The Plymouth Company had established a trading house on the Connecticut, as early as 1633. Their trade with the Pequots in arrow points, knives, hatchets, &c., might very probably give offence to the Narragansets. “We found,” says Winthrop, “that all the sachems of Narraganset, except Canonicus and Miantonomi were the contrivers of Mr. Oldham’s death, and the occasion was because he went to make peace and trade with the Pequots.” CANTO FIFTH. STANZA XI. _Brother, the spirit of my son is gone; I burned my lodge to speak my mighty grief._ Williams says, “The chiefe and most aged peaceable father of the countrey, Canonnicus, having buried his sonne, he burned his own palace, and all his goods in it, (amongst them to a great value), in a solemn remembrance of his son, and in a kind of humble expiation to the gods, who (as they believe) had taken away his sonne from him.” _I am thy father, thou shalt be my son._ See the extract from Williams’ testimony, in note to stanza xxxiii, of canto iv. STANZA XXIV. _The sable fox-hide did his loins enclose-- The sable fox-tail formed his nodding crest._ The Indians had a superstitious regard for the black fox. Williams says, they considered it a Manittoo--a god, spirit, or divine power. STANZA XXXII. _Hast thou forgot, when, by Cohannet’s stream, To curse the strangers every charm was tried._ “But before I pass on, let the reader take notice of a very remarkable particular which was made known to the planters at Plymouth some short space after their arrival; that the Indians, before they came to the English to make friendship with them, got all the Pawaws in the country, who, for three days together, in a horrid and devilish manner, did curse and execrate them with their conjurations, which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp.”--_N. E. Memorial._ _How I appeared, and, by the embers’ gleam, To the hard rock my lance’s point applied, And scored my mandate._ The inscriptions on the rocks by Taunton river have afforded a subject of much speculation to the antiquary. It would not be strange if the Indians ascribed to them a supernatural origin. STANZA XLII. _An odor, strange, though not offensive, spread About him, as he near and nearer drew;_ If my recollection serves me, Dr. Good, in his Book of Nature, supposes that the seeming power of fascination in serpents may arise from an odor emitted by them. The tale of the Hunter and the Rattlesnake, in the New England Legends, must furnish the author with a justification for the use which he has made of this serpent in the text; and it ought also to be added, that his description of the serpent, in the act of exercising his mysterious powers, is not essentially different from that in the tale to which he has referred. STANZA LXIII. _Here stretched Aquidnay tow’rd the ocean blue._