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
[52] Samoset, in 1625, sold Pemaquid to John Brown. His sign-manual was
a bended bow, with an arrow fitted to the string. The deed to Brown also
fixes the residence, at Pemaquid, of Abraham Shurt, agent of Elbridge
and Aldworth, in the year 1626.
[53] "New York Colonial Documents," vol. iii., p. 256. Some primitive
defensive works had existed as early as 1630, rifled in 1632 by the
freebooter, Dixy Bull.
[54] It was of stone; a quadrangle seven hundred and thirty-seven feet
in compass without the outer walls, one hundred and eight feet square
within the inner ones: pierced with embrasures for twenty-eight cannons,
and mounting fourteen, six being eighteen-pounders. The south wall
fronting the sea was twenty-two feet high, and six feet thick at the
ports. The great flanker, or round tower, at the west end of the line
was twenty-nine feet high. It stood about a score of rods from
high-water mark.--MATHER, vol. ii., p. 537.
[55] "D'Iberville, monseigneur, est un tres sage garçon, entreprenant et
qui scait ce qu'il fait."--M. DENONVILLE.
[56] As it is inconsistent with the purpose and limits of these chapters
to give the detail of charters, patents, and titles by which Pemaquid
has acquired much historical prominence, the reader may, in addition to
authorities named in the text, consult Thornton's "Ancient Pemaquid,"
vol. v. "Maine Historical Collections;" Johnston's "Bristol, Bremen, and
Pemaquid;" Hough's "Pemaquid Papers," etc.
[57] While making his geological survey of Maine.
[58] Williamson mentions the heaps on the eastern bank, not so high as
on the western, extending back twenty rods from the river, and rendering
the land useless. The shell heaps of Georgia and Florida are more
extensive than any in New England.
[Illustration: MONHEGAN ISLAND.]
CHAPTER VII.
MONHEGAN ISLAND.
"From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
Oh hundred-harbored Maine!"
WHITTIER.
The most famous island you can find on the New England map is Monhegan
Island. To it the voyages of Weymouth, of Popham, and of Smith converge.
The latter has put it down as one of the landmarks of our coast. Rosier
calls it an excellent landfall. It is undoubtedly Monhegan that is seen
on the oldest charts of New England. Champlain, with the same aptness
and originality recognized in Mount Desert and Isle au Haut, names it La
Tortue. Take from the shelf Bradford, Winthrop, Prince, or Hubbard, and
you will find this island to figure conspicuously in their pages.
Bradford says starving Plymouth was succored from Monhegan as early as
1622. The Boston colonists of 1630 were boarded when entering Salem by a
Plymouth man, going about his business at Pemaquid. English fishing
ships hovered about the island for a dozen years before the _Mayflower_
swung to her anchorage in the "ice-rimmed" bay. The embers of some
camp-fire were always smouldering there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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