Part 34

Mss. Cutler, penes me.

Mss. Cutler, penes me.

The late Dr. Waterhouse, Professor of Medicine at Cambridge, read lectures on Natural History to his classes as early as 1788, and published the botanical part of these lectures in the Monthly Anthology, 1804-8; reprinting this in 1811, with the title of the Botanist (Boston, 8vo, pp. 228). In the preface to this volume, the author’s are claimed to have been the first public lectures on Natural History given in the United States. The Massachusetts Professorship of Botany and Entomology was founded in 1805, and the Botanical Garden in 1807; but the eminent naturalist who first filled the chair left little behind him to bear witness to his acknowledged “learning and genius.”—Quincy, Hist. Harv. Univ., vol. ii. p. 330. The studies of Peck were not, however, confined to the Fauna and Flora of New England; and his distinguished successors in the lecture-room and the botanical garden—Mr. Nuttall, the late Dr. Harris, and Professor Gray—may be said to have maintained a like general, rather than local character, in the entomological and botanical investigations pursued at the University.

This house was one Mr. Robert Gibbs’s “of an ancient family in Devonshire,” says Farmer (Geneal. Reg., p. 120); and it stood on Fort Hill, the way leading to it becoming afterwards known as Gibbs’s Lane, and a wharf at the waterside, belonging to the property, as Gibbs’s Wharf. Mr. W. B. Trask, who obligingly examined for me the early deeds concerning this estate in Suffolk Registry, furnishes a memorandum, that on the 6th June, 1671, Robert Gibbs of Boston, merchant, conveys to Edward and Elisha Hutchinson, in trust, for Elizabeth, wife of said Robert, during her life, and after her decease to such child or children as he shall have by her, his land and house on Fort Hill, with warehouse on wharf, ‘which land was formerly my grandfather, Henry Webb’s.’ The wife of said Robert Gibbs was daughter to Jacob Sheafe by Margaret, daughter to Henry Webb, mercer. Sampson Sheafe, a Provincial councillor of New Hampshire, and the ancestor of a family of long standing there, married another daughter of Jacob Sheafe. Mr. Gibbs was father to the Rev. Henry Gibbs, minister of Watertown, and had other children; and the family continues to this day.

Compare the author’s Voyages, pp. 19, 161, 173, for other notices of Boston, and as to the first of these, which represents the town (in 1638) as “rather a village, ... there being not above twenty or thirty houses,” see the note in Savage’s Winthrop, edit. 1, vol. i. p. 267.

Mr. Henry Josselyn was probably living at Black Point in 1638, when his brother first visited it (Voyages, p. 20). It was then the estate (by grant from the council at Plymouth) and residence of Captain Thomas Cammock; but he, dying in 1643, bequeathed it, except five hundred acres which were reserved to his wife, to Josselyn, who, marrying the widow, succeeded to the whole property, which was described as containing fifteen hundred acres (Willis infra), but is called by Sullivan five thousand (History of Maine, p. 128). In 1658, this and other adjoining tracts were erected into a town by Massachusetts, under the name of Scarborough, which is thus further noticed by our author in his Voyages, p. 201, as “the town of Black Point, consisting of about fifty dwelling-houses, and a Magazine, or Doganne, scatteringly built. They have store of neat and horses, of sheep near upon seven or eight hundred, much arable and marsh, salt and fresh, and a corn-mill.”—Comp. Williamson’s Hist. of Maine, vol. i. pp. 392, 666; Willis in Geneal. Register, vol. i. p. 202.

Empyema is a result of disease of the lungs. See Voyages, p. 121.

Compare the accounts of the first appearance of the country by the Rev. Francis Higginson and Mr. Thomas Graves, both well-qualified observers, in New-England’s Plantation, London, 1630; reprinted in Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 117. And see Wood’s New England’s Prospect, a book which our author was probably acquainted with; as compare p. 4 of Wood (edit. 1764) with the beginning of p. 3 of the Rarities, and some other places in both.

The earliest ascents of the White Mountains were those made by Field and others in 1642, of which we have some account in Winthrop’s Journal (by Savage, edit. 1, vol. ii. pp. 67, 89). Darby Field, “an Irishman living about Pascataquack,” has the honor of being the first European who set foot upon the summit of Mount Washington. He appears at Exeter in 1639, and was at Dover in 1645, and died there in 1649, leaving a widow, and, it is said, children (A. H. Quint, N. E. Geneal. Reg., vol. vi. p. 38). It seems likely, from his account, that Field, on reaching the Indian town in the Saco Valley, “at the foot of the hill” where the “two branches of Saco river met,” pursued his way up the valley either of Rocky Branch or of Ellis River, till he gradually attained to the region of dwarf firs, on what is known as Boott’s Spur, which is between the “valley” called Oakes’s Gulf, in which the “Mount Washington” branch of the Saco has its head, and the valley in which the Rocky Branch rises (see G. P. Bond’s Map of the White Mountains). There is no other way that shall fulfil the conditions of the narrative except that over Boott’s Spur; but of the three streams, that is, “the two branches of Saco River,” which come together at or near the probable site of the Indian town, the Rocky Branch is the shortest, and its valley the most ascending. Field repeated his visit, with some others, “about a month after;” and later, in the same year, the mountains were visited by the worshipful Thomas Gorges, Esq., Deputy-Governor, and Richard Vines, Esq., Councillor of the Province of Maine, of which Winthrop takes notice at p. 89. Whether Josselyn went up himself, or had his account from others, does not appear. But his calling the mountains “inaccessible but by the gullies,” leaves it at least supposable, that he, or the party from which he got his information (perhaps Gorges’s), instead of gradually ascending the long ridges, or spurs, penetrated into one of the gulfs (as they are there called), or ravines, of the eastern side; the walls of which are exceedingly steep, and literally inaccessible in many parts, except by the gullies. The “large level or plain of a day’s journey over, whereon grows nothing but moss,” is noticed in Winthrop’s account of Gorges’s ascent, but not in that of Field’s; and this plain—which doubtless includes what has since been called “Bigelow’s Lawn” (lying immediately under the south-eastern side of the summit of Mount Washington), but understood also, in Gorges’s account, to extend northward as far as the “Lake of the Clouds”—furnishes another ground for supposing that the last-mentioned explorer, or, at least, Josselyn, may have penetrated the mountain by one of its eastern ravines; several of which head in the great plain mentioned, while that is rather remote from what we have taken for Field’s “ridge.” Our author is the only authority for the “pond of clear water in the midst of” the top of Mount Washington; though a somewhat capacious spring, which was well known there before the putting-up of the house on the summit, may have been larger once; or he may rather have mistaken, or misremembered, the position of the Lake of the Clouds.

Compare, as to the insulation of the tract understood by Josselyn as New England, Palfrey, Hist. N. E., vol. i. pp. 1, 2, and note, and the accompanying map.

See the author’s larger account of the natives in his Voyages, pp. 123-150.

There is a much fuller account—to be noticed again—of our birds, in the Voyages, pp. 95-103. Wood’s (N. E. Prospect, chap, viii.) is also curious. In the notes which immediately follow, on the birds, beasts, fishes, and reptiles, the oldest writers on our natural history will be found often to explain or illustrate each other.

Chimney-swallow.

“The pilhannaw is the king of birds of prey in New England. Some take him to be a kind of eagle; others for the Indian ruck,—the biggest bird that is, except the ostrich. One Mr. Hilton, living at Pascataway, had the hap to kill one of them. Being by the sea-side, he perceived a great shadow over his head, the sun shining out clear. Casting up his eyes, he saw a monstrous bird soaring aloft in the air; and, of a sudden, all the ducks and geese (there being then a great many) dived under water, nothing of them appearing but their heads. Mr. Hilton, having made readie his piece, shot and brought her down to the ground. How he disposed of her, I know not; but had he taken her alive, and sent her over into England, neither Bartholomew nor Sturbridge Fair could have produced such another sight.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 95. These notices have been taken to be sufficient by some writers to show the probable existence of “a bird of prey, very large and bold, on the back of some of our American plantations.” But our author’s account indicates clearly a crested eagle, which we cannot explain by any thing nearer home than the yzquautli, or crested vulture of Mexico and the countries south of it (Falco Harpyja, Gmel.); two notices of which (cited by Linnæus) had been published some twenty years before Josselyn wrote, and may have been supposed by him to be applicable to a large bird which he had heard of as inhabiting mountains about Ossipee. The great heron—an inhabitant of the coast, and so uncommon inland that “one ... shot in the upper parts of New Hampshire was described to” Wilson “as a great curiosity” (Amer. Ornith., by Brewer, p. 555)—has the size and the crest of Josselyn’s bird; and, if this last was only (as is possible) the name of a confused conception made up from several accounts of large birds, the heron may well be thought to have had a share in it.

“Of these, sometimes there will be forty, threescore and a hundred, of a flock; sometimes more, and sometimes less. Their feeding is acorns, hawes, and berries: some of them get a haunt to frequent English corn. In winter, when the snow covers the ground, they resort to the seashore to look for shrimps, and such small fishes, at low tides. Such as love turkey-hunting must follow it in winter, after a new-fallen snow, when he may follow them by their tracks. Some have killed ten or a dozen in half a day. If they can be found towards an evening, and watched where they perch,—if one come about ten or eleven of the clock,—he may shoot as often as he will: they will sit, unless they be slenderly wounded. These turkies remain all the year long. The price of a good turkey-cock is four shillings; and he is well worth it, for he may be in weight forty pounds; a hen, two shillings.”—Wood, N. Eng. Prospect, chap. viii. See also Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 99.

“The geese of the country be of three sorts. First, a brant goose; which is a goose almost like the wild goose in England. The price of one of these is sixpence. The second kind is a white goose, almost as big as an English tame goose. These come in great flocks about Michaelmas: sometimes there will be two or three thousand in a flock. Those continue six weeks, and so fly to the southward; returning in March, and staying six weeks more, returning to the northward. The price of one of these is eightpence. The third kind of geese is a great grey goose, with a black neck, and a black and white head; strong of flight: and these be a great deal bigger than the ordinary geese of England; some very fat, and, in the spring, full of feathers, that the shot can scarce pierce them. Most of these geese remain with us from Michaelmas to April. They feed in the sea upon grass in the bays at low water, and gravel, and in the woods of acorns; having, as other fowl have, their pass and repass to the northward and southward. The accurate marksmen kill of these both flying and sitting. The price of a grey goose is eighteen-pence.”—Wood, N. E. Prospect, l. c. The white goose here mentioned is probably the snow-goose; upon which compare Nuttall, Mass. Ornith., Water-Birds, p. 344. Josselyn (Voyages, p. 100) says the brant and the gray goose “are best meat; the white are lean and tough, and live a long time; whereupon the proverb, ‘Older than a white goose:’” which is not supported by Wood or later writers. The snow-goose has become much less frequent with us since the settlement of the country. The great grey goose of Wood is our well-known Canada goose.

This was the best that our author could say of the eagles of New England. Wood assists us once more here: “The eagles of the country be of two sorts,—one like the eagles that be in England; the other is something bigger, with a great white head and white tail. These be commonly called gripes.”—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c. The first spoken of by Wood—and perhaps, also, what Josselyn names last—may be the common or ring-tailed eagle, now known to be the young of the golden eagle. The second of Wood, and first of our author, is without doubt, the bald eagle; the (so to say) tyrannical habits of which bird are sufficiently well known, at least in the vivid pages of Wilson. See the Voyages, p. 96; where we learn also that “hawkes there are of several kinds; as goshawks, falcons, laniers, sparrow-hawkes, and a little black hawke highly prized by the Indians, who wear them on their heads, and is accounted of worth sufficient to ransom a sagamour. They are so strangely couragious and hardie that nothing flyeth in the air that they will not bind with. I have seen them tower so high, that they have been so small that scarcely could they be taken by the eye” (p. 95-6). Wood makes like mention of this little black hawk (New-Eng. Prospect, l. c.); and R. Williams (Key into the Language of the Indians of N. E., in Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 220) calls it “sachim, a little bird about the bigness of a swallow, or less; to which the Indians give that name, because of its sachem or prince-like courage and command over greater birds: that a man shall often see this small bird pursue and vanquish and put to flight the crow and other birds far bigger than itself.” This was our well-known king-bird; and Josselyn, on the same page, tells us of “a small ash-colour bird that is shaped like a hawke, with talons and beak, that falleth upon crowes; mounting up into the air after them, and will beat them till they make them cry:” which was, perhaps, the king-bird’s half-cousin, as Wilson calls him,—the purple-martin.

Nuttall (Manual, Water-Birds, p. 520) says that the young of the red-throated diver is called cobble in England. Our author elsewhere (Voyages, p. 101) makes mention of the “wobble” and the “wilmote” (that is, guillemot) as distinct; but his wilmot was “a kind of teal.”

“He maketh a noise sometimes like a sow-gelder’s horn.”—N. Eng. Prospect, l. c.

The first is the great-horned or cat-owl; the second, probably, the mottled or little screech-owl, which Wood notices more fully as “small, speckled like a partridge, with ears” (l. c.); and the third, the Acadian or little owl. There are but two owls reckoned in New-England’s Prospect; the second of which—“a great owl, almost as big as an eagle; his body being as good meat as a partridge” (l. c.)—is, perhaps, the snowy owl, which, according to Audubon, is good eating.—Peabody Report on Birds of Mass., p. 275.

It is not clear what is meant here. The author merely mentions the bird again, in Voyages, p. 96.

So Wood: “There are no magpies, jackdaws, cuckoos, jays, &c.”—New-England’s Prospect, l. c. Our author, in his Voyages, adds to the above list of New-England birds the following: “The partridge is larger than ours; white-flesht, but very dry: they are indeed a sort of partridges called grooses. The pidgeon, of which there are millions of millions.... The snow-bird, like a chaffinch, go in flocks, and are good meat.... Thrushes, with red breasts, which will be very fat, and are good meat.... Thressels, ... filladies, ... small singing-birds; ninmurders, little yellow birds; New-England nightingales, painted with orient colours,—black, white, blew, yellow, green, and scarlet,—and sing sweetly; wood-larks, wrens, swallows, who will sit upon trees; and starlings, black as ravens, with scarlet pinions. Other sorts of birds there are; as the troculus, wagtail or dish-water, which is here of a brown colour; titmouse,—two or three sorts; the dunneck or hedge-sparrow, who is starke naked in his winter nest; the golden or yellow hammer,—a bird about the bigness of a thrush, that is all over as red as bloud; woodpeckers of two or three sorts, gloriously set out with variety of glittering colours; the colibry, viemalin, or rising or walking-bird, an emblem of the resurrection, and the wonder of little birds. The water-fowl are these that follow: Hookers, or wild swans; cranes; ... four sorts of ducks,—a black duck, a brown duck like our wild ducks, a grey duck, and a great black and white duck. These frequent rivers and ponds. But, of ducks, there be many more sorts; as hounds, old wives, murres, doies, shell-drakes, shoulers or shoflers, widgeons, simps, teal, blew-wing’d and green-wing’d didapers or dipchicks, fenduck, duckers or moorhens, coots, pochards (a water-fowl like a duck), plungeons (a kind of water-fowl, with a long, reddish bill), puets, plovers, smethes, wilmotes (a kind of teal), godwits, humilities, knotes, red-shankes, ... gulls, white gulls or sea-cobbs, caudemandies, herons, grey bitterns, ox-eyes, birds called oxen and keen, petterels, king’s fishers, ... little birds that frequent the sea-shore in flocks, called sanderlins. They are about the bigness of a sparrow, and, in the fall of the leaf, will be all fat. When I was first in the countrie” (that is, in 1638; in which connection, what follows is not without its interest to us), “the English cut them into small pieces to put into their puddings, instead of suet. I have known twelve-score and above killed at two shots.... The cormorant, shape or sharke” (pp. 99-103).

Compare the account given in the Voyages, pp. 82-95, which is much fuller; as also New-England’s Prospect, chap. vi.

“Most fierce in strawberry-time; at which time they have young ones; at which time, likewise, they will go upright, like a man, and climb trees, and swim to the islands: which if the Indians see, there will be more sportful bear-baiting than Paris garden can afford; for, seeing the bears take water, an Indian will leap after him; where they go to water-cuffs for bloody noses and scratched sides. In the end, the man gets the victory; riding the bear over the watery plain, till he can bear him no longer.... There would be more of them, if it were not for the wolves which devour them. A kennel of those ravening runagadoes, setting upon a poor, single bear, will tear him as a dog will tear a kid.”—New-Eng. Prospect, l. c., which see farther; and also Josselyn’s Voyages, pp. 91-2.

Stupefied with drink.—Webster, Eng. Dict.

Thwart.

“The woolves be in some respect different from them in other countries. It was never known yet that a wolf ever set upon a man or woman: neither do they trouble horses or cows; but swine, goats, and red calves, which they take for deer, be often destroyed by them; so that a red calf is cheaper than a black one, in that regard, in some places.... They be made much like a mungrel; being big-boned, lank-paunched, deep-breasted; having a thick neck and head, prick ears and long snout, with dangerous teeth; long, staring hair, and a great bush-tail. It is thought by many that our English mastiff might be too hard for them: but it is no such matter; for they care no more for an ordinary mastiff than an ordinary mastiff cares for a cur. Many good dogs have been spoiled by them.... There is little hope of their utter destruction; the country being so spacious, and they so numerous, travelling in the swamps by kennels: sometimes ten or twelve are of a company.... In a word, they be the greatest inconveniency the country hath.”—New-England’s Prospect, l. c.

Spoken of again in the Voyages, pp. 94 and 193; and in Hubbard, Hist. N. England, p. 25. Josselyn’s may be compared with Lewis and Clark’s notice of the Indian dog (Travels, vol. ii. p. 165).