printed in their Proceedings for October, 1874. The original narrative, founded on a letter from Nicol6 Zeno to his brother Antonio, and on subsequent letters from Antonio to a third brother, Carlo, is said to have been prepared by Antonio after his return to Venice. It was preserved in manuscript among the family papers until a descendant, also named Nicol6, while still a boy, partially destroyed it. From what escaped of the papers, this Nicol6 Zeno the younger afterward rewrote the narrative, which with a map copied from one much decayed, found in the family palace, was published in 1558 by Francisco Marcolini at Venice. It is a small i2mo volume of sixty-three leaves, and contains, besides this narrative, the adventures of another member of the family, Caterino Zeno, who niade a journey into Persia. It was reprinted in the third edition of the second volume of Ramusio*s Collection of Voyages^ Venice, 1574; and Hakluyt included a translation of this in his Divers Voyages^ published in 1582.

The story of the voyages of the Cabots, which come next in the list of the early voyages, requires a different treatment from that pursued in considering the stories of the Northmen and the Zeni. Instead of having to condense a detailed narrative, real or fictitious, I am called upon to construct, if possible, a connected story from very scanty and very scattered materials, - many of them of doubtful value. These voyages of the Cabots present great difficulties, and have given rise to much discussion. To recapitulate even a small part of this discussion would overrun the limits of my space. It is only within a few years, since the publication of the researches of Mr. Rawdon Brown and Mr. Bergenroth among the archives of Venice and of Spain, that positive evidence has been brought to light which enables the historian to settle beyond reasonable doubt even such fundamental points as the date of the voyage in which the main-land of America was discovered, and the name of the commander. To John Cabot this honor is due ; and he saw the coast of North America, June 24, 1497, more than a year before Columbus reached the main-land.

John Cabot, a native of Genoa, or of some neighboring village,^ settled in Venice, where he obtained a grant of citizenship from the Senate, after a residence of fifteen years, March 29, 1476.* He was a man of some acquirements in cosmography and the science of navigation, and had been a traveller in the East' He married in Venice, and there probably his second son Sebastian was born.^ John Cabot emigrated with his family from Venice to England, where he settled in Bristol, then, next to London, the most flourishing seaport of the kingdom and a great resort for merchants and navigators. It was already possessed of a trade with Iceland, and was favorably situated for exploring voyages in search of Kathay.^ The date of this removal to England is uncertain, but it was probably about the year 1477,^ when Sebastian Cabot, if born at all, was a very young child. The object of the removal is supposed to have been the embarking in mercantile pursuits, in which many foreigners were then engaged in Bristol.*

That voyages from Bristol toward the west in search of new countries or of a new route to Kathay were not unusual, and that John Cabot was a moving spirit in some of these voyages, appear from a despatch of the Spanish ambassador in England to his sovereigns. Under date of July 25, 1498, he writes: "The people of Bristol have, for the last seven years, sent out every year two, three, or four light ships {caravelas) in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of the Genoese."^

Possibly some encouraging result was obtained in one of these preliminary voyages, if I may call them by that name. It is certain that application was made to King Henry VII. for aid, and that a patent was issued to John Cabot and his three sons by name, bearing date March 5, 1496, by which they were authorized to discover new lands for the king, to set up his ensigns therein, and they were granted, under restrictions, some control over future trade with such new countries.® By this patent the Cabots were to bear all the expenses of the voyage ; and this may have caused the delay of a year in the sailing of the expedition, which did not leave Bristol until the following spring. The name of one vessel, the " Matthew," has come down to us. With this vessel John Cabot, accompanied by Sebastian, reached some point in America, most probably Cape Breton, on June 24, 1497.' No long stay could have been made ; for the ** Matthew," the voyage of 1497, and assisted a "good olde usually put down farther to the south. - Ed.] gentleman " at wishing Godspeed to .Stephen " The patent, in Latin and English, is in

« M. D'Avezac (Utter, p. 505) says 1477; has been reprinted by Hazard and others. Dr. Kohl {Discovery of Maine, p. 123) says prob- ^ There is some difference of opinion as to

* This letter is published, from the English article in the Historical Magazine, March, 1868; SUte Paper Calendars, in the Proceedings of the F. Kidder's contribution to the Nciv England after sailing along the coast three hundred leagues, was back in Bristol early in August, as appears from a letter of a Venetian gentleman, and from the entry in the privy-purse expenses of a payment of ;£io "to him that found the new isle." '

A second patent or license was issued to John Cabot the next year (Feb. 3, 1498), in which he was authorized to impress six vessels, and "them convey and lead to the land and isles of late found by the said John in our name and by our commandment." ^ John Cabot does not appear to have profited by this license. He is said to disappear from history at this point.' He is supposed to have died soon after the grant was made. Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1498 under this license, the king having been at the charge of one vessel of the fleet He is supposed to have taken out at least three hundred men, and to have entertained some plan of a colony or settlement.* What the exact events of this voyage were, - how much of the coast of North America was explored. - yet remain uncertain. There is no contemporary account of the voyage, and what we find which may possibly relate to it presents many difficulties, and is, in part at least, of doubtful character. It is probable that Cabot reached in this voyage a high degree of latitude, seeking always a passage through the land to Kathay. It is possible that, as Dr. Kohl suggests, finding the coast trend to the East at the modern Cumberland, which answers to the highest latitude which any of the stories state him to have attained, and finding also his way blocked by heavy ice, he may have turned and run down the American coast to the south. The farthest point in this direction which he is supposed to have reached was in the latitude of the Straits of Gibraltar, - 36° north.*

Historical and Genealogical Register^ October, 1878 ; H. Stevens's Sebastian Cabot - John Cabot - o\ and Mr. Deane's paper on Cabot's "Mappe Monde" in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for April, 1867, where the earliest suggestion of Cape Breton (drawn from the map) is made.

* The patents issued to John Cabot ; the despatch of the Spanish Ambassador quoted above ; the letter of the Venetian gentleman Lorenzo Pasqualigo {Calendar of State Papers^ Venetian^ 1 202-1 509, p. 262, and reprinted with other documents in Proceedings Amer. Antiq. Society^ October, 1865); and Cabot's "Mappe Monde," published by M. Jomard, are ample evidence for the truth of the voyage of 1497. The map should be examined with the aid of Mr. Deane's learned comments on it, made to the meeting of the Antiquarian Society in April, 1867, J^"^^ o^ his careful note to the Ilakluyt Discourse on Western Planting (Maine Hist. Soc., 2d series, ii. 223-227); and Mr. Major's contribution to the Archaologia^ xliii. 17-42, on the "True date of the English Discovery of the American Continent under John and Sebastian Cabot." M. D'Avezac adhered to his early belief In a voyage of 1494.

* Unless the Spanish Ambassador's despatch gives trace of him : " I have seen the map which the discoverer has made ; who is another (Genoese, like Columbus. . . . The Genoese has continued his voyage." The date of the despatch is July 25, 1498, and Sebastian Cabot is supposed to have sailed on the second voyage early in the spring. But dates and all other particulars of this voyage are uncertain. That the expedition had started before the despatch was written is certain from the despatch itself, and from the passage in the Cotton MSS. See Mr. Hale's paper in the Antiquarian Society's Proceedings^ April, i860, p. 37.

* From the scanty original authorities for the voyages of Sebastian Cabot many elaborate accounts have been built. Mr. Biddle, in his valuable Memoir^ gives an account of a third voyage in 1 51 7, and M. D'Avezac agrees with him. Dr. Kohl thinks that this voyage never took place, and he is followed by other critics. The reader must be referred to Kohl's Discovery of Maitu,

The voyages of the Cabots were barren of immediate results. The claim of England to her North American territory rested upon them finally, but no present advantage accrued to their commander. Sebastian Cabot's subsequent career does not fall within the scope of this chapter. It is known that he lived for many years after his discoveries, serving successively Spain and England. He entered the service of the former in 1512,^ and was advanced to the dignity of Grand Pilot in 15 18. In this capacity he presided at the celebrated Congress of Badajos in 1524. Two years later he sailed for the Moluccas in command of an expedition which did not result successfully. He returned to England about 1548, and was granted a pension by Edward VI. the next year. He became Governor of the new Company of Merchant Advejiturers, who opened the trade to Russia. The date of his death is uncertain and the place of his burial unknown.*

I must pass over, without relating their stories, the voyages of the Cortereals in 1500 and 1501. Mr. Biddle thinks that Gaspar Cortereal's landfall was in New England,^ but Dr. Kohl, who has made a careful study of these voyages, places it to the north of Cape Race. The interested reader will find in the fifth chapter of Dr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine the fullest and latest information regarding the Cortereal voyages.

I approach next the voyage of Verrazano, whose narrative is said to contain the earliest particular description of the eastern coast of North America.* Giovanni Verrazano, an Italian in the service of Francis I. of France, had made for that monarch some predatory voyages with a view to Spanish Indian commerce, and possibly one or more voyages in search of new countries.^ On his return from one of these latter voyages he wrote to the King from Dieppe, July 8, 1524, an account of his discovery and exploration of a new country. His letter relates that with one ship, the " Dauphine," well manned and equipped, he sailed westward from the Madeira Islands about Jan. 17 (27), 1524. He encountered a severe tempest, from which he escaped with difficulty, and at length, after a voyage of fortynine days, he came in sight of a land hitherto unknown to navigators.* First he coasted to the south in search of a harbor, but finding none he turned about, and running beyond the point of his landfall, anchored and sent a boat ashore.^ Continuing northward along the coast, a second landing was attempted, and a youth who was cast upon the shore in the attempt was kindly received and cared for by the natives.*' Their kindness was

* The character of the times, if not of the Cape Fear (Discovery of Maine^ p. 252) ; Mr. J. man, is shown by Cabot's intrigues with Venice, Winter Jones, in the neighborhood of Charleston of which we get glimpses in the Calendar of or Savannah (Hakluyt Society's Divers Voyages, State Papers, Venetian, 1520-1526^ pp. 278, 293- p. 56) ; Mr. Brevoort, off Little Egg Harbor beach 295, 304, 315, 328 ; and also in the volume 1534- ( Verrazano the Navigator, p. 37).

* Hakluyt, Divers Voyages (Hakluyt Soc. * Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones place this incident ed.), p. Ixxxviii. at Raleigh Bay ; Mr. Brevoort, at Rockaway repaid by the abduction by the French, at their next landing, of an Indian boy.^ Verrazano describes a harbor, a pleasant place among small hills, in the midst of which a great stream of water ran down into the sea ; so deep at its mouth that any great vessel might pass into it.^ From this harbor the shore line was followed to the eastward, and at a distance of fifty leagues an island was discovered and called Louisa, the only place named by Verrazano.' Fifteen leagues from Louisa Island the explorer found a good harbor, where he remained two weeks, and became somewhat acquainted with the natives, of whose manners and customs he gives an account.* From this point the voyage was continued, and another landing made, where the natives were found much more savage than those before seen, and where the Europeans were roughly received.* At last the land "discovered by the Britons, which is in fifty degrees "-was reached, and then, having spent all their provisions, the expedition sailed for France.

The story of Verrazano's voyage contained in the letter from the explorer to the King already mentioned was first printed by Ramusio in the third volume of his Collection of Voyages in 1556. From this it was translated by Hakluyt for his Divers Voyages, published in 1582. A manuscript copy of the letter, differing in some particulars from Ramusio's printed text, and containing a cosmographical appendix,^ was found later in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. This was printed, with a translation by Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, in the Collections of the New York Historical Society in 1 841 (2d series, i. 37-68),* and the translation was incorporated by Dr. Asher into his Henry Hudson the Navigator, published by the Hakluyt Society in i860 (pp. 197-228). With the Magliabecchian manuscript there was found a letter from Fernando Carli to his father, from Lyons, dated Aug. 4, 1524, in which he transmits the copy of Verrazano's letter.' There exists no French original of this letter.

This narrative has been generally considered as worthy of credit until a few years ago, when its authenticity was attacked by Mr. Buckingham Smith, who accounted the whole letter a fraud. Mr. Smith's view has been followed and supported by Mr. Henry C. Murphy, who published an

* Identified generally with New York Har- according to Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones. Mr. Brcbor and the Hudson River. See Dr. Kohl's voort places this landing between Nahant and Disctrcery of Maine, pp. 256-258; Hakluyt So- Cape Ann.

the mouth of the Thames in Connecticut {Ver- important document {Henry Hudson the Navirazano the Navigator, p. 43), and identifies New gator, pp. 198, 199, 222, note),

* Block Island (Brevoort, p. 43); Martha's in the AWth A meriean /Review, x\v. 2g^. Vineyard (Dr. Kohl, p. 260, and Mr. Jones, - Carli's letter is in Buckingham Smith's p 64). Inquiry, pp. 27-30; H. C. Murphy's Voyage of elaborate monograph on the subject in 1875. On the other side, the genuineness of the letter has been maintained by Mr. J. C. Brevoort, whose Verrazano the Navigator, read before the Ameridan Geographical Society in November, 1871, was printed in 1874; by Mr. Major, who reviewed Mr. Murphy's book in the Geographical Magazine (London) for July 1876; and by Mr. De Costa in articles in the Magazitie of Amefican History for February, May, and August, 1878, and for January, 1879.

Mr. Murphy thinks that the Verrazano letter was concocted to increase the glory of Florence, and that its geography was taken from the discoveries made by Gomez, whose voyage I shall touch upon next. In the discussion of this, as of all early voyages, much depends upon the maps. There is a Verrazano map preserved in Rome, supposed to have been made by a brother of the navigator; and Hakluyt speaks of an "olde mappe in parchmente, made as yt shoulde seme by Verarsanus," and of a ** globe in the Queene's privie gallery at Westminster, which also semeth to be of Verarsanus' mekinge.'* ^ I have purposely avoided touching upon the maps of these early voyages, as the early cartography of this region will be treated in a succeeding chapter. Mr. Deane's note to the passages cited from Hakluyt's Discourse (pp. 216-219) should be consulted. Mr. De Costa, in his contribution to the Magazine of American History for August, 1878, gives for the first time the names on the American section of the .Verrazano map.

Much doubt hangs over the subsequent career of Verrazano. He is said to have made a second voyage to America, and to have been killed by the savages here. He is said also to have been taken by the Spaniards and hanged as a pirate. The reader must consult the works of Murphy and Brevoort, where all that can be said is related.

The year following Verrazano's voyage, but, so far as is known, without any connection with it, Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese by birth, who had served Spain as pilot, and had been a member of the Congress of Badajos, sailed in search of a passage to India less difficult than that discovered by Magellan in 1520. Gomez had been of Magellan's expedition, but had deserted his commander and returned home. There is no narrative of his voyage. It is uncertain where he landed, and whether he sailed up or down the American coast. Dr. Kohl has examined more carefully than any one else the various allusions to this voyage, and its results as laid down on the maps.^ His opinion is that Gomez struck the coast toward the North and sailed along it southward as far as the fortieth or forty-first parallel of latitude. He saw, probably, much of the New England coast, and may have entered many bays and even harbors, for his voyage lasted ten months. A map of the world made in 1529 by Diego Ribero, the imperial cosmographcr, gives the name '^ tierra de Estevan Gomez'* to that part of America answering nearly to New ICngland and Nova Scotia.

For some time nothing seems to have been done in England, after Cabot's discovery, in the way of exploration of the new continent. I am inclined to reject the voyage of 15 17 imdcr the supposed command of Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Part.* But in 1527 two ships, the ** Mary of Guilford " and the " Samson," sailed for the New World under the command of John Rut. The object of the expedition was probably the discovery of a northwest passage. One vessel, the " Samson,*' was lost ; the other is said to have visited parts of the American coast, and Dr. Kohl supposes that she carried the first Europeans who are known to have trodden the shores of Maine.^ No detailed account of this voyage exists beyond Rut's letter from Newfoundland to the King, which is very meagre.' It has been supposed by some that Verrazano was the pilot, and that he lost his life in this voyage.

Rut's expedition was followed in 1536 by that of" Master Hore," undertaken with the same object and very tragic in its details.* After this unfortunate experience, the attention of the English was directed for a time to attempts to find a passage to Kathay by the northeast, in one of which Willoughby met his sad fate.

Andre Thevet, a Franciscan monk who accompanied Villegagnon's expedition to Brazil, is said to have sailed along the American coast on his return voyage to Europe in 1556. In his works written after his arrival home he gives a description of Norumbega, which Dr. Kohl considers interesting.* But Thevet has not been esteemed a trustworthy authority, and much doubt exists as to his visit to New England.®

The French expeditions to Canada under Carticr and Robcrval, the Huguenot colony in Florida, and the discoveries of the Spaniards and others at the southward do not come within the scope of this chapter. After the English had turned their attention to the search for a northeast passage, the idea of further exploration of America slumbered for many years. The plan of colonization was not yet conceived. Later in this same sixteenth century, however, England awakened to the value of the American possessions which she might claim under the discovery of Cabot. Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote a treatise to prove the possibility of a northwest passage in 1576, and lost his life seven years later in an attempt to establish England's supremacy in the Western World. And Richard Hakluyt, after publishing in 1582 his Divers Voyages, prepared in 1584 an elaborate Discourse on Westertt Planting, in aid of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was Gilbert's successor in the scheme for American colonization.

Costa controverts Dr. KohFs claim that Rut \lzV\uyt, Princi/Htl Ntrvigations,\\\. 12^1^1, landed in Maine, Northmen in Maine, pp. 43-62. * Discovery of Maine, pp. 416-420.

Dr. Palfrey, after recounting these early voyages, when he comes to the story of Gosnold's expedition, says, with that admirable caution which is characteristic of a true historian, ** Gosnold, Brereton, and three others went on shore, - the first Englishmen who are known to have set foot upon the soil of Massachusetts."^ The twenty years that have passed since Dr. Palfrey wrote do not make it possible to contradict with decision this statement. Gosnold's expedition, planned with a view to a settlement, took place in 1602. He landed first at a point not far from Cape Ann, sailed thence across the bay, and entered the harbor of Provincetown. Rounding the end of Cape Cod, he sailed along its " back side," and at last pitched the site of his colony on the small island of Cuttyhunk in Buzzard's Bay. Here a fort, or protected house, was built, and the settlement begun. It was soon abandoned, however, for want of proper supplies, and the " Concord," Gosnold's vessel, returned with the people to England, where she arrived, says her commander, without " one cake of bread, nor any drink but a little vinegar left." ^

Boston Harbor

THE broad indentation of the New England coast, of which Cape Sable and Cape Cod form the outer promontories, has of late years acquired the name of the Gulf of Maine. In the southwest part of this expanse, enclosed by Cape Ann and Cape Cod, is the water which on modern maps is called Massachusetts Bay. This name was, however, by the earliest frequenters and planters, and subsequently by the settlers, confined to what is now called Boston Harbor. It is, moreover, probable that the name was even restricted to wh.it wc know as the inner harbor, if not indeed to that portion of it represented by Quincy Bay.* Chiefly upon the shores of this minor inlet dwelt the Massachusetts Indians, a designation borrowed, it is said, primarily from a hillock on ^the shore, the name of which was later given to the high eminence known to Captain John Smith and others as Massachusetts Mount, and to us as the Blue Hill.' This name - Massachusetts Bay - gradually extended, subsequent to the settlement, over the entire harbor, and finally took the range now appropriated to it.' It is the cartographical history of these waters which is the subject of this chapter.

1 Wood, in 1634, speaks of the land on Quincy Bay: *'This place is called Massachusets fields, where the greatest Sagamore in the Countrey lived before the plague, who caused it to be cleared for himself."

' The origin and significance of the name has given rise to some conflicting views. See E. E. Hale's note, and a letter of J. H. Trumbull in AmerUan Antiquarian Society s Proceedinf^^ Oct 21, 1867, p. 77. For earlier views see Everett's Orations^ ii. 116. Hutchinson, in 1764, speaks of the sachem's abode being on "a small hill or rising upland in the midst of a body of salt marsh, near to a place called Squantum ; " and adds, "it is known by the name of Massachusetts Hill or Mount Massachusetts to this day." There is a small lithographic view of this hillock, after a sketch by Miss Eliza Susan

Quincy in 1827, with a distant view of Boston, taken from the late President Quincy's estate. It is in this called Moswetuset, or Sachem's Hill. Smith says that the plague, shortly after his visit, reduced this tribe to thirty individuals, and of these twenty-eight were killed by neighboring tribes, leaving two, who fled the country till the English came. Smith's Advertisements^ &c, in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll.^ vii. 16.

> Drake, I fist, of Boston^ p. 59, says it is not clear when the name Massachusetts was first applied to the great bay. The early writers seemed to look upon Charles River as oeginning at Point Allerton, and Smith, in 1629, makes that designation an alternative, - '*the bay of Massachusetts, otherwise called Charles River." So Dudley, in 1630, speaks of Charlestown as " three leagues up Charles River; " and yet, in

The Memorial History Of Boston

The outline of the Massachusetts coast was never drawn upon any map so as to be recognized, except from its relative position, before John Smith sailed along it in 1614; but it is curious to see how, from the very beginning of explorations, the headland of Cape Cod attracted attention.^ The Northmen of the tenth century left no charts known to us ; but Torfaeus, in his Gronlamlia Antiqiia, published in 1706, gives some old Icelandic delineations of the North Atlantic, which presumably may have followed some ancient Scandinavian charts, although made, of themselves, five or six hundred years after the Northmen voyages. Sigurd Stephanius, an Icelander, made such a one in 1570, but at that date more than two hundred years had passed since the last of these Norse voyages, if the Sagas arc to be believed. This map represents the promontory of Vinlaud (Cape Cod?), jutting from the main to the north and east, shaped much like a the same writing (** Letter to the Countess of Lincoln "), he connects the two names, as distinguishing harbor from stream, "the Massachusetts bay and Charles River." Roger Clap, speaking of the arrival of the first vessel of Winihrop's fleet, May 30, 1630, says of the captain of it, that he " would not bring us into Charles River, but put us ashore on Nantasket Point;" and, after going to the Charlestown i>eninsula in a boat, then they went " up Charles River." Winthrop, i. 144, sought to make a distinction in 1633, when he speaks of *Mhe bay, or rather the lake, for so it were more properly termed, the bay being that part of the sea without, between the two capes, Cape Cod and Cape Ann." On Wood's map, 1634, the name is given as if it covered the great bay; but this was for the engraver's convenience probably, for in his text he says, ** the chief e and usuall Harbour is the still Bay of Massachusets, which is close aboard the plantations, in which most of our ships come to anchor." The bill of lading of 1632, given later in this volume, signifies Boston by the '* aforesaid port of Massachuset Bay." Bradford, Plymouth Plantation^ p. 368, confines the name to the present harbor, in 1639-40. In 1676, a paper in Hutchinson's Collf£tton speaks ol "the Plantation of Massachusetts Bay, commonly called the Corporation of Boston." Deeds of Spectacle and Rainsford islands, re8i>ectively dated in 1684 and 1691, speak of them as "scituate in Massachusetts Bay." iV. £. Hist, and Geneal, Peg., January, 1868. p. 47. The British Admiralty charts of about the Revolutionary time often apply to the present Massachusetts Bay the term Boston Bay, in distinction to Boston Harbor. On some of these maps the Gulf of Maine is called Massachusetts Bay. As late as 1853, Jo.stah Quincy, Municipal Hist, of Boston, p. 2, conforms t<) I he old usage, and s|)cuk.s of Boston peninsula as formed by Charles River and Massachusetts Bay.

' The most effective study of this early cartographical problem is given in Dr. John G. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, published by the Maine Historical Society. Cf. Amer. Atitiq, Soc. Proc., April 28, 1869, p. 37. Dr. Palfrey, History of Neio England, i. 96, gives but a meagre list of the early maps. A few of them are named in S. A. Drake's Nooks and Corsiers of the New England Coast, ch. i. ; and their want of fitting delineation is discussed in B. F. l)e Costa's article on the Verrazzano map in the Maga&iiu of American History, August, 1878, p. 455. The great atlases of Jomard, Kunstmann, and Santarcm contain several of the early maps showing the New England coast. '!*he most complete enumeration of the French maps makes part of the section " Cartographie " in Ilarrisse's Notes sur la Nouvelle France, Paris, 1872, pp. 191-239. A collection of maps, formed by II arrisse, embracing early MS. and engraved maps, with copies of maps in the French archives, was offered some years since to the United States Government, but, on the failure of the negotiations, they became the property of S. L. M. Barlow, Esq., of New York, who kindly sent them to me for inspection. I have also seen the excellent collection of copies of early French maps made by Mr. Francis Parkman in the prosecution of his studies. With the exception, however, of Champlain, the French map-makers usually concerned themselves only incidentally with the New England coast, their chief study being with Acadie, the course of the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes, and, later, of the Mississippi Valley. The resources for this study, with chance light on the New England coast, are also great in the Parliamentary Library (Ottawa, Canada); in the collection in our own State House, formed under authority by Mr. Ben. Pcrley Poore in Paris. As private collectors, Mr. O. II. Marshall, of Buffalo, and Mr. C. C. Baldwin, of Cleveland, have well cultivated this field.

Earliest Maps Of Massachusetts Day

The Zeno map, drawn not long before 1400, but not published till 1558, shows in the southwest corner a bit of coast-line, skirted with islands, which those who believe in its authenticity interpret as a part of our New England coast.^

Of Sebastian Cabot*s voyage, 1498, there are no charts remaining; ' but Juan de la Cosa, one of Columbus's companions, who made in 1500 the earliest existing map showing any part of the American continent, is supposed to have had access to Cabot's charts, or to copies of them. Cosa's map is now preserved in the Royal Library at Madrid, and was brought to light by Humboldt, when exploring Baron Walckenaer's library in Paris, in 1832. It shows, in an island off a promontory, what seems to be Cape Cod, but, according to the prevailing opinion of that time, it represents these landmarks as on the northeast coast of Asia, washed by " the sea discovered by the English," as the legend on it reads. That this configuration really represents the Gulf of Maine would be borne out by Peter Martyr's statement that Sebastian Cabot reached, sailing south, the latitude of Gibraltar; and Gomara's, that Cabot turned back at 38° north latitude. Still, some excellent later commentators have doubted if he came south of the St. Lawrence gulf. Yet it is upon Cabot's discoveries that the English for a long while claimed their rights to the coasts of New England and Nova Scotia.*

^ The map appeared in a little volume now scarce, published, as said by Mr. Dexter, at Venice in 1558, Dfi Commentarii del l'in(;n[>io; and it has been reproduced by R. II. Major in iht /^oyal Geog. Society's Journal^ '873; in his cd. of the narrative, published by the Ilakluyt Society, 1873; and in his paper in the Mtus. Hist. Soc. Proc.^ October, 1874. There arc other fac-similes in the Catalogue of the John Carter Broivn Library^ !>- 21 1 ; in Malte Urun*s Atmales des Voyages ; in Kohl's Disc, of Afaiue^ p. 97 ; and in Bryant and Gay's United States^ i. 84, &c.

- Hakluyt's Western Planting-, ed. by Chas. Deane, p. 224. The portrait of Cabot preserved by our Historical Society is a copy of an original now destroyed. Cf. Mass, Hist, Soc. Proc., January, 186s.

< Sir William Alexander, in 1630, set forth this claim, as given in the Bannaiyne Collection of Royal Letters, Edinburgh, 1867, p. 61. Cf. Chas. Deane's note to Ilakluyt's Western Planting, p. 194, and Hakluyt's argument in his ch. xviii. ]*urchas also discussed the claim. Cosa's map has often l>een reproduced since Humboldt gave it in his Exatnen Critique, and again, reduced, in his A pp. to Ghillany's Be- - haini, Nuremberg, 1853. The best fac-simile is in Jomard's Monuments de la Giographie, and a lithographic reproduction of the American region is given in Henry Stevens's Hist, and Geog. Notes, pi. i. It

Cabot's discoveries, and his reports of the large quantities of fish in these waters, led to many Norman, Breton, and Biscayan fishing vessels following in his track. With from one third to one half of the days in the Calendar fast-days, fish was at that time an important article of food, and the fishing fleet along the coast as early as 1504 was surprisingly large.^ It can hardly be possible that from the Grand Banks these fishermen should not have stretched their courses to George's Bank, and have made the acquaintance of the harbors of our bay. It seems evident that the fishermen made out the contour of the coast from Labrador south much before those exploring under royal commissions. Their sailing-charts, however, have all disappeared, or, at least, none are known giving any delineation of our bay.

In 1508 the map of Ruysch was issued at Rome in an edition of Ptolemy's Geography. This is the rare but well-known earliest engraved map showing the new discoveries, and connecting them of course with the coast of Asia.^ Cape Race is clearly made out, but the coast trends westward from that point in a way hardly to be identified with any of the minor contours known to modern maps.® Following this came an interval, when the region known through the discoveries of Cabot, and subsequently of Cortereal, the Portuguese, came out on the maps as an island or as an indefinite section of the main, while the Atlantic swept over the region now known as New England. This idea prevailed in the globe preserved in the Lenox Library in New York, made probably 15 10-12; in Sylvanus's map to the Ptolemy of 1511 ; in the sketch-map of Leonardo da Vinci, preserved in the Queen's Collection at Windsor; in the map in Stobnicza's Ptolemy, a Polish edition of 1 5 12 or later; in Schoner's globe, preserved at Nuremberg, 1520, and in various other delineations.

A more correct idea prevailed in 1527, when Robert Thorne, an English merchant then living in Seville, transmitted to England the map, showing recent Spanish and Portuguese discoveries, which, with Thome's letter to Henry VIII., instigated the expedition under Rut, who according to Hakluyt coasted the shores of Norumbega or Arambec, and landed men " to examine into the condition of the country." Maine, and even the whole of New England, was known by this name, and it is barely possible that our bay may have been explored by the first English known to have p. 151, &c. Cf. AppcndLx to Kunstmann's Ent- Antiq. Sae. /'roc., April 21, 1871. deckuitg Amerikas, - A copy of the original of this map, which

1632, p. 9; Navarrete's Collectiott, &c., iii. 176, Notes, pi. 2; in Lelewel's Afoyat Age, and a secwho denies the French claim ; Parkman's Pioneers tion in Kohl's Disc, of Maine, p. 1 56. The set foot on the soil of this region. If Rut made any saih'ng-charts, none are known; but Thome's map was engraved in Hakhiyt's first publication, the Divers Voyages^ London, 1582.* It shows a continuous coast-line from Labrador to Florida, but it can hardly be said that it has any indication of Massachusetts Bay.

In 1527 we have the map^ ascribed to Fernando Columbus, the son of the admiral, which is preserved at Munich, and bears a close resemblance to the chart made in 1529 by the royal cartographer, Ribero, by the order of Charles V., ^( to embody existing knowledge. They are supposed to represent the results of the expedition of Gomez, which had been sent out after the Congress at Badajos, where, on a comparison of views of geographers then present, it appeared there had been up to that time no adequate examination of the coast of the present United States, to discover if some passage through to the Indies did not exist. The discoveries of Gomez first introduced into maps the connection between Cabot's surveys and those of the Spanish, who had sailed as far^ north as the Chesapeake. In Ribero's chart, de Arenas^ (Sandy Cape), enclosing a circling bay called St. Christoval, which stretches with a northern sweep to the estuary of the Penobscot* If Boston Harbor can be made out at all, it would seem to be that fed by a river and called Bate de S. Antonio,

The same date (1529) is given to a planisphere, preserved in the Collegio Romano de Propaganda Fide at Rome, which by some is thought to be an original, and by others a copy, by Hieronimus Verrazzano. It has of late years been brought into prominence in support of the authenticity of a letter

* There is, however, some difference of opinion on this point. Originals of this Ribero map are preserved at Rome and at Weimar, and Dr. Kohl gives a fac-simile in his Ael/esfen General K'arten von Atnerika^ and a reduction in his Diseovery of Maine, p. 299. Sprengel, in 1795, ^^^ already given a large fac-simile in his C/eher Kiberos alteste Wellhirte. Ixricwel, Afoyen Age, gives a reduction. Murphy, Verrazzano, p. 129, gives it with English names, and this writer thinks that it is followed in the map gi\en in Ramusio's Indie Occitlcnfali, Venice, 1 534. De Costa, Afaji^. of Amer. History, August, 1878, p. 459, on the contra»-y, traces this Ramusio map to another preserved in the Propaganda at Rome, of which he gives a sketch. Thomassy, Noitvelles Annates ties Voyaf^s, xxxv., had already described this Propaganda map in 1855, and it is attributed - De Costa thinks wrongfully - to Verrazzano in the Sfndi Bihlio^^'afici, &c., p. 358. Dc Costa also contends that Oviedo, when he described the coast in 1534 from the map of Chaves, now lost, repudiated Ribero, as did Ruscelli in 1544 (Kohl, p. 297), and Gastaldi in the Ptolemy of 1548. The map of Fernando Columbus is also given in fac-simile in Kohl's Adtesten General Karten von Avierika, Weimar, i860, and a section is given in Kohl's Disc, of Maitu.

ascribed to Giovanni de Verrazzano, which purports to describe a cruise by that navigator along the coast of the present United States in 1524.* The map in question, if it shows our bay at all, puts it much too far to the north, and the outstretched spit of land which bounds it on the south is represented as much broken along its straight length.^

The Asian theory came out again very singularly, in 1531, in the planisphere of Orontius Finajus, in which the eastern shore is given with close resemblance to that of the older continent. It is hardly possible to find our bay, however, in any of its sinuosities.*

Dr. Kohl gives from a MS. in the collection of the late Henry Huth, of London, of about this date, a Spanish map of the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, which resembles the outline of Ribero, with the same want of definiteness.* Much the same may be said of a map of an Italian cosmographer, Baptista Agnese, 1536, preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden.^ In this and in other maps of about this time the continent in the latitude of New England is drawn as an isthmus, which is made to connect the Cabot discoveries at the north with the Spanish discoveries about ancient Florida. It usually shows on the Atlantic side a vague likeness of Massachusetts Bay, resembling the Ribero draft. A map giving this representation did much service during the middle of that century, appearing first in the Ptolemy of 1540, subsequently in the Cosmographia of Sebastian Munster, and in various other places for a period of fifty years. I think the map was the first from a wood-block, in which cavities were cut for the insertion of type for the names. Impressions of it accordingly appear with the names changed into several languages.® The engraved sheets of a globe, an early work of Mercator, 1541, show a similar bay.^ It is quite impossible to make the coast-line, as shown in the globe of Ulpius. into any semblance of the bay. This globe, which bears date 1542, was found in Spain by the late Mr. Buckingham Smith, and is now in the New York Historical Society's rooms, and it was cited by Smith in his contribution to the Verrazzano controversy.*^ known to him, does not mention any of Verraz- given in Henry Stevens's Historical and dozano. The main |>oints of the Verrazzano con- graphical Notes, trovcrsy arc sketched in Mr. Dcxter's chapter. * Kohl, Disc, of Afaine^ p. 315.

his Vcrrazano the Navigator, give engravings. New England coast. See Kohl, p. 315. but without the coast names, which are un- ^ These sheets - the only ones known - were from the original to an enlarged section of issued under the auspices of the Belgian govthe map, which is given in the Mag. of Amer, ernment.

Earliest Maps Of Massachusetts Bay

How far Alfonce, in 1542, came into the bay it is not easy to determine, though he has been credited with being its first actual discoverer, and there is a sketch of the Norumbcga or Maine coast, given, after Alfonce's drafts, in Murphy's Verrazzano.*

Of about this date ( 1 542-43 ) is a map which was perhaps made, as Davezac thinks, under orders from Francis I. On it the Spanish ''Cabo de Arenas'* becomes the French C, des Sablons, and it encloses a bay in the same way, which has a river - R.dela Tourrt^e, ^oss\h\y our Charles - at its inner point.^ Another map of this time (1543) seems to be of Portuguese origin, and is preserved in the collection of the late Sir Thomas Phillipps. It gives the same bay, but calls the outer cape C, dc Croix, and it has a river - Rio Hondo - about where the Merrimac should be. The designation Cabo de Arenas is given to a projection further south.' A year later is the date (1544) of the large engraved map of which the single copy known is preserved in the great Paris library. The influence of Jomard brought it from Germany, where it was discovered in 1855. It is usually called Sebastian Cabot's Mappeinonde, but the better authorities* doubt Cabot's connection with it in the state in which we have it It gives our cape and bay rather after Ribero's plat, but without names.

In 1556 the Italian Ramusio gave a map of the two Americas in the third volume of his Collection of Voyages^ but the sketch of the coast-line from Terra de Baealaos (Newfoundland) to Florida has simply a general southwesterly trend. The same map was again used in his 1565 edition.

In 1561, Ruscelli, a learned Italian geographer, produced his edition of Ptolemy, and included in it a map ® borrowed seemingly, so far as the coastlines of New England go, from a previous map of Gastaldi ; but he carries the coast to the west and gives the bay this time with two headlands, bestowing the name of Cabo de Santa Maria on the one corresponding to

» See B. F. De Costa's Northmen in Maine, p. 92 ; Davezac in the Dttlletin de la Socifti de Giographie, 1857, p. 317; Margry's i>J A^tft'/^- tions Fran^aiseSy p. 228; Gucfrin's Navigateurs Franfais,^, 109; Hakluyt's Principall Navigations^ iii. 237 ; and Le Rontier de Jean Alphonse, pub. by the Quebec Lit. and Hist. Soc., 1843.

* R. H. Major's "English Discovery of the American Continent," in the Archaohgia, xliii., p. 17; Geo. Bancroft in Afpleion^s Cyclopo'dia ; Chas. Deane in his Ranarks on Sebastian Cabot^s Mappemonde, in Amer. Antiq, Soc. Proceedings, April 24, 1S67, also Oct. 20, 1866, and his note to Hakluyt's Western Planting, p. 224; and Kohl's Disc, of Maine, p. 358. There is also a small sketch of it in Bryant and Gay's United States, i. 132; Jomard, Monuments de la Giographic, gives it in fac-simile ; iind Judge Daly gives a reduction of the entire map in his Early History of Cartography, an address before the American Geographical Society, 1879.

- This map is figured in Lclewel, p. 170, and Kohl, p. 233. The Ptolemy in question is in the Boston Public Library. . The same characteristics of nomenclature appear in Navigationi del mofido nuovo, by Nicollo del Dolfinato, which is also given in Kohl, p. 317.

Cape Cod, and not to Cape Ann, as the Spanish maps commonly do. In the small map of the New World, given in Levinus Apolonius, published at Antwerp, 1566, Cape Ann is called C. de S, Maria; Cape Cod, C de Trafalgar; ^ and Massachusetts Bay is named B, de S. ChristovaL

In 1569 the great German map-maker, Mercator, produced his most famous work, - that great chart in which he first gave his well-known projection publicity, and which is now to be seen in the National Library at Paris. For our Massachusetts Bay he represents an almost enclosed expanse of water, guarding it on the south with the then well-known C. de Arenas, He puts it, however, much too far to the south, giving it a latitude of 38° north. Unfortunately, as Kohl says, this great chart tells us but little of our own New England coast.^

The next year (1570) Ortelius brought out his Thcatntm orbis tcrraruvt, which was the first general atlas since the revival of letters. The maps of the world and of the two Americas were not changed in several successive editions.* Penobscot Bay is given prominence with C, de lagus islas on its westerly entrance, while a general southerly trend of coast, called Buena Vista, gives the old Spanish name of C. de Arenas further down, with hardly a protuberance to correspond. Ortelius followed, in large measure, the views of Mercator, and in turn affected for many years the cartographical knowledge of the world, but he had less influence in England than on the continent. When Hakluyt issued his first publication in 1582, - Divers Voyages , - he gave in it what was known as Michael Lok's map, a strange conglomeration of cartographical notions. Our bay is still shown with its Cape Careiias, but the Penobscot was changed into a strait connecting Massachusetts Bay with the St. Lawrence, or the gulf-like water that stood for that river, while the " Mare de Verrazana, 1524," making an^ isthmus of New England, lay like a broad sea over most of New France.*

There is in the Munich Library, in the collection of manuscript maps which belonged to Robert Dudley, one marked '* Thomas Hood made this platte, 1592." It gives a shape to the bay common to maps of this time, and calls Cape Cod C. de Pero, - a name Dudley corrects in the manuscript to Arenas, while Hood had placed the old name further down the coast.

* This name is usually applied on the Carolina coast to Cape llattcras or Cape Fear, but the sliding scale on which names run in those days was very slippery.

* It is given in Jomard's great work in facsimile, and is reduced in Ixlcwcl, p. 181, and in part in Kohl, p. 384. C£. Anter. Geog. Soc. Bui- Utin, No. 4, on Mercator and his works. Judge Daly gives a reduction of the entire map in his Early History 0/ Cartoj^raphy^ N. V., 1879.

* The map claims to have been made *'acgreat western sea called in early maps by his name passed out of geographers' minds. 'I'hc map is rarer than the book. The copies of the Dh'trs Voyages in Harvard College Library, in the Lenox Library, and in Chas. Dcanc's collection, have it in fac-simile. The I lakluyt Society's reprint of the book gives it in fac-simile, and it can also l>e found in the Catalogue of the John Carter Brown Library, p. 288. There arc small sketches of it in Kohl's Disc, 0/ Maiue, p. 290, and in Fox Bourne's English Seamen,

Earliest Maps Of Massachusetts Bay

A new cartographer appeared, 1597, in VVytflict, who then pubHshed his Dcscriptionis Ptolemaiae Angmcntum^ and gave a new delineation to the coast, with some curious mistakes. A large estuary is represented in the correct latitude for Massachusetts Bay, fed by various rivers, and called Chesipook SinuSy while the genuine Chesapeake has no existence. Along the main river, at the bottom of this bay, Comoice is written ; while to the north, where the Merrimac might be, is the R. de Bnena Madre? with an island, K Primera^ off the mouth. C. de Santa Maria is carried well north into what looks like Casco Bay, with the usual estuary of Nommbega ( Penobscot) still to the east' Confusion meets one at every turn in tracing the development of the coast-lines at this time. Maps were produced and followed here and there often long after other and better surveys were made

Library of Boston and in Harvard College Library; and the map of 1597 is also in the latter library. The America sh'e Nevus Orbis of Metellus, issued at Cologne, 1600, has a map which seems to have been drawn wholly from Wytfliet. It is also in the College Library. Cf. Harrisse's Nou'k I'^aiue^ No. 29S-301.

known. Kohl,^ for instance, gives three maps of about 1590, which are hardly improved on Ribero of sixty years before, showing how Hondius, as late as 161 9, used an old plate of Mercator's, which can be contrasted with a map in the Atlas Minor Gerardi Mcrcatoris, also issued by Hondius in 1607; while the Novus Atlas of Blaeu, Amsterdam, so late as 1642, shows a coast-line of a very much earlier date.^ Again, the same atlas shows differing sources in separate maps of the coast; as, for instance, in Hondius's Mercator, Amsterdam, 161 3, the map Virginia and Florida gives to the Chcsepioock Sinus the same shape that it bears in Wytfliet, while being put in 37)4^, it raises a doubt if it may not, after all, be the modern Chesapeake ; but in the same atlas, on a map of the two Americas, the C, de las Arenas encloses a large B, de S, Christofle, going back to Ribero for the name, while Chesepiook now does duty to a small inlet a little further south.^

De Bry's map of the two Americas, in 1 597, makes the coast-line stretch west from the Penobscot, loop into a bay, and then trend south. This is our bay again with the C, de 5. Maria at the north, but Plancius's name for the southern peninsula, C, de S, Tiago^ was a forerunner of Prince Charles's Cape James of twenty years later, when he fruitlessly tried to supplant the homely nomenclature of Gosnold. It is usually said that this English navigator was the earliest to stretch his course from England directly to New England, others having before followed the circuitous course by the Azores and the West Indies. It seems to be quite certain that he made his landfall near Salem, May 14, 1602, when, striking across to the opposite Cape, he was surprised at a large catch of fish, and gave the now well-known name of Cape Cod to the headland.* He and his men are the first English positively known to have landed on Massachusetts soil.^ If Gosnold made any drafts of the coast as he found it, they have not come down to us. They would doubtless have shown the peninsula of Cape Cod as an island, ** by reason of the large sound [called by him Shoal Hope] that lay between it and the main." We know that Hudson and Block subsequently supposed it such.

- So late as 1638, in Linschoten's Histoire de reton's Brief and True Relation are the chief la Naz'igation^ a map by Petrus Plancius, dated original authorities. The Harvard College copy 1594, preserves this same S, Christoval Bay, shut of Brercton is imperfect ; there is one in the Barin by C. de S. A/aria on the north, and C. de S. low Collection ; and the Brinley copy (Catalo^e, 7 M^o on the south. It had apiKiared on various No. 280) brought eight hundred dollars. Brereintervening charts, and came out even later in ton is reprinted in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll, viii. 69. Visscher*s map of the two Americas, dated There are other accounts in Strachey's Historic 1652. Blaeu, when he was making his sectional of Travaile, ii. ch. 6; reprinted in 4 Mass, Hist, charts follow the reports of Block (161 4), would Coll. i. 223, and in N, Y. Hist. Coll.; and in give the old contour in his general maps, with the Sniilh*s Generall Historie, i. 16. For Gosnold's B. de C/tristoJiCt &c., as see his 1635 edition. landfall, sec John A. Poor, in his Vindication of

It is interesting to note that the earliest Enghsh name attached to our coast should later point to one of the chief industries of the future Commonwealth.*

Captain Pring, the next year, 1603, following in the track of Gosnold, seems to have landed somewhere * in the bay, without entering, however, the present Boston Harbor, and to have made a map, if we can so interpret Gorges's language when he says Pring made " the most exact discovery of that coast that ever came to my hands." It has never, however, come into later hands, so far as we know, and it is fair to presume bore more resemblance to the reality than did the sketches of the New England coast which this same year - 1603 - appeared in Juan Botero's Relacioiies Universalis^ published at Valladolid, which is of no further interest than as introducing a new word, Modano^ against a barely protuberant coast, where Cape Cod might well be.

Again, another English captain, Weymouth, leaving England in May, 1605, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, seems to have struck the coast at our Cape Cod, and then to have borne away to the north, leaving to our friends of the Maine coast a disputed question concerning his navigating.*

Our next records are French. Henry IV., in 1603, gave to De Monts a patent of La Cadie, as a country lying between 40® and 46® north latitude.*- In De Monts* expedition for exploration, in 1605, Champlain sailed with him as his pilot, and they seem to have landed at Cape Ann,' where Champlain tells us he got the natives to draw for him the coast farther south. They made it in the form of a great bay, and placed six pebbles at intervals along its shores to indicate so many distinct chieftaincies. It has been noted that this agrees with the number of chief sachems which, later, Gookin and others said the early settlers found about Massachusetts

* The effigy of a codfish, which now hangs in 280) brought eight hundred dollars. There are the Representatives' Chamber in the State other copies in the Barlow Collection, and in the House, was transferred from the Old State N. Y. Hist. Soc. Library. The copy in the House in 1 79S, where it was hung up in a simi* Grcnville Collection (British Museum) was lar position, by vote in 1784, "as a memorial of transcribed for Sparks to print in the 3 Mass, the importance of the cod-fishery ; *' and it would Hist, Coi/., viii. 125; and George Prince has also appear, from the same vote, that such an em- printed it in his pamphlet on Weymouth. Cf. blcm had earlier "been usual." A previous Purchas, iv. 1659; Strachey in Mass, I/ist. Coll, effigy may have lieen burned in one of the fires i. 228 ; Smith's Geiterall Iltstorie^ p. 18.

been subjected in 17 11 or 1747. A colonial ii. 410. This covered the New England coast, stamp in 1755 figured a cod as "the staple of ^ Le Cap aux Isles^ he calls it, in reference to

* Plymouth was the bay in which Pring map, of which Mr. Francis Parkman procured a landed, according to De Costa, in his pai>er on copy, somewhat strangely confounds matters, Gosnold and Pring, in N. E, Hist, and Ceneal. when the C. St. Louis of Champlain, on the Keg,, January, 1878, p. 8a Marshfield shore, is fixed here, with C St. Anne

* Roster's Journal^ describing this voyage, is consort of King James that improves on the one of the rarities. The Brinley copy (No. simpler adulation of Smith.

Bay ; and Champlain adds, " I observed in the bay all that the savages had described to me." Sailing then to the west-south-west, between numerous islands, the French anchored near an island, finding on their way the coast a great deal cleared, and planted with corn and fine trees. The islands about them were covered with wood.^ This supposed to depict Boston Harbor, and the Charles, perhaps, that he describes when, towards the end of his chapter, he says, " There is in this bay a very broad river, which we named River du Guast, which stretched, as it seemed, toward the Iroquois."

Passing outside the harbor, we next track them to Brant Rock Point, on the Marshfield shore, - their Cap St, Louis ^ - whence they skirted a low sandy coast to Port du Cap St, Louis, seemingly the same harbor in which the " Mayflower" landed her company in 1620.^ Again following the bend of the bay, they reach^ Cap Blanc, our Cape Cod, which they rounded, and, going south a little further, they had a skirmish with the natives, and turned back.

The next year, 1606, Champlain came back with Poutrincourt. Having occasion to calk their shallop in Gloucester Harbor, he has left us a map of it in his book. He says, however, very little of his now following his previous track beyond Cap St, Louis to a harbor, which was perhaps Barnstable; and so again rounding Cap Blanc he tacked away to the south, finding the shore and the shoals doubtless different from now, and so proceeded to the entrance of the Vineyard Sound, a little further than before, when he again turned back, and never again visited these shores. He left on them, however, names that clung to some maps for a long time. The full narrative of these explorations appeared in the 161 3 edition of Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain, published at Paris; and it was accompanied by two maps, - the one showing the coast from the St Lawrence to the Chesapeake, " faict Tan, 1612;" and the other carried the coast south only to about the extent of his own observations. This is called the map of 161 3. In the first we have Baye Blanche inside of C, blan ; the Baye aux Isles, from its relation to C, St. Louis, might be Plymouth ; the R. de Gas flows into a bay dotted with islands, and comes, as his text indicates, from a region west near Lac de Champlain, which is marked as the country of the Yrocois, The 1613 map is not so carefully drawn, but it has the same prototype of the Charles, stretching still to the western Yroquois, just south of Lake Champlain. Some of these features still clung

* A plan of this bay is rudely given in the fac-simile. I regret that I have not been 1613 and 1632 editions of Champlain; and able to agree with Mr. Parkman - Pioneers Drake, A^ooks and Corners of the New En^^Umd of France in the New World, p. 232 - in Coasts copies it. Thin whole narrative is easily fixing the modern correspondences of Chamfollowed in the English translation of the 1613 plain's localities. My views accord with Mr. edition which has been made by Professor Otis Slafter's.

to the larger map* of 1632, which appeared in the consolidated edition of Champlain's successive narratives of that date ; but the supposable Charles has dwindled in this later map to a mere coast stream, while Lake Champlain, interposing to the east of the Hudson, lies not farther distant to the west from the site of Boston than the Cap mix Isles (Cape Ann) lies to the east.

It is interesting to remember that in 1609, only three or four years after Champlain's voyage, Henry Hudson landed at Cape Cod on his way to explore the river since called by his name ; and his reports made it possible for Champlain to make his map of the harbor of New York and its magnificent river as well as he did. In the same year, 1609, Lescarbot brought out in his Nouvclle France a map which did further service in the later editions of 1611 and 161 2. Cape Cod would hardly challenge our acquaintance in this map, and the bay within seems but one of a zigzag series of contours which run north, each well supplied with islands, till the region of the Kinibcki is reached, when the coast turns eastward. There are no names from Malcbarre to C/ioiiacoet, the latter well up into the bend of the coast.* In the year of the original issue of Lescarbot, Hakluyt had caused an English translation of it to be published in London. This Nova Francia^ as it was called, came out in 1609, with nothing to show that Lescarbot was its original source except that it had his map; and this was the latest engraved cartographical expression of this region which Englishmen could have seen when that "thrice memorable discoverer. Captain Smith," as Wood calls him, took up the problem. Lescarbot had certainly gone far from a solution, as many others had done, if we may trust Smith's own words. -* I have had six or seven several plots of these northern parts, so unlike each to other, and most so differing from any true proportion or resemblance of the country as they did me no more good than so much waste paper, though they cost me more. It may be that it was not my chance to see the best."^

* The 1612 Lescarbot is in Harvard College or no regard to detail. Franquelin made for Library. The map is fac-similed in Tross*s re- Colliert various maps ; and others of his time are print of the book, - Paris, 1866, p. 224; and noted in Harrisse's -AW« j«/r //? A^J^f/rr/Zf /'>-<?«<-^', otiier reproductions are in' the Abbe Faillon*s and in the appendix to Parkman*s La SalU, J/isfoire de la Cohuif Frattfrtisf fti Cau<i(itt/\.%^ Mr. Parkman's tracing of the great map of and in TAe Popham Memorial. A fac-simile is Franquelin, the original of which has disapalso given herewith. ])enrecl from the French archives, gives Bosloii^

- Smith'.s reference must \yt to drafts made with the hook of Ca|>e Cod, but nothing else disby English explorers or fishermen on the const, tinctively. An earlier map shows an undulating The only engraved maps to which he could line from Maine to Jersey. Mr. Parkman has have referred were lescarbot *s and Champlain's; lately placed his collection of ma|)S in Harvard and it seems improbable that he knew the lat- College Library.

The Memorial History Of Boston

ships ^ carried his company and his supplies. He sailed away for North Virginia, as the country was then called, and struck the coast near the Penobscot. Leaving his vessels to fish and trade, he took eight men in a boat, and started to map out the bay. He speaks of passing ** close aboard the shore in a little boat," and of drawing ** the map from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, rocks, and landmarks," and adds that he ** sounded about twenty-five excellent good harbors." We follow him in his coursing pretty accurately round Cape Ann, which he named Cape Tragabigsanda, after an old Turkish flame of his, while the neighboring islands were set down on his plot as the Three Turks' Heads, the doughty navigator having memorably decapitated an equal number of Moslems at some past time.^

Our present interest in his narrative is to ascertain how closely he explored Boston Harbor. His language is usually held to signify that he struck across from the north shore and touched the south shore somewhere in the neighborhood of Cohasset, and that he mistook the entrance by Point Allerton as the debouching of a river. He J wrote afterwards that he thought ** the fairest reach published clearly shows a bay with eight islands in it, into which this river flows. From this one would infer that he at least got within the outer harbor, and mistook one of the inner passages for the river's mouth.^ It is, of course, possible that he embodied in this map what information he obtained from the descriptions of the natives at that time, but he does not say he did. He afterwards made use of later explorers* reports, when he extended on his map this same bay farther inland, and increased the number of its islands ; describing at the same time ** that fair channel " as divid-

* These vessels were of fifty and sixty tons. Mr. Deane has gathered a number of instances of the sizes of the ships of these early navigators. Mass, Hist. Soc, Proc.^ Octolxir, 1865.