USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 7
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1 Biddle, Cabo!, p. 98.
2 The character of the times, if not of the man, is shown by Cabol's intrigues with Venice, of which we get glimpses in the Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1520-1526, pp. 278, 293- 295, 304, 315, 328 ; and also in the volume 1 534- 1554, P. 364.
3 Biddle, Cabot, book ji. ch. iv.
4 Hakluyt, Divers Voyages (Hakluyt Soc. ed.), p. Ixxxviii.
3 Brevoort, Verrazano the Navigator, pp. 19, 35.
6 Dr. Kohl places Verrazano's landfall at Cape Fear ( Discovery of Maine, p. 252) ; Mr. J. Winter Jones, in the neighborhood of Charleston or Savannah (Hakluyt Society's Divers Voyages, p. 56) ; Mr. Brevoort, off Little Egg Harbor beach (Verrasano the Navigator, p. 37).
7 At Onslow Bay, near New River Inlet ; Discovery of Maine, p. 254.
8 Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones place this incident at Raleigh Bay; Mr. Brevoort, at Rockaway Beach, Long Island.
1
33
EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY.
repaid by the abduction by the French, at their next landing, of an Indian boy.1 Verrazano describes a harbor, a pleasant place among small hills, in the midst of which a great stream of water ran down into the sea; so deep at its mouth that any great vessel might pass into it.2 From this harbor the shore line was followed to the eastward, and at a distance of fifty leagues an island was discovered and called Louisa, the only place named by Verrazano.3 Fifteen leagues from Louisa Island the explorer found a good harbor, where he remained two weeks, and became somewhat acquainted with the natives, of whose manners and customs he gives an account.4 From this point the voyage was continued, and another landing made, where the natives were found much more savage than those before seen, and where the Europeans were roughly received.5 At last the land " discovered by the Britons, which is in fifty degrees "6 was reached, and then, having spent all their provisions, the expedition sailed for France.
The story of Verrazano's voyage contained in the letter from the explorer to the King already mentioned was first printed by Ramusio in the third volume of his Collection of Voyages in 1556. From this it was translated by Hakluyt for his Divers Voyages, published in 1582. A manuscript copy of the letter, differing in some particulars from Ramusio's printed text, and containing a cosmographical appendix,7 was found later in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. This was printed, with a translation by Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, in the Collections of the New York Historical Society in 1841 (2d series, i. 37-68),8 and the translation was incorporated by Dr. Asher into his Henry Hudson the Navigator, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1860 (pp. 197-228). With the Magliabecchian manu- script there was found a letter from Fernando Carli to his father, from Lyons, dated Aug. 4, 1524, in which he transmits the copy of Verrazano's letter.9 There exists no French original of this letter.
This narrative has been generally considered as worthy of credit until a few years ago, when its authenticity was attacked by Mr. Buckingham Smith, who accounted the whole letter a fraud. Mr. Smith's view has been followed and supported by Mr. Henry C. Murphy, who published an
1 Somewhere on the Delaware coast (Jones) ; or south of it (Dr. Kohl) ; or on Long Island (Brevoort).
2 Identified generally with New York Har- bor and the Hudson River. See Dr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, pp. 256-258; Hlakluyt So- ciety's edition, Divers Voyages, p. 63; Asher's Henry Hudson the Navigator, p. 211, note. But Brevoort thinks that this description applies to the mouth of the Thames in Connecticut ( Ver- rasano the Navigator, p. 43), and identifies New York with a point reached earlier (Ibid. p. 40).
3 Block Island (Brevoort, p. 43) ; Martha's Vineyard (Dr. Kohl, p. 260, and Mr. Jones, p 64).
4 Verrazano's letter says that this harbor was in the parallel of Rome, 41º 40'. It has VOL. 1. - 5.
been identified with Narragansett Bay, and particularly with Newport.
5 Not far from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, according to Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones. . Mr. Bre- voort places this landing between Nahant and Cape Ann.
6 Hakluyt Society's edition, Divers Voyages, p. 71.
7 Dr. Asher considers this appendix a very important document ( Henry Hudson the Nuvi- gator, pp. 198, 199, 222, note).
8 See also Professor G. W. Greene's article in the North American Review, xIv. 293.
9 Carli's letter is in Buckingham Smith's Inquiry, pp. 27-30; 11. C. Murphy's Voyage of Terrassano, pp. 17-19; and in Brevoort's, Varru- sano the Navigator, pp. 151-153.
34
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
elaborate monograph on the subject in 1875. On the other side, the genuineness of the letter has been maintained by Mr. J. C. Brevoort, whose Verrasano the Navigator, read before the American Geographical Society in November, 1871, was printed in 1874; by Mr. Major, who reviewed Mr. Murphy's book in the Geographical Magasine (London) for July 1876; and by Mr. De Costa in articles in the Magasine of American History for February, May, and August, 1878, and for January, 1879.
Mr. Murphy thinks that the Verrazano letter was concocted to increase the glory of Florence, and that its geography was taken from the dis- coveries made by Gomez, whose voyage I shall touch upon next. In the cliscussion of this, as of all early voyages, much depends upon the maps. There is a Verrazano map preserved in Rome, supposed to have been made by a brother of the navigator; and Hakluyt speaks of an " olde mappe in parchmente, made as yt shoulde seme by Verarsanus," and of a " globe in the Queene's privie gallery at Westminster, which also semeth to be of Verarsanus' mekinge."1 1 have purposely avoided touching upon the maps of these early voyages, as the early cartography of this region will be treated in a succeeding chapter. Mr. Deane's note to the passages cited from Hakluyt's Discourse (pp. 216-219) should be consulted. Mr. De Costa, in his contribution to the Magasine of American History for August, 1878, gives for the first time the names on the American section of the Verrazano map.
Much doubt hangs over the subsequent career of Verrazano. He is said to have made a second voyage to America, and to have been killed by the savages here. He is said also to have been taken by the Spaniards and hanged as a pirate. The reader must consult the works of Murphy and Brevoort, where all that can be said is related.
The year following Verrazano's voyage, but, so far as is known, without any connection with it, Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese by birth, who had served Spain as pilot, and had been a member of the Congress of Badajos, sailed in search of a passage to India less difficult than that discovered by Magellan in 1520. Gomez had been of Magellan's expedition, but had deserted his commander and returned home. There is no narrative of his voyage. It is uncertain where he landed, and whether he sailed up or down the American coast. Dr. Kohl has examined more carefully than any one else the various allusions to this voyage, and its results as laid down on the maps.2 His opinion is that Gomez struck the coast toward the North and sailed along it southward as far as the fortieth or forty-first parallel of latitude. He saw, probably, much of the New England coast, and may have entered many bays and even harbors, for his voyage lasted ten months. A map of the world made in 1529 by Diego Ribero, the imperial cosmographer, gives the name " tierra de Estevan Gomes" to that part of America answering nearly to New England and Nova Scotia.
I Discourse on Western Planting (2 Maine Ilist. Soc. ii. 113, 114).
2 Discovery of Maine, pp. 271-281, and ap- pendix to chapter viii.
35
EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY.
For some time nothing seems to have been done in England, after Cabot's discovery, in the way of exploration of the new continent. I am inclined to reject the voyage of 1517 under the supposed command of Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Part.1 But in 1527 two ships, the " Mary of Guilford" and the "Samson," sailed for the New World under the command of John Rut. The object of the expedition was probably the discovery of a northwest passage. One vessel, the "Samson," was lost; the other is said to have visited parts of the American coast, and Dr. Kohl supposes that she carried the first Europeans who are known to have trodden the shores of Maine.2 No detailed account of this voyage exists beyond Rut's letter from Newfoundland to the King, which is very meagre.3 It has been supposed by some that Verrazano was the pilot, and that he lost his life in this voyage.
Rut's expedition was followed in 1536 by that of " Master Hore," under- taken with the same object and very tragic in its details.4 After this unfortunate experience, the attention of the English was directed for a time to attempts to find a passage to Kathay by the northeast, in one of which Willoughby met his sad fate.
André Thevet, a Franciscan monk who accompanied Villegagnon's expedition to Brazil, is said to have sailed along the American coast on his return voyage to Europe in 1556. In his works written after his arrival home he gives a description of Norumbega, which Dr. Kohl considers interesting.5 But Thevet has not been esteemed a trustworthy authority, and much doubt exists as to his visit to New England.6
The French expeditions to Canada under Cartier and Roberval, the Huguenot colony in Florida, and the discoveries of the Spaniards and others at the southward do not come within the scope of this chapter. After the English had turned their attention to the search for a northeast passage, the idea of further exploration of America slumbered for many years. The plan of colonization was not yet conceived. Later in this same sixteenth century, however, England awakened to the value of the Ameri- can possessions which she might claim under the discovery of Cabot. Sir Hunphrey Gilbert wrote a treatise to prove the possibility of a northwest passage in 1576, and lost his life seven years later in an attempt to estab- lish England's supremacy in the Western World. And Richard Hakluyt, after publishing in 1582 his Divers Voyages, prepared in 1584 an elabo- rate Discourse on Western Planting, in aid of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was Gilbert's successor in the scheme for American colonization.
1 See Dr. Kohl's argument in Discovery of Maine, pp. 206-225. The opposite view is main- tained by Biddle, Memoir of S. Cabot, chs. xiii .- xv. 2 Discovery of Maine, pp. 281-289. Mr. De Costa controverts Dr. Kohl's claim that Rut Janded in Maine, Northmen in Maine, pp. 43-62. In the same volume, pp. So-122, he asserts for Jean Allefonsce the honor of the discovery of Massachusetts Bay.
·
3 Purchas, Pilgrimes, iii. Sog.
4 For Ilore's voyage see Dr. Asher's intro- duction to Ilcury Hudson the Navigator, p. xCv ; Dr. Kohl, Discovery of Maine, pp. 337-340; Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, iii. 129-131.
5 Discovery of Maine, pp. 416-420.
6 Northmen in Maine, pp. 63-79; Hakluyt, Western Planting, pp. 184, 185.
36
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Dr. Palfrey, after recounting these early voyages, when he comes to the story of Gosnold's expedition, says, with that admirable caution which is characteristic of a true historian, " Gosnold, Brereton, and three others went on shore, -the first Englishmen who are known to have set foot upon the soil of Massachusetts."1 The twenty years that have passed since Dr. Palfrey wrote do not make it possible to contradict with deci- sion this statement. Gosnold's expedition, planned with a view to a settlement, took place in 1602. He landed first at a point not far from Cape Ann, sailed thence across the bay, and entered the harbor of Provincetown. Rounding the end of Cape Cod, he sailed along its " back side," and at last pitched the site of his colony on the small island of Cuttyhunk in Buzzard's Bay. Here a fort, or protected house, was built, and the settlement begun. It was soon abandoned, however, for want of proper supplies, and the "Concord," Gosnold's vessel, returned with the people to England, where she arrived, says her commander, without " one cake of bread, nor any drink but a little vinegar left." 2
George Dexter
1 Palfrey, Hist. of .V. E., i. 71. 2 Gosnold's letter to his father ; Purchas, Pilgrimes, iv. 1646.
CHAPTER II.
THE EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY AND BOSTON HARBOR.
BV JUSTIN WINSOR, Librarian of Harvard University.
T HE broad indentation of the New England coast, of which Cape Sable and Cape Cod form the outer promontories, has of late years acquired the name of the Gulf of Mainc. In the southwest part of this expanse, enclosed by Cape Ann and Cape Cod, is the water which on modern maps is called Massachusetts Bay. This name was, however, by the earliest frequenters and planters, and subsequently by the settlers, confined to what is now called Boston Harbor. It is, moreover, probable that the name was even restricted to what we know as the inner harbor, if not indeed to that portion of it represented by Quincy Bay.1 Chiefly upon the shores of this minor inlet dwelt the Massachusetts Indians, a designation borrowed, it is said, primarily from a hillock on the shore, the name of which was later given to the high eminence known to Captain John Smith and others as Massachusetts Mount, and to us as the Blue Hill.2 This name - Massa- chusetts Bay - gradually extended, subsequent to the settlement, over the entire harbor, and finally took the range now appropriated to it.3 It is the cartographical history of these waters which is the subject of this chapter.
1 Wood, in 1634, speaks of the land on Quincy Bay : "This place is called Massachu- sets fields, where the greatest Sagamore in the Countrey lived before the plague, who caused it to be cleared for himself."
2 The origin and significance of the name has given rise to some conflicting views. See E. E. Ilale's note, and a letter of J. H. Trum- bull in American Antiquarian Society's Proceed- ings, Oct. 21, 1867, p. 77. For earlier views see Everett's Orations, ii. 116. IIutchinson, in 1764, speaks of the sachem's abode being on "a small hill or rising upland in the midst of a body of salt marsh, near to a place called Squantum ; " and adds, "it is known by the name of Massa- chusetts Ilill or Mount Massachusetts to this day." There is a small lithographic view of this hillock, after a sketch by Miss Eliza Susan
Quincy in 1827, with a distant view of Boston, taken from the late President Quincy's estate. It is in this called Moswetuset, or Sachem's Hill. Smith says that the plague, shortly after his visit, reduced this tribe to thirty individuals, and of these twenty-eight were killed by neigh- boring tribes, leaving two, who fled the country till the English came. Smith's Advertisements, &c., in 3 Mass. Ilist. Coll., vii. 16.
3 Drake, Hist. of Boston, P. 59, says it is not clear when the name Massachusetts was first applied to the great bay. The early writers seemed to look upon Charles River as begin- ning at Point Allerton, and Smith, in 1629, makes that designation an alternative, -"the bay of Massachusetts, otherwise called Charles River." So Dudley, in 1630, speaks of Charlestown as " three leagues up Charles River ; " and yet, in
38
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The outline of the Massachusetts coast was never drawn upon any map so as to be recognized, except from its relative position, before John Smith sailed along it in 1614; but it is curious to see how, from the very begin- ning of explorations, the headland of Cape Cod attracted attention.1 The Northmen of the tenth century left no charts known to us; but Torfæus, in his Gronlandia Antiqua, published in 1706, gives some old Icelandic delin- cations of the North Atlantic, which presumably may have followed some ancient Scandinavian charts, although made, of themselves, five or six hundred years after the Northmen voyages. Sigurd Stephanius, an Ice- lander, made such a one in 1570, but at that date more than two hundred years had passed since the last of these Norse voyages, if the Sagas are to be believed. This map represents the promontory of Finland (Cape Cod?), jutting from the main to the north and east, shaped much like a
the same writing (" Letter to the Countess of Lincoln "), he connects the two names, as dis- tinguishing harbor from stream, " the Massa- chusetts Bay and Charles River." Roger Clap, speaking of the arrival of the first vessel of Winthrop's fleet, May 30, 1630, says of the captain of it, that he " would not bring us into Charles River, but put us ashore on Nantasket Point;" and, after going to the Charlestown pe- ninsula in a boat, then they went " up Charles River." Winthrop, i. 144, sought to make a distinction in 1633, when he speaks of "the bay, or rather the lake, for so it were more properly termed, the bay being that part of the sea without, between the two capes, Cape Cod and Cape Ann." On Wood's map, 1634. the name is given as if it covered the great bay ; but this was for the engraver's convenience prob- ably, for in his text he says, "the chiefe and usuall llarbour is the still Bay of Massachusets, which is close aboard the plantations, in which most of our ships come to anchor." The bill of lading of 1632, given later in this volume, signifies Boston by the " aforesaid port of Mas- sachuset Bay." Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, P. 368, confines the name to the present harbor, in 1639-40. In 1676, a paper in Hutchinson's Collection speaks of "the Plantation of Massa- chusetts Bay, commonly called the Corporation of Boston." Deeds of Spectacle and Rainsford islands, respectively dated in 1684 and 1691, speak of them as "scituate in Massachusetts Bay." N. E. Ilist. and Gencal. Reg., January, 1868, p 47. The British Admiralty charts of about the Revolutionary time often apply to the present Massachusetts Bay the term Boston Bay, in distinction to Boston Harbor. On some of these maps the Gulf of Maine is called Massa- chusetts Bay. As late as 1852, Josiah Quincy, Municipal Ilist. of Boston, p. 2, conforms to the old usage, and speaks of Boston peninsula as formed by Charles River and Massachusetts Bay.
I The most effective study of this early car- tographical problem is given in Dr. John G. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, published by the Maine Historical Society. Cf. Amer. Antig. Soc. Proc., April 28, 1869, p. 37. Dr. Palfrey, History of New England, i. 96, gives but a meagre list of the early maps. A few of them are named in S. A. Drake's Nooks and Cor- tters of the New England Coast, ch. i. ; and their want of fitting delineation is discussed in B. F. De Costa's article on the Verrazzano map in the Magasine of American History, August, 1878, 1. 455. The great atlases of Jomard, Kunstmann, and Santarem contain several of the early maps showing the New England coast. The most complete enumeration of the French maps makes part of the section " Cartographie " in Harrisse's Notes sur la Nouvelle France, Paris, 1872, pp. 191-239. A collection of maps, formed by Har- risse, embracing early MS. and engraved maps, with copies of maps in the French archives, was offered some years since to the United States Government, but, on the failure of the negotiations, they became the property of S. L. M. Barlow, Esq., of New York, who kindly sent them to me for inspection. I have also seen the excellent collection of copies of early French maps made by Mr. Francis Parkman in the prose- cution of his studies. With the exception, how- ever, of Champlain, the French map-makers usu- ally concerned themselves only incidentally with the New England coast, their chief study being with Acadie, the course of the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes, and, later, of the Missis- sippi Valley. The resources for this study, with chance light on the New England coast, are also great in the Parliamentary Library (Ottawa, Canada) ; in the collection in our own State House, formed under authority by Mr. Ben. Perley Poore in Paris. As private collec- tors, Mr. O. II. Marshall, of Buffalo, and Mr. C. C. Baldwin, of Cleveland, have well cultivated this field.
39
EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY.
ship's nose. An appellation of this meaning is said in the old Norse story to have been given to a cape in this region. The bay lying to the west of it has an unindented continental line, and Dr. Kohl argues that some older leclandie original must have Skratlinge. been before Stephanius, as no European map previous Land to 1570 presents such a configuration. The Sagas name a point of land, Krossaness, lying within this bay; but this map gives nothing to correspond. It has been identified, as Mr. Dexter has pointed out, either with Point Allerton or the Gurnet Point.1 Promontorium Vinlandiae.
The Zeno map, drawn not long before 1400, but not published till 1558, shows in the southwest corner a bit of coast-line, skirted with islands, which those who believe in its authenticity interpret as a part of our New England coast.2
Of Sebastian Cabot's voyage, 1498, there are no charts remaining ; 3 but Juan de la Cosa, one of Columbus's companions, who made in 1500 the earliest existing map showing any part of the American continent, is supposed to have had access to Cabot's charts, or to copies of them. Cosa's map is now preserved in the Royal Library at Madrid, and was brought to light by Humboldt, when exploring Baron Walckenaer's library in Paris, in 1832. It shows, in an island off a promontory, what seems to be Cape Cod, but, according to the prevailing opinion of that time, it represents these landmarks as on the northeast coast of Asia, washed by "the sea discovered by the English," as the legend on it reads. That this configura- tion really represents the Gulf of Maine would be borne out by Peter Martyr's statement that Sebastian Cabot reached, sailing south, the latitude of Gibraltar; and Gomara's, that Cabot turned back at 38º north latitude. Still, some excellent later commentators have doubted if he came south of the St. Lawrence gulf. Yet it is upon Cabot's discoveries that the English for a long while claimed their rights to the coasts of New England and Nova Scotia.4
1 This map is sketched in Kohl, p. 107.
2 The map appeared in a little volume now scarce, published, as said by Mr. Dexter, at Venice in 1558, Dei Commentarii del Viaggio ; and it has been reproduced by R. H. Major in the Royal Geog. Society's Journal, 1873; in his ed. of the narrative, published by the Hakluyt Society, 1873; and in his paper in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., October, 1874. There are other fac-similes in the Catalogue of the John Carter Brown Library, p. 211 ; in Malte Brun's Annales des Voyages : in Kohl's Disc. of Maine, P. 97; and in Bryant and Gay's United States, i. S4, &c. 3 Hakluyt's Western Planting, ed. by Chas. Deane, p. 224. The portrait of Cabot preserved by our Historical Society is a copy of an original now destroyed. Cf. Mass. Fhist. Soc. Proc., Jan- uary, 1865.
4 Sir William Alexander, in 1630, set forth this claim, as given in the Bannatyne Collection of Royal Letters, Edinburgh, 1867, p. 61. Cf. Chas. Deane's note to Ilakluyt's Western Plant- ing, p. 194, and Hakluyt's argument in his ch. xviii. Purchas also discussed the claim. Cosa's map has often been re- produced since Hum- boldt gave it in his Examen Critique, and again, reduced, in his App. to Ghillany's Be- huim, Nuremberg, 1853. The best fac-simile is COSA'S MAP. in Jomard's Monu- ments de la Géographie, and a lithographic re- production of the American region is given in Henry Stevens's Ilist. and Geog. Notes, pl. I. It
40
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Cabot's discoveries, and his reports of the large quantities of fish in these waters, led to many Norman, Breton, and Biscayan fishing vessels following in his track. With from one third to one half of the days in the Calendar fast-days, fish was at that time an important article of food, and the fishing fleet along the coast as carly as 1504 was surprisingly large.1 It can hardly be possible that from the Grand Banks these fishermen should not have stretched their courses to George's Bank, and have made the acquaintance of the harbors of our bay. It seems evident that the fishermen made out the contour of the coast from Labrador south much before those exploring under royal commissions. Their sailing-charts, however, have all disap- peared, or, at least, none are known giving any delineation of our bay.
In 1508 the map of Ruysch was issued at Rome in an edition of Ptolemy's Geography. This is the rare but well-known earliest engraved map showing the new discoveries, and connecting them of course with the coast of Asia.2 Cape Race is clearly made out, but the coast trends westward from that point in a way hardly to be identified with any of the minor contours known to modern maps.3 Following this came an interval, when the region known through the discoveries of Cabot, and subsequently of Cortereal, the Portuguese, came out on the maps as an island or as an indefinite section of the main, while the Atlantic swept over the region now known as New England. This idea prevailed in the globe preserved in the Lenox Library in New York, made probably 1510-12; in Sylvanus's map to the Ptolemy of 1511; in the sketch-map of Leonardo da Vinci, preserved in the Queen's Collection at Windsor; in the map in Stobnicza's Ptolemy, a Polish edition of 1512 or later; in Schoner's globe, preserved at Nurem- berg, 1520, and in various other delincations.
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