149. It is interesting to observe the agreement of the sign-writing of this savage on the point of Cape Anne with the statement of the historian Gookin, who in 1656 was superintendent of Indian affairs in Massachusetts, and who wrote in 1674. He says: "Their chief sachem held dominion over many other petty governours; as those of Weechagaskas, Neponsitt, Punkapaog, Nonantam, Nashaway, and some of the Nipmuck people, as far as Pokomtacuke, as the old men of Massachusetts affirmed." Here we have the six tribes, represented by the pebbles, recorded seventy years later as a tradition handed down by the old men of the tribe. Champlain remarks further on, "I observed in the bay all that the savages had described to me at Island Cape." 150. This was the Merrimac with its shoals at the mouth, which they had passed without observing, having sailed from the offing near Little Boar's Head directly to the head of Cape Anne, during the darkness of the previous night. 151. The latitude of the Straitsmouth Island Light on the extreme point of Cape Anne is 42° 39' 43". A little east of it, where they probably anchored, there are now sixteen fathoms of water. 152. Emmerson's Point, forming the eastern extremity of Cape Anne, twenty or twenty-five feet high, fringed with a wall of bare rocks on the sea. 153. Thatcher's Island, near the point just mentioned. It is nearly half a mile long and three hundred and fifty yards wide, and about fifty feet high. 154. It is not possible to determine with absolute certainty the place of this anchorage. But as Champlain describes, at the end of this chapter, what must have been Charles River coming from the country of the Iroquois or the west, most likely as seen from his anchorage, there can be little doubt that he anchored in Boston Harbor, near the western limit of Noddle's Island, now known as East Boston. 155. The fishermen and fur-traders had visited these coasts from a very early period.--_Vide antea_, note 18. From them they obtained the axe, a most important implement in their rude mode of life, and it was occasionally found in use among tribes far in the interior.