Drake Samuel Adams
Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast
In 1630 the first public execution took place in Plymouth. The culprit was John Billington, who, as Bradford wrote home to England, was a knave, and so would live and die. Billington had waylaid and shot one of the town,171 and was adjudged guilty of murder. The colony patent could not confer a power it did not itself possess to inflict the death penalty, so they took counsel of their friends just come into Massachusetts Bay, and were advised to "purge the land of blood."
In 1658, the crime of adultery appears to be first noticed in the laws. The punishment of this offense was two whippings, the persons convicted to wear two capital letters "A. D." cut in cloth and sewed on their uppermost garment, on their arm or back; if they removed the letters, they were again to be publicly whipped. Another law, that would bear rather hardly on the present generation, was as follows: Any persons "who behaved themselves profanely by being without doors at the meeting-houses on the Lord's day, in time of exercise, and there misdemeaning themselves by jestings, sleepings, or the like," were first to be admonished, and if they did not refrain, set in the stocks; and if still unreclaimed, cited before the court.
Josselyn, writing of the old "Body of Laws of 1646," says, "Scolds they gag and set them at their doors for certain hours, for all comers and goers by to gaze at." And here is material for the "Scarlet Letter: " "An English woman suffering an Indian to have carnal knowledge of her was obliged to wear an Indian cut out of red cloth sewed upon her right arm, and worn twelve months." Swearing was punished by boring through the tongue with a hot iron; adultery with death.
The chronicles of the Pilgrims have undergone many strange vicissitudes, but are fortunately quite full and complete. It would be pleasant to know more of their lives during their first year at Plymouth than is given by Bradford or Morton. Governor Bradford's manuscript history of Plymouth plantation was probably purloined from the New England Library deposited in the Old South Church of Boston, during the siege of 1775. It found its way to the Fulham Library in England, was discovered, and a copy made which has since been printed, after remaining in manuscript more than two hundred years. The letter-book of Governor Bradford has a similar history. It was rescued from a grocer's shop in Halifax, after the destruction of half its invaluable contents.
The next best thing to be done is probably to go at once to the top of Burial Hill, which is here what the Hoe is to English Plymouth. Here, at least, are plenty of memorials of the Pilgrims, and here town and harbor are outspread for perusal. Seen at full tide, the harbor appears a goodly port enough, but it is left as bare by the ebb as if the sea had been commanded to remove and become dry land. Nothing except a broad expanse of sand-bars and mussel shoals, with luxuriant growth of eel-grass, meets the eye. Through these a narrow and devious channel makes its way. The bay, however, could not be called tame with two such landmarks as Captain's Hill on Duxbury side, and the promontory of Manomet on the shoulder of the Cape.
Plymouth Bay is formed by the jutting-out of Manomet on the south, and by the long-attenuated strip of sand known as Duxbury Beach, on the north. This beach terminates in a smaller pattern of the celebrated Italian boot that looks equally ready to play at foot-ball with Sicily or to kick intruders out of the Mediterranean. The heel of the boot is toward the sea, and called The Gurnet; the toe points landward, and is called Saquish Head. Just within the toe of the boot is Clark's Island, named from the master's mate of the Mayflower; then comes Captain's Hill, making, with the beach, Duxbury Harbor; and in the farthest reach of the bay to the westward is Kingston, where a little water-course, called after the master of the Mayflower,172 makes up into the land. In the southern board Cape Cod is seen on a clear day far out at sea; a mere shining streak of white sand it appears at this distance.
Plymouth harbor proper is formed by a long sand-spit parallel with the shore, that serves as a breakwater for the shallow roadstead. It is anchored where it is, for the winds would blow it away else, by wooden cribs on which the drifting sands are mounded; and it is also tethered by beach-grass rooted in the hillocks or downs that fringe the harbor-side. Now and then extensive repairs are necessary to make good the ravages of a winter's sea-lashings, as many as six hundred tons of stone having been added to the breakwater at the Point at one time. Brush is placed in the jetties, and thousands of roots of beach-grass are planted to catch and stay the shifting sands. The harbor is lighted at evening by twin lights on the Gurnet, and by a single one off Plymouth Beach. The latter is a caisson of iron rooted to the rock by a filling of concrete, and is washed on all sides by the waters of the harbor.
Sand is everywhere; the "stern and rock-bound coast" of Mrs. Hemans nowhere. Except one little cluster by the northern shore of the harbor, the Forefathers' is the only rock on which those pious men could have landed with dry feet. A few boulders, noticeably infrequent, are scattered along the beach as you approach from Kingston. The hills on which the town is built appear lean and emaciated, as if the light yellow earth with which they are furnished were a compromise between sand and soil. The gardens and house-plots, nevertheless, thrive if they have moisture enough. Few vessels were lying in the harbor, for Plymouth has at present little or no commerce; yet of these, two small colliers were larger than the little Mayflower that carried a greater than Cæsar and his fortunes.173
The Pilgrims brought the name of their settlement along with them, though Captain John Smith gives it first the Indian name of Accomack, changed by Prince Charles to Plimouth, as it appears on the map accompanying "Advertisements for the Unexperienced." The port was, however, earlier known to both French and English. Samoset told the Pilgrims, at his first interview with them, the Indian name was Patuxet.174 Prince, indeed, assigns a date (December 31st) for the formal assumption of the English name.175
Plymouth, England, from which the Pilgrims finally set sail on the 6th of September, 1619, is situated at the extreme north-west corner of Devonshire, and is divided from Cornwall only by the river Tamar. The name has no other significance than the mouth of the river Plym. Exmouth and Dartmouth have the like derivation. Plymouth was long the residence of Sir Francis Drake, and was the birthplace of Sir John Hawkins; also of the painters Northcote, Prout, and B. Haydon. Captain John Davis, the intrepid navigator, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, Queen Elizabeth said, was a "man of noe good happ by sea," were also of Devonshire. It is of the two rivers upon which the "Three Towns" stand that old Michael Drayton writes:
"Plym that claims by rightThe christening of that Bay, which bears her noble name."
In spite of historic antecedents, English Plymouth was distasteful to Lord Nelson, who says, in one of his letters to Lady Hamilton, "I hate Plymouth." American Plymouth should owe no grudge to his memory, for he did a very noble act to one of her townsmen. While cruising on our coast in the Albemarle, in 1782, Nelson captured a fishing schooner belonging to Plymouth. The cargo of the vessel constituted nearly the whole property of Captain Carver, the master, who had a large family at home anxiously awaiting his return. There being no officer on board the Albemarle acquainted with Boston Bay, Nelson ordered the master of the prize to act as pilot. He performed the service to the satisfaction of his captor, who requited him by giving him his vessel and cargo back again, with a certificate to prevent recapture by other British cruisers. Sir N. Harris Nicolas relates that Nelson accompanied this generous act with words equally generous: "You have rendered me, sir, a very essential service, and it is not the custom of English seamen to be ungrateful. In the name, therefore, and with the approbation of the officers of this ship, I return your schooner, and with it this certificate of your good conduct.176 Farewell! and may God bless you."
The choice of the site of Plymouth by the Pilgrims was due rather to the pressing necessities of their situation than to a well-considered determination. Arriving on our coast in the beginning of winter, after nearly six weeks passed in explorations that enfeebled the hardiest among them, they found their provisions failing, while the increasing rigor of the season called for a speedy decision. As it was not their destination, so it may readily be conceived they were not prepared beforehand with such knowledge of the coast as might now be most serviceable to them. Cheated by their captain, they had thrown away the valuable time spent in searching the barren cape for a harbor fit for settlement. Smith, in his egotism, administers a rebuke to them in this wise:
"Yet at the first landing at Cape Cod, being an hundred passengers, besides twenty they had left behind at Plimouth for want of good take heed, thinking to find all things better than I advised them, spent six or seven weeks in wandering up and downe in frost and snow, wind and raine, among the woods, cricks, and swamps, forty of them died, and three-score were left in a most miserable estate at New Plimouth, where their ship left them, and but nine leagues by sea from where they landed, whose misery and variable opinions, for want of experience, occasioned much faction, till necessity agreed them."
It is not easily understood why they should have remained in so unpromising a location after a better knowledge of the country had been obtained. To the north was Massachusetts, called by Smith "the paradise of those parts." South-west of them was the fertile Narraganset country, with fair Aquidneck within their patent. In thirteen or fourteen years the whole of Plymouth colony would not have made one populous town. But there are indications that a removal was kept in view. Their brethren in Leyden, who saw the hand of God in their first choice, advised them not to abandon it. In 1633 they established a trading-house on the Connecticut, and when afterward dispossessed by Massachusetts, alleged as a reason for holding a post there that "they lived upon a barren place, where they were by necessity cast, and neither they nor theirs could long continue upon the same, and why should they be deprived of that which they had provided and intended to remove to as soon as they were able?"177 Yet, like fatalists they continued on the very shores to which Providence had directed them.
When the Pilgrims explored the bay, they were at first undetermined whether to make choice of Clark's Island, the shores of the little river at Kingston, or the spot on the main-land which became their ultimate abode. The high ground of Plymouth shore, the "sweete brooke" under the hill-side, and the large tract of land ready cleared for their use, settled the question; the high hill from which they might see Cape Cod, and withal very fit for a citadel, clenched their decision.
It did not seem to occur to the Pilgrims that to pitch their residence in a place desolated by the visitation of God was at all ill-omened. In their circuit of the bay they did not see an Indian or an Indian wigwam, though they met with traces of a former habitation. Added to the sadness and gloom of the landscape, the frozen earth, the bare and leafless trees, was a silence not alone of nature, but of death. The plague had cleared the way for them; they built upon graves.
This terrible forerunner of the English is alluded to by several of the old writers. It swept the coast from the Fresh Water River to the Penobscot, with a destructiveness like to that witnessed in London a few years later. Sir F. Gorges tells us that the Indians inhabiting the region round about the embouchure of the Saco were sorely afflicted with it, "so that the country was in a manner left void of inhabitants." Vines, Sir Ferdinando's agent, with his companions, slept in the cabins with those that died; but, to their good fortune, as the narrative quaintly sets forth, "not one of them ever felt their heads to ache while they stayed there." This was in the year 1616-'17. Levett says the Indians at "Aquamenticus" were all dead when he was there. Samoset explains, in his broken English, to the Pilgrims that the lawful occupants of Patuxet had, four years before, been swept away by an extraordinary plague. The Indians had never seen or heard of the disease before. Villages withered away when the blight fell upon them; tribes were obliterated, and nations were reduced to tribes. Doubtless, this disaster had much to do with the peaceable settlement of Plymouth, Salem, and Boston. Had the Pilgrims been everywhere resisted, as at Nauset, they could hardly have planted their colony in Plymouth Bay.
There was another cause to which the English owed their safety, as related to them by many aged Indians. A French ship had been cast away on Cape Cod. The crew succeeded in landing, but the Indians, less merciful than the sea, butchered all but three of them. Two were ransomed by Dermer, one of Sir F. Gorges's captains. The other remained with the savages, acquired their language, and died among them. Before his death he foretold that God was angry, and would destroy them, and give their heritage to a strange people. They derided him, and answered boastfully, they were so strong and numerous that the Manitou could not kill them all. Soon after the pestilence depopulated the country. Then came the Englishmen in their ships. The savages assembled in a dark swamp, where their conjurors, with incantations lasting several days, solemnly cursed the pale-faces, devoting them to destruction. Thus the English found safety in the superstitious awe of the natives. The story of the terrible plague is as yet unwritten. Governor Bradford says that when Winslow went to confer with Massasoit, he passed by numbers of unburied skulls and bones of those who had died.
Captain Levett is corroborative of the Pilgrims' settled intention to depart from their original place of settlement. He observes in his "Voyage into New England: " "Neither was I at New Plymouth, but I fear that place is not so good as many others; for if it were, in my conceit, they would content themselves with it, and not seek for any other, having ten times so much ground as would serve ten times so many people as they have now among them. But it seems they have no fish to make benefit of; for this year they had one ship fish at Pemaquid, and another at Cape Ann, where they have begun a new plantation, but how long it will continue I know not."
It is evident from the testimony that the settlement at Plymouth was ill-considered, and that the Pilgrims were themselves far from satisfied with it. In this, too, we have the solution of the rapid overshadowing of the Old Colony by its neighbors, and the fading away of its political and commercial importance.
There is no manner of doubt that Plymouth had been visited by whites long before the advent of the Mayflower's band. Hutchinson erroneously says De Monts "did not go into the Massachusetts bay, but struck over from some part of the eastern shore to Cape Ann, and so to Cape Cod, and sailed farther southward." Definite is this!
It was the object of De Monts to examine the coast, and his pilot seems to have kept in with it as closely as possible, making a harbor every night where one was to be found. The Indian pilot proved to have little knowledge of the shores or of the language of the tribes to the westward of the Saco; for on being confronted with the natives of the Massachusetts country, he was not able to understand them. Gorges recounts that his natives from Pemaquid and from Martha's Vineyard at first hardly comprehended each other.
Hutchinson, it is probable, saw the edition of "Champlain's Voyages" of 1632, contenting himself with a cursory examination of it. An attentive reading of the text of the edition of 1613 would have undeceived him as to the movements of De Monts. Although the reprint of 1632 gives the substance of the voyage, it is so mutilated in its details as to afford scanty satisfaction to the student.
After leaving Cape Ann, De Monts entered Boston Bay and saw Charles River, named by his company "Rivière du Gas," in compliment to their chief. From thence they continued their route to a place that has for the moment a greater interest. Given the latitude, the physical features, and the distance from Cape Ann, we are at no loss to put the finger on Plymouth Bay, of which the geographer of the expedition is the first to give us a description.
The wind coming contrary, they dropped anchor in a little roadstead.178 While lying there they were boarded by canoes that had been out fishing for cod. These, going to shore, notified their companions, who assembled on the sands, dancing and gesticulating in token of amity and welcome. A canoe from the bark landed with a few trifles with which the simple natives were well pleased, and begged their strange visitors to come and visit them within their river. The man-stealers had not yet been among them. They offered a simple but sincere hospitality.
Let us have recourse to the musty pages and antiquated French of Champlain, following in the wake of the bark as it weathers the Gurnet, and doubles Saquish, with the cheery cry of the leadsman, and the eyes of De Monts, Champlain, and Champdoré fixed on the shores of coming renown:
"Nous levames l'ancre pour ce faire, mais nous n'y peusmes entrer à cause du peu d'eau que nous y trouvames estans de basse mer et fumes contrainctes de mouiller l'ancre à l'entrée d'icelle. Je decendis à terre où j'eu vis quantité d'autres qui nous reçeurent fort gratieusement: et fus recognoistre la rivière, où n'y a vey autre chose qu'un bras d'eau qui s'estant quelque peu dans les terres qui font en partie desertées: dedans lequel il n'y a qu'un ruisseau qui ne peut porter basteaux sinon de pleine mer. Ce lieu peut avoir une lieue de circuit. En l'une des entrées duquel y a une manière d'icelle couverte de bois et principalement de pins qui tient d'un coste à des dunes de sable, qui font assez longues: l'autre coste est une terre assez haute. II y a deux islets dans lad. Baye, qu'on ne voit point si l'on n'est dedans, où autour la mer asséche presque toute de basse mer. Ce lieu est fort remarquable de la mer; d'autant que la coste est fort basse, hormis le cap de l'entrée de la Baye qu'avons nommé le port du cap St. Louys distant dud. cap deux lieues et dix du Cap aux Isles. Il est environ par le hauteur du Cap St. Louys."
TRANSLATION. 179
We raised the anchor to do this, but we could not enter therein by reason of the little water which we found there, being low sea, and were constrained to let go the anchor at the entrance of it. I went ashore, where I saw numbers of natives who received us very graciously, and surveyed the river, which is nothing more than an arm of water that makes a little way in the lands which are in part deserted, within which it is only a rivulet that can not float vessels except at full sea. This place may be a league in circuit. At one of the entrances is a sort of island, which is covered with wood, principally pines, which holds to a coast of sandy downs of some length; the other shore is pretty high land. There are two isles in the said Bay which are not perceived until you are within, which the sea leaves almost entirely at low tide. This place is very remarkable from the sea, inasmuch as the coast is very low, except the cape at the entrance of the Bay, which we have named Port Cape St. Louis, distant from the said Cape two leagues, and ten from the Cape of Islands. It is about the latitude of Cape St. Louis.180
In this description the Gurnet and Manomet stand out for easy recognition. The sandy downs of Duxbury Beach, the shallow harbor, the river, even the soundings establish the identity of Port St. Louis with Plymouth; and the two islands become further evidence, if more were needed.
To account for the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the Cape when the Pilgrims were reconnoitring there, it is only necessary to cite a few facts. Cabot stole three savages and carried them to England, where, says Stow, in ludicrous astonishment, after two years' residence they could not be told from Englishmen. In 1508, it is said, Thomas Aubert, a pilot of Dieppe, excited great curiosity by bringing over several natives to France. Cartier took two back with him to France, but with their own consent; and they were eventually, I believe, restored to their native country. Weymouth, in 1605, seized five at Pemaquid; Harlow, in 1611, five more; and Hunt, the greatest thief of them all, kidnaped in this very harbor of Plymouth, in the year 1614, twenty-four of those silly savages, and sold them in Spain for reals of eight. After such treachery it is not strange the red men looked on these new-comers as their natural enemies. It is more extraordinary that Samoset, on entering their weak village some months after their landing, should have greeted them with the memorable "Welcome, Englishmen!"
The Pilgrims saw in the evidences of prior intercourse with Europeans, that they were not the pioneers in this wilderness of New England. They found implements and utensils of civilized manufacture, though no fire-arms. These articles were probably obtained by barter with the fishing or trading ships.
On William Wood's map of 1634,181 Old Plymouth is laid down on the eastern shore of Narraganset Bay, while New Plymouth has its proper position. "New Plimouth" is placed on Blauw's map at the head of a small bay, into which a large river flows. One of the headlands of the bay is named C. Blanco Gallis, and the bay itself Crane Bay. Josselyn has also this reference to Old Plymouth:
"At the farther end of the bay, by the mouth of Narraganset River, on the south side thereof was Old Plymouth plantation, Anno 1602." He may have borrowed his itinerary in part from Wood, who, as I take it, referred to Gosnold's attempt at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay. In his summary, under date of 1607, Josselyn notes, "Plimouth plantation in New England attempted."
I spent some hours among the grave-stones on Burial Hill. Here, as in the streets of the living inhabitants, the old familiar names of the Mayflower's passengers are to be met with. And in every burial-place in the land, I make no doubt, are to be found Howlands and Winslows, Bradfords and Brewsters, side by side. I have felt myself much moved in thinking on the story of those stern men and self-contained, trustful women. Their whole lives might justly be called a pilgrimage. Consider their gathering in the Old England they loved so well; then their dispersion, suffering, and hurried flight into Holland; afterward the staking their all on the issue of their venture in the New World, and the painful, anxious lives they led; despoiling the young of their youth, and the elders of a peaceful old age.
This spot, as is well known, was not the Pilgrims' original place of interment. They who first died were buried on Cole's Hill, nearer the shore, and to the strait limits of their little hamlet. They lost one half their number during the first dismal winter, and there was room enough without going far to make their graves. Tradition says that, fearing their wretchedness might inspire the Indians with the hope of exterminating them, those early graves were first leveled and then planted upon in order to conceal their losses. It is said that sixty years elapsed before a grave-stone with an inscription was set up in Plymouth; certain it is that none older has been found than that of Edward Gray, merchant, who died in 1681.
The obliterated grave-yard on Cole's Hill, which was nothing more than a sea-bluff overhanging the shore, was flooded by a freshet about 1735, laying bare many of the graves, and carrying along with it to the sea many of the remains. It is the supposed resting-place of Carver, the first governor of Plymouth, and of his wife, who did not long survive him. It contained the ashes of fifty of the one hundred and two that had landed in December. In the time of the first winter's sickness, says Hutchinson, there were not above seven men capable of bearing arms. And yet, when they were almost too few to bury their own dead, they talked of war with Canonicus as if it were mere bagatelle, answering defiance with defiance. I fancy those Pilgrims were of the right stuff!
On Burial Hill is a monument to the memory of Governor Bradford, who succeeded Carver, and was annually chosen from 1621 until his death, in 1657 – except during the years 1633, 1636, 1638, and 1644, when Edward Winslow, and in 1634, when Thomas Prence, administered the colony affairs. In seventy years there were only six different persons governors of Plymouth. Roger White, the friend of Bradford, writes him a letter from Leyden, December, 1625, counseling rotation in office, more than hinting that the constant re-election of himself to the chief office in the colony tended to an oligarchy.182 Bradford was among the earliest to go into Holland for conscience' sake. He was of good estate, and had learned the art of silk-dyeing in Amsterdam. His residence in the New World began in affliction, for, before a site for settlement had been fixed upon, his wife, Dorothy May, fell from the vessel into the sea and was drowned. His monument was erected, some years ago, by descendants.
In a conspicuous position is the monument raised, in 1858, by the descendants of Robert Cushman, and of Thomas Cushman, his son, for forty-three years ruling elder of the church of the Pilgrims. Of all the original memorial tablets in this old cemetery, those of Thomas Cushman, who came in 1621, in the Fortune, and of Thomas Clark, a passenger by the Ann, in 1623, alone were remaining. The grave of John Howland, an emigrant of the Mayflower, has been identified, and furnished with a handsome head-stone. In some instances boards bearing simply the name and age of the deceased have replaced the aged and no longer legible stones, as in the cases of Elder Thomas Faunce, William Crowe, and others. The stone of Thomas Clark was the most curious I saw, and in general the inscriptions do not possess other interest than the recollections they summon up. The grave of Dr. Adoniram Judson is also here.
Burial Hill is also memorable as the site of the second183 regular church edifice in New England, built to serve the double purpose of church and citadel. From this cause the eminence was long called Fort Hill. By February, 1621, after the defiance of Canonicus, the town was inclosed within a palisade, taking in the top of the hill under which it was situated. In 1622 the colonists built their church-fortress; it should have been dedicated with Luther's anthem:
"God is a castle and defense,
When troubles and distress invade,
He'll help and free us from offense,
And ever shield us with his aid."
Ever willing to turn an honest penny, the Dutch, in 1627, opened a correspondence between Fort Amsterdam and Plymouth, with offers of trade. They followed it with an embassy in the person of Isaac de Rasieres, who, says Bradford, was their chief merchant, and second to their governor. He came into Plymouth "honorably attended with a noise of trumpeters." It is in a letter of De Rasieres, found at The Hague by Mr. Brodhead, that we obtain a circumstantial account of town and fortress as they then existed.
"Upon the hill," he writes, "they have a large, square house, with a flat roof, made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays."184
A looker-on here in 1807 found in this burying-ground and on the summit of the hill the remains of the ditch that surrounded the ancient fortification erected in 1675, on the approach of Philip's war. This was a work of greater magnitude than that of the first adventurers, inclosing a space one hundred feet square, strongly palisaded with pickets ten and a half feet high. As late as 1844 the whole circuit of this work was distinctly visible.185 The head of Wittuwamet, one of the chiefs killed by Standish's party at Weymouth in 1623, was set up on the battlements of the fort, as was afterward that of the renowned King Philip. The vaunting, the exasperating mockery of a savage, is in these lines:
'Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?'
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand,
Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the handle,
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning,
'I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle;
By-and-by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children.'
According to Edward Winslow, the English stood to their guns when Indians came among them. To allay distrust in the minds of the savages, they were told it was an act of courtesy observed by the English, both on land and sea. The sentinel who paced his lonely round here in 1622 should have had steady nerves. The nearest outpost was his fellow-watcher on the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam. He could hardly pass the word on "All's well!" to Jamestown or Saint Augustine, or hear the challenge from Port Royal, in Acadia. Behind him was the wilderness, out of which it was a wonder the Indians did not burst, it was so easy to overwhelm the devoted little band of Englishmen and brush them away into the sea. I make no account of the few scattered cabins along the northern coast, and the Pilgrims made no account of them. Thus they lived for ten years within the narrow limits of an intrenched camp, a picket lodged within an enemy's country, until the settlement in Massachusetts Bay enabled them to draw breath. Why might they not say to those after-comers,
