Voyages of Samuel De Champlain Volume II Part 8

There is, moreover, in this bay a very broad river, which we named River du Guast. [159] It stretches, as it seemed to me, towards the Iroquois, a nation in open warfare with the Montagnais, who live on the great river St. Lawrence.

ENDNOTES:

107. _Isle de la Tortue_, commonly known as Seguin Island, high and rocky, with precipitous sh.o.r.es. It is nearly equidistant from Wood, Pond, and Salter's Islands at the mouth of the Kennebec, and about one mile and three quarters from each. The United States light upon it is 180 feet above the level of the sea. It may be seen at the distance of twenty miles.

108. Ellingwood Rock, Seguin Ledges, and White Ledge.

109. Pond Island on the west, and Stage Island on the east: the two rocks referred to in the same sentence are now called the Sugar Loaves.

110. This was apparently in the upper part of Back River, where it is exceedingly narrow. The minute and circ.u.mstantial description of the mouth of the Kennebec, and the positive statement in the text that they entered the river so described, and the conformity of the description to that laid down on our Coast Survey Charts, as well as on Champlain's local map, all render it certain that they entered the mouth of the Kennebec proper; and having entered, they must have pa.s.sed on a flood-tide into and through Back River, which in some places is so narrow that their little barque could hardly fall to be grazed in pa.s.sing. Having reached Hockomock Bay, they pa.s.sed down through the lower h.e.l.l Gate, rounded the southern point of West Port or Jerremisquam Island, sailing up its eastern sh.o.r.e until they reached the harbor of Wisca.s.set; then down the western side, turning Hockomock Point, threading the narrow pa.s.sage of the Sasanoa River through the upper h.e.l.l Gate, entering the Sagadahoc, pa.s.sing the Chops, and finally through the Neck, into Merrymeeting Bay. The narrowness of the channel and the want of water at low tide in Back River would seem at first blush to throw a doubt over the possibility of Champlain's pa.s.sing through this tidal pa.s.sage. But it has at least seven feet of water at high tide. His little barque, of fifteen tons, without any cargo, would not draw more than four feet at most, and would pa.s.s through without any difficulty, incommoded only by the narrowness of the channel to which Champlain refers. With the same barque, they pa.s.sed over the bar at Nauset, or Mallebarre, where Champlain distinctly says there were only four feet of water.--_Vide postea_, p. 81.

111. West Port, or Jerremisquam Island.

112. This was Wisca.s.set Harbor, as farther on it will be seen that from this point they started down the river, taking another way than that by which they had come.

113. Hockomock Point, a rocky precipitous bluff.

114. The movement of the waters about this "narrow waterfall" has been a puzzle from the days of Champlain to the present time. The phenomena have not changed. Having consulted the United States Coast Pilot and likewise several persons who have navigated these waters and have a personal knowledge of the "fall," the following is, we think, a satisfactory explanation. The stream in which the fall occurs is called the Sasanoa, and is a tidal current flowing from the Kennebec, opposite the city of Bath, to the Sheepscot. It was up this tidal pa.s.sage that Champlain was sailing from the waters of the Sheepscot to the Kennebec, and the "narrow waterfall" was what is now called the upper h.e.l.l Gate, which is only fifty yards wide, hemmed in by walls of rock on both sides. Above it the Sasanoa expands into a broad bay.

When the tide from the Kennebec has filled this bay, the water rushes through this narrow gate with a velocity Sometimes of thirteen miles an hour. There is properly no fall in the bed of the stream, but the appearance of a fall is occasioned by the pent-up waters of the bay above rus.h.i.+ng through this narrow outlet, having acc.u.mulated faster than they could be drained off. At half ebb, on a spring tide, a wall of water from six inches to a foot stretches across the stream, and the roar of the flood boiling over the rocks at the Gate can be heard two miles below. The tide continues to flow up the Sasanoa from the Sheepscot not only on the flood, but for some time on the ebb, as the waters in the upper part of the Sheepscot and its bays, in returning, naturally force themselves up this pa.s.sage until they are sufficiently drained off to turn the current in the Sasanoa in the other direction.

Champlain, sailing from the Sheepscot up the Sasanoa, arrived at the Gate probably just as the tide was beginning to turn, and when there was comparatively only a slight fall, but yet enough to make it necessary to force their little barque up through the Gate by means of hawsers as described in the text. After getting a short distance from the narrows, he would be on the water ebbing back into the Kennebec, and would be still moving with the tide, as he had been until he reached the fall.

115. Merrymeeting Bay, so called from the meeting in this bay of the two rivers mentioned in the text a little below, viz., the Kennebec and the Androscoggin.

116. The lat.i.tude of Seguin, here called Tortoise Island, is 43 42' 25".

117. The head-waters of the Kennebec, as well as those of the Pen.o.bscot, approach very near to the Chaudiere, which flows into the St.

Lawrence near Quebec.

118. Cas...o...b..y, which stretches from Cape Small Point to Cape Elizabeth. It has within it a hundred and thirty-six islands. They anch.o.r.ed and pa.s.sed the night somewhere within the limits of this bay, but did not attempt its exploration.

119. These were the White Mountains in New Hamps.h.i.+re, towering above the sea 6,225 feet. They are about sixty miles distant from Cas...o...b..y, and were observed by all the early voyagers as they sailed along the coast of Maine. They are referred to on Ribero's Map of 1529 by the Spanish word _montanas_, and were evidently seen by Estevan Gomez in 1525, whose discoveries are delineated by this map. They will also be found on the Mappe-Monde of about the middle of the sixteenth century, and on Sebastian Cabot's map, 1544, both included in the "Monuments de la Geographie" of Jomard, and they are also indicated on numerous other early maps.

120. This conjecture is not sustained by any evidence beyond the similarity of the names. There are numerous idle opinions as to the kind of plant which was so efficacious a remedy for the scurvy, but they are utterly without foundation. There does not appear to be any means of determining what the healing plant was.

121. The four leagues of the previous day added to the eight of this bring them from the Kennebec to Saco Bay.

122. The small island "proche de la grande terre" was Stratton Island: they anch.o.r.ed on the northern side and nearly east of Bluff Island, which is a quarter of a mile distant. The Indians came down to welcome them from the promontory long known as Black Point, now called Prout's Neck. Compare Champlain's local map and the United States Coast Survey Charts.

123. Champlain's narrative, together with his sketch or drawing, ill.u.s.trating the mouth of the Saco and its environs, compared with the United States Coast Survey Charts, renders it certain that this was Richmond Island. Lescarbot describes it as a 'great island, about half a league in compa.s.s, at the entrance of the bay of the said place of Chouacoet It is about a mile long, and eight hundred yards in its greatest width.--_Coast Pilot_. It received its present name at a very early period. It was granted under the t.i.tle of "a small island, called Richmond," by the Council for New England to Walter Bagnall, Dec. 2, 1631.--_Vide Calendar of Eng. State Papers_, Col. 1574-1660, p. 137. Concerning the death of Bagnall on this island a short time before the above grant was made, _vide Winthrop's Hist. New Eng._, ed. 1853, Vol. I. pp. 75, 118.

124. Lescarbot calls him Olmechin.--_Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, par M. Lescarbot, Paris, 1612, p. 558.

125. They had hoped that the wife of Panounias, their Indian guide, who was said to have been born among the Almouchiquois, would be able to interpret their language, but in this they appear to have been disappointed.--_Vide antea_, p. 55.

126. From the Indian word, M'-foo-ah-koo-et, or, as the French p.r.o.nounced it, _Chouacoet_, which had been the name, applied by the aborigines to this locality we know not how long, is derived the name Saco, now given to the river and city in the same vicinity. The orthography given to the original word is various, as Sawocotuck, Sowocatuck, Sawakquatook, Sockhigones, and Chouacost. The variations in this, as in other Indian words, may have arisen from a misapprehension of the sound given by the aborigines, or from ignorance, on the part of writers, of the proper method of representing sounds, joined to an utter indifference to a matter which seemed to them of trifling importance.

127. _Febues du Bresil_. This is the well-known trailing or bush-bean of New England, _Phaseolus vulgaris_, called the "Brazilian bean" because it resembled a bean known in France at that time under that name. It is sometimes called the kidney-bean. It is indigenous to America.

128. _Citrouilles_, the common summer squash, _Cucurbita polymorpha_, as may be seen by reference to Champlain's map of 1612, where its form is delineated over the inscription, _la forme des sitroules_. It is indigenous to America. Our word squash is derived from the Indian _askutasquash_ or _isquoutersquash_. "In summer, when their corne is spent, Isquoutersquashes is their best bread, a fruit like the young Pumpion."--_Wood's New England Prospect_, 1634, Prince Society ed., p. 76. "_Askutasquash_, their Vine aples, which the _English_ from them call _Squashes_, about the bignesse of Apples, of severall colours, a sweet, light, wholesome refres.h.i.+ng."--_Roger Williams, Key_, 1643, Narragansett Club ed., p. 125.

129. _Courges_, the pumpkin, _Cucurbita maxima_, indigenous to America. As the pumpkin and likewise the squash were vegetables. .h.i.therto unknown to Champlain, there was no French word by which he could accurately identify them. The names given to them were such as he thought would describe them to his countrymen more nearly than any others. Had he been a botanist, he would probably have given them new names.

130. _Petum_. Tobacco, _Nicotiana rustica_, sometimes called wild tobacco.

It was a smaller and more hardy species than the _Nicotiana tabac.u.m_, now cultivated in warmer climates, but had the same qualities though inferior in strength and aroma. It was found in cultivation by the Indians all along our coast and in Canada. Cartier observed it growing in Canada in 1535. Of it he says: "There groweth also a certain kind of herbe, whereof in Sommer they make a great prouision for all the yeere, making great account of it, and onely men vse of it, and first they cause it to be dried in the Sunne, then weare it about their neckes wrapped in a little beasts skinne made like a little bagge, with a hollow peece of stone or wood like a pipe; then when they please they make pouder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said Cornet or pipe, and laying a cole of fire vpon it, at the other ende sucke so long, that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till that it commeth out of their mouth and nostrils, euen as out of the Tonnell of a chimney. They say that this doth keepe them warme and in health: they neuer goe without some of it about them. We ourselues haue tryed the same smoke, and hauing put it in our mouthes, it seemed almost as hot as Pepper."--_Jacques Cartier, 2 Voyage_, 1535; _Hakluyt_, London, ed. 1810, Vol. III. p. 276.

We may here remark that the esculents found in cultivation at Saco, beans, squashes, pumpkins, and corn, as well as the tobacco, are all American tropical or subtropical plants, and must have been transmitted from tribe to tribe, from more southern climates. The Indian traditions would seem to indicate this. "They have a tradition," says Roger Williams, "that the Crow brought them at first an _Indian_ Graine of Corne in one Eare, and an _Indian_ or _French_ Beane in another, from the Great G.o.d _Kautantouwit's_ field in the Southwest from whence they hold came all their Corne and Beanes."-- _Key to the Language of America_, London, 1643, Narragansett Club ed., p. 144.

Seventy years before Champlain, Jacques Cartier had found nearly the same vegetables cultivated by the Indians in the valley of the St. Lawrence. He says: "They digge their grounds with certaine peeces of wood, as bigge as halfe a sword, on which ground groweth their corne, which they call Ossici; it is as bigge as our small peason....

They haue also great store of Muske-milions. Pompions, Gourds, Cuc.u.mbers, Peason, and Beanes of euery colour, yet differing from ours."--_Hakluyt_, Vol. II. p. 276. For a full history of these plants, the reader is referred to the History of Plants, a learned and elaborate work now in press, by Charles Pickering, M.D. of Boston.

131. The lat.i.tude of Wood Island at the mouth of the Saco, where they were at anchor, is 43 27' 23".

132. The site of this Indian fortification was a rocky bluff on the western side of the river, now owned by Mr. John Ward, where from time to time Indian relics have been found. The island at the mouth of the river, which Champlain speaks of as a suitable location for a fortress, is Ram Island, and is low and rocky, and about a hundred and fifty yards in length.

133. For Sunday read Tuesday.--_Vide Shurtless's Calendar_.

134. This landing was probably near Wells Neck, and the meadows which they saw were the salt marshes of Wells.

135. The Red-wing Blackbird, _Ageloeus phoeniceus_, of l.u.s.trous black, with the bend of the wing red. They are still abundant in the same locality, and indeed across the whole continent to the Pacific Ocean.--_Vide Cones's Key_, Boston, 1872, p. 156; _Baird's Report_, Was.h.i.+ngton, 1858, Part II. p. 526.

136. _Le Port aux Isles_. This Island Harbor is the present Cape Porpoise Harbor.

137. This harbor is Goose Fair Bay, from one to two miles north-east of Cape Porpoise, in the middle of which are two large ledges, "the dangerous reefs" to which Champlain refers.

138. This was the common red currant of the gardens, _Ribes rubrum_, which is a native of America. The fetid currant, _Ribes prostratum_, is also indigenous to this country. It has a pale red fruit, which gives forth a very disagreeable odor. Josselyn refers to the currant both in his Voyages and in his Rarities. Tuckerman found it growing wild in the White Mountains.

139. The pa.s.senger pigeon, _Ectopistes migratorius_, formerly numerous in New England. Commonly known as the wild pigeon. Wood says they fly in flocks of millions of millions.--_New England Prospect_, 1634; Prince Society ed., p. 31.

140. Champlain's lat.i.tude is less inaccurate than usual. It is not possible to determine the exact point at which he took it. But the lat.i.tude of Cape Porpoise, according to the Coast Survey Charts, is 43 21' 43".

141. Cape Anne.

142. The point at which Champlain first saw Cape Anne, and "isles a.s.sez hautes," the Isles of Shoals, was east of Little Boar's Head, and three miles from the sh.o.r.e. Nine years afterward, Captain John Smith visited these islands, and denominated them on his map of New England Smith's Isles. They began at a very early date to be called the Isles of Shoals. "Smith's Isles are a heape together, none neere them, against Accominticus."--_Smith's Description of New England_. Rouge's map, 1778, has Isles of Shoals, _ou des Ecoles_. For a full description and history of these islands, the reader is referred to "The Isles of Shoals," by John S. Jenness, New York, 1875.

143. Champlain has not been felicitous in his description of this bay. He probably means to say that from the point where he then was, off Little Boar's Head, to the point where it extends farthest into the land, or to the west, it appeared to be about twelve miles, and that the depth of the bay appeared to be six miles, and eight at the point of greatest depth. As he did not explore the bay, it is obvious that he intended to speak of it only as measured by the eye. No name has been a.s.signed to this expanse of water on our maps. It washes the coast of Hampton, Salisbury, Newburyport, Ipswich, and Annisquam. It might well be called Merrimac Bay, aster the name of the important river that empties its waters into it, midway between its northern and southern extremities.

144. It is to be observed that, starting from Cape Porpoise Harbor on the morning of the 15th of July, they sailed twelve leagues before the sail of the night commenced. This would bring them, allowing for the sinuosities of the sh.o.r.e, to a point between Little Boar's Head and the Isles of Shoals. In this distance, they had pa.s.sed the sandy sh.o.r.es of Wells Beach and York Beach in Maine, and Foss's Beach and Rye Beach in New Hamps.h.i.+re, and still saw the white Sands of Hampton and Salisbury Beaches stretching far into the bay on their right. The excellent harbor of Portsmouth, land-locked by numerous islands, had been pa.s.sed un.o.bserved. A sail of eighteen nautical miles brought them to their anchorage at the extreme point of Cape Anne.

145. Straitsmouth, Thatcher, and Milk island. They were named by Captain John Smith the "Three Turks' Heads," in memory of the three Turks'

heads cut off by him at the siege of Caniza, by which he acquired from Sigismundus, prince of Transylvania, their effigies in his s.h.i.+eld for his arms.--_The true Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captaine John Smith_, London, 1629.

146. What Champlain here calls "le Cap aux Isles," Island Cape, is Cape Anne, called Cape Tragabigzanda by Captain John Smith, the name of his mistress, to whom he was given when a prisoner among the Turks. The name was changed by Prince Charles, afterward Charles I., to Cape Anne, in honor of his mother, who was Anne of Denmark.--_Vide Description of New England_ by Capt. John Smith, London, 1616.

147. This was the bay west of a line drawn from Little Boar's Head to Cape Anne, which may well be called Merrimac Bay.

148. Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.

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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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."