USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Topographical and historical description of Boston > Part 5
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During the year 1493, Columbus made a second voy- age to the new world; and, on the eighth day of Decem- ber of the same year, he laid the foundation of a town on the island of Hispaniola, which, being the first founded in the new country, he named Isabella, in honor of his patroness, the Queen of Castile.
It was not, however, until the first day of August, 1498, that Columbus, on his third voyage, reached any part of the main land of the American continent; nor was he aware, at that time, that the land which was then seen was any other than an island; therefore he gave it the name of La Isla Santa, little thinking that he beheld, for the first time, the soil of a new continent. This land, situated at the mouth of the river Orinoco, is now in- cluded within the boundaries of the republic of Vene- zuela, which lies easterly of that great country which bears the name of Colombia, in grateful remembrance of the illustrious navigator, its first European discoverer.
After making a fourth voyage across the Atlantic, the admiral, for by this title Columbus wished always to be designated, quitting forever the field of his discov- eries and glory, returned to Spain; and, being worn out by fatigue, ill-treatment, and premature old age, he died at Valladolid on the twentieth of May, 1506, in about the seventy-first year of his age, and the fourteenth of
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
his renown, and was buried in the convent of St. Fran- cisco, the funeral services being attended with great pomp, in the parochial church of Santa Maria de la An- tigua. Such, however, is the mutability of all sublunary matters, that his earthly remains were afterwards re- moved, in the year 1513, to a chapel of a Carthusian monastery in Seville, and again, in 1536, to Hispaniola, where they were deposited in the principal chapel of the cathedral, in the city of San Domingo. After remaining in this last place of sepulture about two hundred and sixty years, the relics of the great discoverer were trans- ported to the island of Cuba, and in January, 1796, were placed near the great altar in the cathedral at Havana, there, it is hoped, nevermore to be disturbed by mortal hands.
Although Columbus was the first authentic discov- erer of the western hemisphere, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century, an Icelandic historian, Thormoder Thorfæus, inspired with national pride, claimed for his own countrymen a prior knowledge of the American continent, founded on tradition of undoubted authority, dating back many centuries.
It is well known that the Northmen, inhabiting Nor- way, Sweden and Denmark, were at a very early period of the Christian era acquainted with the science and practice of navigation, far surpassing the people of the south of Europe in building vessels and managing them upon the sea. The adventures of this people, however, were of a mere predatory character, and possessed noth- ing of that thirst for the glory of discovery which so eminently distinguished those of the navigators of the southern countries. As early as the year 861, in one of their piratical excursions, Iceland was discovered; and,
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about the year 889, Greenland was peopled by the Danes under Friedlos, better known as Eireck Rauda, Eric Raude, and sometimes as Eric the Red, a noted chief- tain.
Very early in the eleventh century, Biarne or Biorne, sometimes called Biron in historical writings, an Icelan- der, who had visited many different countries with his father, Heriulf, for trading purposes, being accidentally separated from his parent on one of these voyages, in directing his course to Greenland was driven by a storm southwesterly to an unknown country, level in its for- mation, destitute of rocks, and thickly wooded, having an island near its coast. After the abatement of the storm, performing his intended voyage to Greenland, he sailed, in the year 1002, on a voyage of discovery in company with Leif (son of the Eric the Red), a person of adventurous disposition, whose desire he had awakened by a recital of his accidental discovery. In this expedi- tion, Biron officiated as guide. It is supposed that the countries which these men visited on this voyage, and which they called Helluland on account of the rocky soil, Markland (the woody), and Vinland dat gode (the good wine country), were in the neighborhood of the island of Newfoundland and the gulf of St. Lawrence; and that the inhabitants, which from their diminutive size they called Skrælings, were the aborigines of that region.
It has been stated that the Icelandic navigators not only visited the shores of Greenland and Labrador, but in often repeated voyages they explored the seacoast of America as far south as New Jersey, establishing colonies in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. They are supposed to have been in New England on some of their voyages, and it has been suggested by Wheaton in
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
his history of the Northmen that they even anchored near the harbor of Boston; but of this the tradition is very vague and unsatisfactory.
Leif, the son of Eric, was succeeded in his explora- tions by his brother Thorwald, who in the year 1003 attempted discoveries more to the southward than those previously made, and who is said to have fallen in with several islands, perhaps those lying south of the Massachusetts coast, destitute of inhabitants. In a subsequent year, 1004, pursuing a more easterly and then northerly direction, he passed a cape to which he gave the name Kiliarnese, by some supposed to be Cape Cod, and following the coast in a circuitous course discovered an abrupt promontory well covered with forest trees, which he named Krossaness, and which archæologists have been led to think was one of the headlands of Boston harbor called by the Plymouth forefathers, in honor of their early agent, Point Aller- ton, the northerly termination of Nantasket Beach. The voyage of this last individual ended as it com- menced by wintering at Vinland previous to a return to Greenland, the place from which it was projected.
Another of the same class of adventurers, but a per- son of considerable distinction and wealth among his countrymen, Thorfin by name, made a similar attempt in the same direction in 1007. By this time the route to Wineland, the Vinland of Leif, had become well- known to the Icelandic and Norwegian navigators, and Thorfin, with more than usual encouragement, and an outfit ample for the days in which it was made, set sail in three vessels with seven score of men with the inten- tion of planting a colony in some of the regions that had been discovered by his predecessors, or upon some new
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
and more suitable territory which he perchance might fall in with on his voyage. Whether the island abound- ing with wild ducks, to which he gave the name of Straumey, was Martha's Vineyard, and his new haven of' Straumfiords was Buzzard's Bay, cannot well be de- termined; but it is related, that in prosecuting his inves- tigations farther in an inland direction by passing through a river giving prospect of the desired land, and arriving in an expanse of water bountifully supplied with grain and fruitful vines, he met with savages whose description is not much unlike that of the New England Indians, and who forced him much against his will to give up his contemplated design, and return home, not only frustrated but disheartened from making further at- tempts; and thus terminated, with the exception of a few smaller attempts, the voyages of the Icelandic navi- gators and adventurers upon the American continent.
Wales, in the person of Madoc, son of Owen Gwyn- neth, claims to be interested in the first settling of America. It is asserted by Hakluyt, who wrote in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and whose book was first pub- lished in 1589, that this Welshman, a younger son of one of the Welsh rulers, left his natural home, where his relatives were quarrelling about an inheritance, and sailing for the west, made discovery of land in the neighborhood of Florida, in the year 1170. It is also said that he made several voyages, and finally established himself and followers in a region not far from Mexico and the West Indies. But these accounts, written at a time when England was aspiring to the sovereignty of the New World, are too frivolous, and are destitute of all internal evidence of truth. The same may be said of almost all of the early claimed discoveries, including
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
those of the brothers Zeno: and, indeed, whatever may have been gained by these traditionary voyages, it is certain that they were forgotten for many years; and that, as late as the fifteenth century, Greenland was only known to the Norwegians and Danes as a lost land.
Notwithstanding the exalted idea Columbus had of the importance of his discovery, his imagination fell far short of its real greatness. He never dreamed of hav- ing given a new continent to the world; his utmost thought being that he had found a new and shorter pas- sage to the long-known golden regions of the East. But it remained for another, Amerigo Vespucci, who followed in his plain and easy track, to take advantage of his ignorance, and give his name to the largest conti- nent of the world, by announcing, as he did in his famous letter to Lorenzo de Medici, in 1504, that the land discovered in the western hemisphere was not the India long sought by a western passage, but a new and exten- sive continent.
On the fifth of March, 1496, John Cabot, a Venetian merchant residing in Bristol, England, obtained from Henry VII., King of England, a patent, giving power to himself and three sons (Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius), or either of their legal representatives, to sail with five ships, procured at their own expense, for the purpose of making search for lands unknown to Christian people, where they should raise the standard of England, and occupy the land, thus discovered and possessed, as vas- sals of the English crown. The patentees were required to pay to the king one-fifth of all the proceeds of the enterprise; and, moreover, were bound to land at the port of Bristol on their return from all voyages. John Cabot, and his son Sebastian, a native of Bristol, and
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afterwards more distinguished than his father, sailing from Bristol in the ship Matthew, undertook their voyage to the unknown regions of the west under this patent; and in this adventure made the first authentic discovery of the American continent. The land thus discovered by English merchants was a portion of Labrador, and the event took place on the twenty-fourth day of June, ' 1497, O. S., about fourteen months before Columbus on his third voyage came in sight of the main land, and nearly two years before Amerigo Vespucci (or, as he is better known, Americus Vespucius) ventured to follow the illustrious Columbus.
On the third of February of the next year, another patent, with more limited powers and privileges, was granted to John and Sebastian Cabot, father and son, who sailed for Labrador in the following May. In this voyage they made land very far to the north; and, having coasted as far south as the most southern boundary of Maryland, were compelled to put about and return to England on account of a deficiency of provisions. Al- though Sebastian Cabot kept up an interest in adventu- rous voyages until his death, at a very advanced age,very little is known of his making any subsequent to this.
Of the long list of illustrious names connected with the voyages made to the southern part of the North American Continent, nothing further need be said; but it may not be uninteresting to notice the fact, that in 1524, John de Verazzani, a Florentine, in the service of Francis I. of France, discovered a continent, in which he found a harbor supposed to be that of New York; and that he subsequently coasted along the northern shores as far as Newfoundland. Many were the voyagers who visited the American coast in northern latitudes
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before the actual settlement of New England, some of whom attempted the establishment of colonies, but failed in their endeavors. Others attempted the colonization of Virginia with more or less success.
It would be a serious omission not to mention in this place, that, after the unfortunate attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to make a settlement of Virginia, under the patent obtained of Queen Elizabeth, in 1584, Bartholo- mew Gosnold, a daring mariner from the western part of England, being possessed of a great desire for discovery, on the twenty-sixth of March, 1602, O. S., set sail from Yarmouth, in England, in a small vessel with only thirty-two men, and by the first direct course ever accomplished made land on the fourteenth of May fol- lowing. After cruising about a fortnight, he disem- barked on the eighteenth of May, probably the first Englishman who set foot on Massachusetts soil, selecting as a resting-place the small island called Cuttyhunk, the most westerly of the group at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, known as the Elizabeth Islands, and about fifteen miles south of New Bedford. There upon a little but well wooded islet of about one acre of land, in a pond of fresh water, Gosnold built a fort, and established a home, the vestiges of which to a sharp and not incredulous eye may be seen at the present time. The stay at Cuttyhunk was of short duration, only long enough to give time for discoveries near the present site of New Bedford; for on the eighteenth of June, scarcely a month after his landing, he sailed with his men for home, and arrived at Exmouth, in the west of England, on the twenty-third of July. Gosnold, nothing daunted, returned to America in an expedition for the settlement of Virginia, where he died at Jamestown on the twenty-
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second of August, 1607, much regretted by his associ- ates, by whom he had been held in the highest esteem.
The next attempt, of any account, for the settlement of New England by Englishmen, was made in the year 1607, by Sir George Popham and Raleigh Gilbert, with a hundred men and the proper supplies. Having left Plymouth, England, on the last of May, they fell in with Monahigon Island, near the coast of Maine, on the eleventh of August, and selected, for their field of operations, a position at Sagadahoc, at the mouth of Kennebec River. There, after going through certain forms, they built a barn for a storehouse, and having fortified it in some degree against the hostile attacks of the natives, called it Fort St. George. Popham, under the title of President, took command of the small colony of forty-five persons, and the larger part of the original one hundred left for England on the fifth of the follow- ing December. Early the next year, on the fifth of February, Popham, their president, died, and the com- pany soon after, discouraged by this sad event, and dispirited by the loss by fire of a great part of their stores, abandoned the settlement of Sagadahoc. The French, however, were more successful in their endeavors, and made several small settlements, the most important of which was Quebec, the foundations of which were laid by Samuel Champlain on the third of July, 1608.
Captain John Smith, whose name has become so familiar on account of his participation in the coloniza- tion of Virginia, and his visit to the New England coast, to which he gave name, set sail from the Downs on the third of March, 1613-14, and arrived at the island of Monahigon on the last of April, 1614. In a boat, which he had built since his arrival, Capt. Smith, with
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eight men, explored the seacoast from Penobscot River to Cape Cod, trading with the natives, and giving names to the various localities, which he subsequently pre- served upon a map of his own drawing, that is now regarded as one of the greatest curiosities which has been transmitted to posterity from the early voyagers. It was on this memorable occasion that, during the absence of the captain, the master of one of the vessels, Thomas Hunt, enticed on board his vessel twenty-four of the natives, and, conveying them into Spain, sold many of them for slaves. Among these captives was the famous Squanto, or Tisquantum, who subsequently, on being restored to his home, proved of very much service to the Plymouth colonists. Capt. Smith died in London on the twenty-first of June, 1631, in the fifty- second year of his age.
Captain Thomas Dermer, who had been with Cap- tain Smith in his voyage to New England in 1614, visited the region of Plymouth in June, 1620, about six months previous to the memorable landing of the Ply- mouth forefathers. He restored to his home the captive Squanto, and then returned to Virginia, where he soon died of wounds received from the Indians of Martha's Vineyard.
On the sixth of September, 1620, O. S., the Plymouth forefathers, after previous ineffectual attempts, left the harbor of Plymouth, in England, in the May Flower, a vessel of a hundred and eighty tons' burden, and on the ninth of November, the sixty-fourth day of their voyage, came in sight of the cliffs of Cape Cod, (as the promon- tory which now bears the name was called by Gosnold in 1602, although Smith in 1614 attempted to designate it Cape James in honor of the ruling sovereign of Eng-
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land; ) and in the hospitable harbor of Provincetown dropped anchor on the eleventh. There, on the last men- tioned day, the pilgrim fathers of New England first entered into a most sacred compact for their better order- ing and preservation; there the firstborn of that little band of self exiles first saw light; and there the iminor- tal passengers of the May Flower first set foot on American soil, just one month before the famous land- ing upon Plymouth Rock, on Monday, the eleventh of December, 1620, O. S., which by the new style of reckon- ing time occurred on the twenty-first. On the fifth of April of the next year, the May Flower returned to England; the Fortune arrived on the ninth of Novem- ber, 1621, the Ann and the Little James in August, 1623, and the Charity in 1624, and from this time forward arrivals at Plymouth were frequent.
In 1622, Thomas Weston, a London merchant, who had been among the most active of the adventurers in promoting the settlement of Plymouth, withdrew his interest and attempted the establishment of a plantation of his own; and for this purpose sent fifty or more men in two vessels, the Charity and the Swan, to commence a colony in the neighborhood of Plymouth, at a place called Wessagusset, part of the township of Weymouth. Not succeeding to their mind, and fearing destruction by the Indians, these men abandoned the design, and the plantation was broken up within a year of its commence- ment under the auspices of Mr. Weston.
In the year 1623, David Tompson, a Scotchman, and Edward and William Hilton, fishmongers of London, under patents obtained by John Mason and Sir Ferdi- nando Gorges, and others, commenced a settlement at Piscataqua River. Subsequently the Hiltons removed
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to Cocheco, now known as Dover, in New Hampshire. In 1624, under an indenture, with all the formality of a charter, made on the first day of January, 1623-4, be- tween Edmund, Lord Sheffield, on the first part, and Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow and their as- sociates and planters at Plymouth, on the second, an attempt for the settlement of a plantation at Cape Ann was made by Roger Conant and others, under the pat- ronage of the Dorchester Company in England. From this effort undoubtedly resulted the settlement of Salem, which dates its precedence from 1626, when a portion of Conant's colony removed to Naumkeik or Naumkeag, named by Smith on his early chart as Bastable, but sub- sequently called Salem by the early Massachusetts colonists.
During the same year an abortive attempt was made for a settlement at Mount Wollaston (now Quincy) by that prince of misrule, Thomas Morton, a London petti- fogger. This by the instrumentality of the Plymouth colony was summarily prevented.
On the nineteenth of March, 1627-8, Sir Henry Rosewell and Sir John Young, with their associates near Dorchester, in England, purchased of the Council for New England a patent for that part of the coun- try situated between three miles to the northward of the Merrimac River and three miles to the southward of the Charles River, and in length from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea. Under this charter, "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England " commenced the settlement of the Massa- chusetts colony ; and for this purpose they chose Matthew Cradock to be their Governor, and Thomas Goffe their Deputy-Governor; and Captain John Endicott and
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
Samuel Skelton and others were first sent over to Naumkeag, now Salem, which was the first town perma- nently settled in the Massachusetts colony, Endicott's company arriving in New England on the sixth of Sep- tember, 1628, and Skelton's on the twenty-ninth of June, 1629. A few persons from the Salem people about the same time settled Mishawum, (Charlestown,) where were seated a tribe of Indians called Aberginians, under John Sagamore, their chief.
Perhaps the greatest step which the Massachusetts company took was consummated on the twenty-ninth of August, 1629, when it was determined, by the " general consent of the company," that the government and pa- tent should be settled in New England. A few days previous to this resolution, twelve men, among whom were Sir Richard Saltonstall, Thomas Dudley, Isaac Johnson, Increase Nowell and John Winthrop, pledged themselves at Cambridge, to be ready to embark for New England with their families on the following March. In this stage of affairs, Matthew Cradock resigned his office as Governor, and John Winthrop was chosen in his place; and Mr. Goffe gave way to John Humphrey as Deputy-Governor.
It may be well, here, to pass in review the great charters under which the first colonists were induced to leave their old homes of England, and to transplant themselves to American soil. On the tenth day of April, 1606, O. S., the memorable letters patent passed the seals of Westminster, when the first James of England, son of the unfortunate Mary of Scotland, granted the first charter, to Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers and others, and established by one instrument the two great colonies of America, - one
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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
to be called "the First Colony of Virginia," and to be under the London Company, and the other to be called "the Second Colony of Virginia," and to be under the Plymouth Company. By this grant the terri- tories of these two overlapped each other three whole degrees of latitude, without ever causing any serious difficulties between the colonies on this account. A second charter was granted to the London Company on the twenty-third of May, 1609, and a third charter to the same on the twelfth of March, 1611-12, when they were incorporated by the name of "the Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony in Virginia."
On the third of November, 1620, the patent of New England was granted to the "council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing of New England in America." This document, generally designated as the "Great Patent of New England," was in reality the basis of the various charters, indentures, and grants which were so numerous during the first years of the colonization of New England; and which, with the exception of the Massachusetts Charter, under which the settlement of Boston was commenced, need not be mentioned in this connection.
On the fourth of March, 1628-9, O. S., the first Charles of England granted letters patent to Sir Henry Rosewell and others as a body corporate "by the name of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England." The original of this is preserved in the State archives, and has upon it the certificate, signed by Charles Cæsar, that Matthew Cradock quali- fied under the charter on the eighteenth of March,
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1628-9; a duplicate of the same is preserved at Salem. The original at Boston has the following indorsement: " A perpetuity granted to Sir Henry Rosewell and others of parte of Newe England, in America. Wolse- ley." The Salem copy has this indorsement: "A du- plicate upon a pa - granted to Sir Henry Rosewell and others. Wolseley." The original has the autograph signature of Wolseley, while the latter has the name written by the engrosser.
Such was the condition of New England, and such the settlements in the colonies of Plymouth and Mas- sachusetts, when the first settlers of Boston were pre- paring for planting a colony on the territory which the following chapters will attempt to describe.
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TOPOGRAPHICAL
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