Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8): French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8): French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
[From the edition of 1613. Key: _A_, anchoring-place. _B_, channel.
_C_, two islands (the left-hand one seems to be what is now known
as Saquish, a peninsula connected at present with the Gurnet Head,
here marked _H_; the right-hand one is the present Clark’s Island).
_D_, sand-hills (apparently the low sand-hills of Duxbury beach).
_E_, shoals. _F_, cabins and tillage ground of the natives. _G_,
beaching-place of our barque (apparently the present Powder Point).
_H_, land like an island, covered with wood (the present Gurnet
Head). _I_, high promontory, seen four or five leagues at sea. This
promontory has usually been called Manomet, and if the right-hand of
the map is north, it has the correct bearing from the Gurnet; but it
is in that case very strange that so marked a feature as the sand-spit
known as Plymouth Beach is not indicated, and no sign is given of the
conspicuous eminence known as Captain’s Hill. If, however, we consider
the top of the map north (and the engraver may be accountable for
the erroneous fashioning of the points of the compass), it becomes
at once perfectly comprehensible as a sketch of that part of the bay
known as Duxbury Harbor, and would not, accordingly, show that part
of the shore on which the Pilgrims landed. In this view the hill _I_
becomes Captain’s Hill, and the rest of the plan, though but rudely
conforming to the lines of Duxbury Harbor, is much more satisfactory in
its topographical correspondences than the other theory would allow.
See the modern map of the harbor in Vol. III. chap. viii. Cf. further
Davis’s _Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth_, p. 35, and the papers in the
_Mag. of Amer. Hist._, December, 1882.
It will be remembered that the French found in all this region populous
communities, which had been greatly reduced or destroyed by a plague
in 1616 and 1617, before the English made their settlements. Mr. Adams
has grouped the authorities on this point in his Morton’s _New English
Canaan_, p. 133.
The French accounts of these Massachusetts Indians may be compared
with the later English descriptions of Smith, Winslow, Wood, Morton,
Williams, Lechford, Josselyn, and Gookin.
The French continued to frequent the Massachusetts coast for some
years. We have accounts of two of their ships, at least, which were
lost there between 1614 and 1619,—one on Cape Cod, two of whose crew
were reclaimed by Dermer (Bradford’s _Plymouth Plantation_, 98), and
the other in Boston Harbor, whose crew were killed. Cf. 4 _Mass. Hist.
Soc. Coll._, iv. 479, 489, in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative; Morton’s _New
English Canaan_, Adams’s edition, p. 131; Mather’s _Magnalia_, book i.
chap. ii.—ED.]]
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