Nooks and Corners of the New England CoastDrake, Samuel Adams
History
Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast
Drake, Samuel Adams
New England -- Description and travel
Here are the bearings of Cape Ann, the Isles of Shoals, and of Ipswich
Bay defined with precision. Champlain also puts the latitude of
Kennebunk River at forty-three degrees twenty-five minutes, which shows
Pring could hardly have explored to the eastward of Cape Elizabeth.
Smith, in 1614, described Cape Ann and Cape Cod as the two great
headlands of New England, giving to the former the name of
Tragabigzanda; but Champlain had preceded him, as Gosnold had preceded
Champlain. On the whole, Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain agree remarkably
in their latitude and in their itinerary.
At Cape Neddoek I "put up," or rather was put up--an expression applied
alike to man and beast in every public-house in New England--at the old
Freeman Tavern, a famous stopping-place in by-gone years, when the
mail-coach between Boston and Portland passed this way. Since I knew it
the house had been brushed up with a coat of paint on the outside, the
tall sign-post was gone, and nothing looked quite natural except the
capacious red barn belonging to the hostel. The bar-room, however, was
unchanged, and the aroma of old Santa Cruz still lingered there, though
the pretty hostess assured me, on the word of a landlady, there was
nothing in the house stronger than small beer. It was not so of yore,
when all comers appeared to have taken the famous Highgate oath: "Never
to drink small beer when you could get ale, unless you liked small beer
best."
The evening tempted me to a stroll down to the harbor, to see the
wood-coasters go out with the flood. Afterward I walked on the beach.
The full moon shone out clear in the heavens, lighting up a radiant
aisle incrusted with silver pavement on the still waters, broad at the
shore, receding until lost in the deepening mystery of the farther sea.
The ground-swell rose and fell with regular heaving, as of Old Ocean
asleep. As a breaker wavered and toppled over, a bright gleam ran along
its broken arch like the swift flashing of a train. Occasionally some
craft crossed the moon's track, where it stood out for a moment with
surprising distinctness, to be swallowed up an instant later in the
surrounding blackness. Boon Island had unclosed its brilliant eye--its
light in the window for the mariner. It had been a perfect day, but the
night was enchanting.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Colonel Storer kept up the stockades and one or more of the
flankarts until after the year 1760, as a memorial rather than a
defense.
[64] This relationship is disputed by Mr. Joseph L. Chester, the eminent
antiquary. Winthrop, it would seem, ought to have known; Eliot and Allen
repeat the authority, the latter giving the full name of Mary
Hutchinson.
[65] Both sides have been ably presented by Dr. N. Bouton and Hon.
Charles H. Bell.
[66] Once, and much better, Arundel, from the Earl of Arundel.
[67] An old sea-chart says, "Saco River bear place at low water."
[Illustration: WHAT THE SEA CAN DO.]
CHAPTER IX.
AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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