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NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS.
BY
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.


WITH ILL USTRA TIONS.


BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1871.







EnterecIý according to Act of Congress, in the year 187T,
B3Y HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


RAND, AVERY, & FRYE, PRiNTERs, 3 CORIHZLL, BOSTON.





THE following hastily-prepared sketches, originally published in less permanient form, are
collected at the request of indulgent readers, and offered with all due apology for their incompleteness.                                                                         H. P. S.
NEWBURYPORT, MASS., Aug. r, 1871.    0 -




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9







CONTENTS.
PAGE.
TE TRUE AccoUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD....        1
CHARLESTOWN...                         8
SALEM....    15
NEWBURYPORT.... 24
DOVER...... 29
PORTSMOUTH3...                                                6





9





ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE.
KIDD KILLS WILLIAM MOORE......... 3
ESCAPE OF THE MYSTERIOUS LADY FROM THE URSULINE CONVENT ON MT. BENEDICT. 11
RUINS OF THE URSULINE CONVENT....... 13
REV. GEORGE BURROUGHS ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT.... 17
CAPT. BOARDMAN ORDERS THE BRITISH FLAG TO BE STRUCK.... 25
GRAND-DAUGHTER OF MAJOR WALDRON ALONE IN THE WOODS... 33
FRANCES DEERING MAKING SIGNAL...... 37





.Iva&





THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.


THE islands about the harbors of all our New
England rivers are so wild, and would seem to
have offered so many advantages, that they
have always been supposed, by the ruder population, to be the hiding-place of piratical treasures, and particularly of Captain Kidd's; and
the secretion, among rocks and sands, of chests
of jewels stripped from noble Spanish ladies
who have walked the awful plank, with shotbags full of diamonds, and ingots of pure gold,
is one of the tenets of the vulgar faith. This
belief has ranged up and down the whole
shore with more freedom than the pirates ever
did, and the legends on the subject are legion
-from the old Frenchman of Passamaquoddy
Bay to the wild stories of the Jersey and Carolina sandbars too countless for memory, the
Fireship off Newport, the Shrieking Woman of
Marblehead, and the Lynn Mariner who, while
burying his treasure in a cave, was sealed up
alive by a thunderbolt that cleft the rock, and
whom some one, under spiritual inspiration,
spent lately a dozen years in vain endeavor to
unearth. The parties that have equipped themselves with hazel-rods and spades, and proceeded, at the dead of night, in search of these
riches, without turning their heads or uttering
the Divine Name, and, digging till they struck
metal, have met with all manner of ghostly appearances, from the little naked negro sitting
and crying on the edge of the hogshead of
doubloons, to the ball of fire sailing straight up
the creek, till it hangs trembling on the tide
just opposite the excavation into which it
shoots with the speed of lightning, so terrifying and bewildering the treasure-seekers that
when all is over they fall to find again the place
of their late labor-the parties that have met
with these adventures would, perhaps, cease to
waste much more of their time in such pursuits
in this part of the country if they knew that
Captain Kidd had never landed north of Block
Island until, with fatal temerity, he brought
his vessel into Boston, and that every penny of
his gains was known and was accounted for,
while as to Bradish Ten and the rest of that
gentry, they wasted everything as they went in
riotous living, and could never have had a dollar to hide, and no disposition to hide it if they
had; and whatever they did possess they took
with them when, quietly abandoning their ships
to the officers of the law, they went up the


creeks and rivers in boats, and dispersed themselves throughout the country.
Ever since the time of Jason there have been
sea-robbers, and at one period they so infested
the Mediterranean-owning a thousand galleys
and four hundred cities, it is said-that Pompey
was Eent out with a fleet and a force of soldiery
to extirpate them. In later times there were
tribes of lawless men associated together in
hunting the cattle of the West Indian Islands,
curing the flesh, and exchanging it in adjacent
settlements; they held all property in common,
and were called Buccaneers, from the word
"h boucan," a Carib term for preserved meat.
By the mistaken policy of the viceroys of the
Islands, who, in order to reduce them to less
lawless lives, exterminated all the cattle, these
men were driven to the sea, and became in
time the celebrated freebooters, or " Brethren
of the Coast." The bull of Pope Alexander VI.,
by authority of which Spain and Portugal
claimed all American discoveries, caused England, France and the Netherlands to combine
in the Western Hemisphere, whatever quarrels
came to hand in the Eastern, and to ravage the
common enemy-so that letters-of-marque were
constantly issued by them to all adventurers,
without requiring any condemnation of prizes
or account of proceedings, by which means
these countries virtually created a system of
piracy, and Sir Francis Drake's sack of St. Domingo, and the subsequent pillage of Pernambuco, were in nowise different from the exploits of the brutal Olonols, Van Horn, and
Brodely, upon the opulent Spanish cities of the
Main. As the trade with the East and West Indies increased, these freebooters ceased to sail
under any color but their own, the black flag;
no longer left their ships to march through
tropical swamps and forests, to float on rafts
down rivers of a hundred cataracts, to scale
mountains, and fall, as if out of the clouds, on
the devoted cities of the Isthmus of Darien,
the silver and gold of whose cathedrals, palaces
and treasure-houses were worth the labor; nor
did they confine themselves on sea to overhauling the Spanish galleon sitting deep in the water with her lading from the Mexican and Peruvian mines; but they niade their attacks on the
great slow ship of the Asiatic waters, and
when their suppression became vital to commerce, and all powers united against them,





THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.


bhey possessed themselves of sumptuous retreats in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean,
where they had their seraglios, and lived in
fabulous splendor and luxury. As this race,
hunted on sea and enervated on land, died out,
their place was taken by others, and expeditions came gradually to be fitted out from the
colonies of New England, while Virginia, the
Carolinas, and even the Quakers of Philadelphia, afforded them a market for their robberies. When these also in their time abandoned their profession, they made their homes,
some in the Carolinas, some in Rhode Island,
and some on the south shore of Long Island,
where their descendants are among the most
respectable of the community.
To none of these did Captain Kidd belong;
and, previous to the last two years of his life,
he was esteemed a good citizen, and as honest
a sea-captain as ever sailed out of New York,
to which place he belonged, and where, in the
Surrogate's office, is still preserved his marriage
certificate, that classifies him as Gentleman.
During the war with France he had been master of a ship in the neighborhood of the Caribbean Sea, and had valiantly come to the assistance of a British man-of-war, and the two
together had vanquished a fleet of six French
frigates; it was testified upon his trial that he
had been a mighty man in the West Indies, and
that he had refused to go a pirateering, upon
which his men had seized his ship; and it was
on account of his public services there that the
General Assembly of New York had paid him a
bounty of one hundred and fifty pounds-a
great sum in those days; and the probability
is, that, being made a bone of contention between political parties, exactly what he was
applauded for doing at one time he was hung
for doing at another.
The American seas being greatly troubled by
pirates, early in 1695 the King summoned the
Earl of Bellonont before him, and told him
that, having come to the determination to put
an end to the -increasing piratical tendencies of
his colonies, he had chosen him as the most
suitable person to be invested with the government of New York and New England. The
earl at once set about devising the readiest
means for the execution of the King's purpose,
and Robert Livingston, chancing then to be in
London, and being acquainted with the earl,
introduced to him William Kidd, who, having
left his wi'e and children in New York, was
also then in London, as a person who had secured some fame in engagements with the
French, a man of honor and intrepidity, and
one who, knowing the haunts of the pirates,
w'as very fit to command the expedition against
them which Bellomont and others were planning.  Livingston became Kidd's surety, a
kindness that the latter always remembered,
as he threatened, on his return two years'
afterward, to sell his sloop, and indemnify
Livingston out of the proceeds, if Bellomont
did not surrender the bond.
It was at first proposed that Kidd should
have a British frigate, but hardly daring to
give him that-which hesitation in itself indicates how far the great lords were really implicated in his transactions-a ship was purchased
for six thousand pounds, Kidd and Livingston
being at one-tilfth of the expense, and the rest
being borne by the Earls of Bellomont and
Romney, the Lord Chancellor Somers, the Lord


High Admiral, the Duke of Shrewsbury, and
Sir Edward Harrison, ana they agreed to give
the King, who entered into It very heartily, a
tenth of the profits of the affair. Kidd was
somewhat averse to the plan, and seriously demurred, it is believed, but was threatened by
the men of power that his own ship should be
detained and taken from him if he persisted,
and accordingly he yielded, and in 1696 was
regularly commissioned under two separate
parchments, one to cruise against the French
and the other-an extraordinary one, but issued
under the Great Seal, empowering him to proceed against the pirates of the American seas,
and really given for the purpose of authorizing
him to dispose of such property as he might
capture. He had orders to render his accounts
to the Earl of Bellomont, remotely and securely
in New England; and the Adventure Galley, a
private armed ship of thirty guns and eighty
men, was brought to the buoy in the Nore at
the latter end of February, and on the 23d of
April, 1696, he sailed in her from Plymouth,
reaching New York in July, and bringing in a
French ship, valued at three hundred and fifty
pounds, which he had taken on the passage,
and which he there condemned.
In New York he invited men to enter his service, by notices posted in the streets, and presenting large offers of booty after forty shares
for himself and the ship should be deducted;
and increasing his crew to more than one hundred and fifty men, he went to Madeira, then
to several of the West Indian ports, and after.
ward to Madagascar, the coast of Malabar, and
to Bab's Key, an island at the entrance of the
Red Sea, where he lay in wait for the Mocha
fleet, then preparing to sail. It is evident that
he went outside of his nominal instructions by
thus leaving 'the American for the Asiatic waters; but it is also evident that he understood
he was to be supported by the people of power
who were behind him at home, and believed
himself to be only following out their intentions; and the man who had been encouraged
to rob one ship had not, perhaps, sufficient refinement of discrimination to think any different matter of robbing another.  Moreover,
having come across and captured no vessel
since leaving New York, he might naturally
have felt that his owners were expecting more
of him, and thus have resolved on something
desperate. At any rate he did not consider
himself to be going outside of his duty, or to
be appearing in any questionable light, when,
on his voyage out, he met the ship carrying the
ambassador to the Great Mogul, and exchanged
courtesies therewith.
Tired out with his want of success, when anchored at Bab's Key, he sent boats to bring the
first news of the sailing of the Mocha fleet, established a lookout on the hills of the island,
and told his men that now he would freight the
Adventure Galley with gold and silver when
the fleet came out, though it was found that
many of its ships belonged to friendly nations,
and it was convoyed by an English and a Dutch
man-of-war. Kidd, however, sailed into the
midst of the fleet, which fired at him first. and
returning the fire with one or two ineffectual
shots, he hauled off and left it to pursue its
course  Sailing then for the coast of Malabar,
a couple of months afterward Kidd took a Moorish vessel belonging to Aden, but commanded
by an Englishman, and finding but little ot





THE TBUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.


3


K"                             " ^ -v  - -."^
"KIDD SNATCHED UP AN IRON-BOUND BUCKET AND STRUCK WILLIAM MOORE A BLOW ON THE HEAD, OF
WHICH HE DIED NEXT DAY."


value in the prize, he had her men hoisted by
the arms and beaten with the fiat of a cutlass
to make them reveal what they had done with
their money-a punishment which, whether severe or not for that semi-barbarous era, was,
with two exceptions, the only act of personal
cruelty of which he was ever accused; and people whom, if the general idea of him were true,
he would have dispatched with a bullet, he
simply kept In the hold till, inquiry for them
being over, he dismissed them. He obtained
from this vessel some coffee, pepper, and Arabian gold, and some myrrh, with which the extravagant rogue pitched his ship. Goingfurther
out to sea again, he next encountered a Portuguese man-of-war, but after a brief engagement
withdrew with ten men wounded, and returned


presently to the coast of Malabar. Here, his
cooper having been killed by the natives, he
"-served them in pretty much the same way,"
says- one writer, "as the officers of our late
South Sea Exploring Expedition served the
Fijians, burning their houses and shooting one
of the murderers." This, however, was one of
the other instances of cruelty to which reference-has Just been made, the murderer being
bound to. a, tree and shot at in turn by all the
retaliators.. Shortly after this, Captain Kidd
fell In with the ship Royal Captain, which he
visited, and whose officers lie entertained on
board the Adventure Galley; but some of her
crew having told that there were Greeks and
others on board with much wealth of precious
stones, the piratical spirit of his men led to





4 -

THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.


mutinous desires and expressions; and, In a crew-not enough to keep his leaking craft
rage with those who had wished to board and from sinking.
rob the Royal Captain, Kidd snatched up an  But the capture of the Quedagh Merchant had
iron-bound bucket, and struck William Moore, been reported home by the East India Company,
the gunner and chief grumbler, a blow on the and directions had been issued to all the Amehead, of which he died next day. Kidd re- rican governors and viceroys to seize him
marked to his surgeon that the death of the wherever he should appear. At Anguilla he
gunner did not trouble him so much as other learned that he had been 'officially proclaimed
passages of his voyage, as he had friends in a pirate, and falling to obtain any provisions
England who could easily bring him off for either there or at St. Thomas, at which latter
that; and he himself had it urged as a virtuous place he was not even allowed to land, he went
act rather than otherwise, since done to pre- to Cura9oa, from whence intelligence of his
vent both piracy and mutiny,             whereabouts was forwarded to England, and
Still on the coast of Malabar, in November he the man-of-war Queensborough was sent In purran across another Moorish vessel, and artfully suit of him.
hoisted the French colors, upon which the Moor  Kidd was aware that he had been upon a
did the same. "By----- have I catched you?" hazardous enterprise, so far as the risks at
he cried; "you are a free prize to England!" home were considered, to say nothing of the
and making easy conquest of her, he caused risks at sea; and whether he was conscious
one Le Roy, a French passenger, to act the that he had exceeded his instructions, too
part of master, and to show a pretended French eagerly misinterpreting them, or whether he
pass, upon which he declared her formally a knew that it is a way with the great to sacrifice
prize to England, as if observing again the pre- those who compromise them too seriously, he
scribed forms, and Intending to claim for his prepared himself for any fortune: he deterconduct, should he ever need to do so, the pro- mined to go to New York, and prove for himtection of the commission authorizing him to self what protection and countenance he now
take French ships. In the course of the next had to expect from Bellomont and the others;
month, December, he captured a Moorish ketch but he also determined to venture as little as
of fifty tons, and turned her adrift; took about possible, and he accordingly bought the sloop
four hundred pounds' worth from a Portuguese, Antonia-though excusing this afterward to the
and sunk her near Calcutta; and then made earl by saying that his men, frightened by the
prize of an Armenian vessel of four hundred proclamation, had wished to run the ship
tons, called the Quedagh Merchant, and some- ashore, and so many of them left him that
times the Scuddee, and commanded by an again he had not enough to handle the ropes,
Englishman-the- entire value of the latter cap- which must have been untrue-loaded her with
ture being sixty-four thousand pounds, of which his silks, muslins, jewels, bullion and gold-dust
Kidd's share was about sixteen thousand. Kidd  (the rest of his booty, consisting of bales of
then went to Madagascar, where, having ex- coarse goods, sugar, iron, rice, wax, opium,
changed all the equipments of the Adventure saltpetre and anchors, he left in the Quedagh
Galley forl dust and bar gold and silver, silks, Merchant, moored on the south side of Hispagold-cloth, precious stones, and spices, he niola, with twenty guns, in the hold and thirty
burned that ship, which was leaking badly, and mounted, and twenty men, with his mate in
took to the Quedagh Merchant, refusing a ran- command)-and sailed in her for New York;
som of thirty thousand rupees which the Arme- intimating, by his action, a doubt of his renians came, crying and wringing their hands, ception, though that might well be accounted
to offer him.                            for by a knowledge of the King's proclamation,
Here, too, he is said to have met with one but Just as plainly intimating that he had reason
of the East India Company's ships, Captain to rely on the promises of Bellomont and the
Culliford, turned pirate.  It was clearly his rest of that royal stock company in piracy.
duty, under his commission, to offer battle at  Meanwhile Bellomont had been delayed from
once; but, instead of anything of the kind, entering upon his official life by one thing and
it was testified on the trial that when the pi- another, until two years had elapsed from the
races, with bated breath, sent out a boat to in- time of Kidd's departure from England. On
quire concerning his intentions, he drank with arriving in New York, he heard of the rumored
them, in a kind of lemonade called " bomboo," career which Kidd was running, and presently
damnation to his own soul if he ever harmed the news having reached England, and an aothem, and exchanged gifts with Culliford, re- count of the public sentiment about it there
ceiving some silk and four hundred pounds in being returned to him, Bellomont felt that very
return for some heavy ordnance. Kidd denied active measures were necessary in order to exthat he had ever been aboard of Culliford, and culpate himself, the Ministry and the King from
declared that, when he proposed to attack him, the popular accusation of participating in Kidd's
his men said they would rather fire two shots robberies, and took every step necessary for his
into him than one into Culliford; that they apprehension.
stole his Journal, broke open his chest and rifled  Needing some repairs before reaching his
it, plundered his ammunition, and threatened destination, Kidd very cautiously put into Delahis life so that he was obliged to barricade him- ware Bay, where he landed a chest belonging
self in his cabin-his statement being borne out to one Gillam, an indubitable pirate, who had
in some degree by the fact that here ninety-five been a Mohammedan, and who now returned,
of his men deserted to Captain Culliford, as if a passenger from  Madagascar. The news
their own master were not sufficiently piratical, spreading up the coast, an armed sloop went
whereupon, recruiting a handful of men, he after Kidd, but failed to find him, and he
sailed immediately for the West Indies. He de- reached the eastern end of Long Island withclared further that he did not go on board the out being overhauled. Entering the Sound,
Quedagh Merchant until after the desertion of he dispatched a letter to Bellomont, and from
these men, which left only about a dozen in his Oyster Bay sent loving greeting to his faml'y,





THE TRUE ACCOUNT OP CAPTAIN KIDD.


5


and a lawyer, by the name of Emot, came down her maid's, was taken out of her temporary
from New York and went on board the An- lodgings in the house of Duncan Campbell, at
tonia. Learning that the Earl of Bellomont the time when search was made for a bag of
was in Boston, Kidd altered his course for gold-dust and ingots of the value of a thousand
Rhode Island, and, arriving there, sent Mr. pounds, that Kidd had intended for a gift to
Emot to Boston to secure a promise of safety Lady Bellomont, and that was found between
from Bellomont if he should land; a promise two sea-beds; but on petition the Governor
granted on condition of its proving that Emot and Council restored to Mrs. Kidd her own.
told the truth-he having asserted that Kidd's His wife-to whom he had been but a few
men locked him up while they committed pi- years married-accompanying him with her
racies. Kidd then went to Block Island, and children, her maid and ah that she possessed,
wrote to Bellomont again, protesting his inno- shows that Kidd had no intention of being surcence, urging the care he had taken of the prised and overmastered; but on the contrary,
owner's interests, and sending Lady Bellomont if worse came to worst, that he had meant to
a present of jewels of the value of sixty take her back to the Quedagh Merchant and
pounds, which Bellomont had her keep lest she find a home in some place beyond the pale of
should offend the giver and prevent the devel- British justice; while retaining her affection,
opments that he desired, though afterward and caring to retain it, is in itself a sort of
surrendering and adding them to the general in- testimony that he was hardly so black as he
ventory of Kidd's effects. While at Block Island has been painted. Ten days after his arrest
he was joined by his wife and children, under news came that the mate of the Quedagh Merthe care of a Mr. Clark; he then gratefully went chant, left in command, had taken out her
out of his way in order to land Mr. Clark on cargo, removed it to Curagoa, and had then
Gardiner's Island, as that gentleman wished to set her on fire, and the mariner who brought
return to New York; and although Kldd him- the intelligence had seen her burning. That
self did not go ashore at the latter place, he -was a dark day, doubtless, to Captain Kidd,
left with Mr. Gardiner a portion of his treasure but not so dark as others yet to come.
afterward abandoned to the Commissioners     A  ship-of-war had now  been  dispatched
sent for it by the Governor. While lying here, from England to take Captain Kidd over there,
three sloops from New York came down and but being delayed by inclement weather, and
were loaded with goods, which were, however, putting back in a storm after he was on board,
all recovered-Kidd maintaining, with so much by the Lime it arrived in the Thames all Engpaucity of invention as to resemble the truth, land was in a state of excitement over his
that it was his men and not he who shipped alleged partnership with several of the Ministhem off. Meanwhile the earl sent down Dun- ters, and their apparent determination not to
can Campbell, the postmaster at Boston, to in- bring him to justice; and from a common
vite Captain Kidd to that port, telling him that malefactor he became the lofty subject of a
if innocent he might safely come in, and he state trial
would intercede for his pardon; and Kidd     On his arrival the House of Commons adstraightway headed the Antonia for Boston, dressed the King, asking to have Kidd's trial
reaching there on the 1st of July and appear- postponed until the next Parliament, that there
ing publicly upon the streets. Hearing of his might be time for the transmission of all the
arrival, the earl sent for him, and, refusing to existing documents having any relation to his
see him without witnesses, examined him be- affairs; and he was accordingly confined in
fore the Council, directed him to draw up a nar- Newgate until the next year, when the papers
rative of his proceedings, and dismissed him. were laid before the House, together with a
Bellomont, however, kept a watch upon his petition from Cogi Baba, on behalf of himself
movements, as he both desired and needed his and other Armenians, subjects of the King of
arrest, but thought it expedient to use friendly Persia, setting forth all the facts of the
means in order to discover the extent of his Quedagh Merchant's capture, and praying for
outrages and the disposition of the property Kidd's examination and their own relief. Cogi
acquired through them. At *the end of the Baba was ordered before the House, and Kidd
week, Kidd showing no intention to unbosom  himself was produced at the bar, and afterward
himself in that wise, and it being feared that remanded to prison. A motion was then made
he meant to make off he was arrested and in the House to declare void the grant made to
committed to. prison, though not till he had the Earl of Bellomont and others of all the treasmade a valiant opposition and had drawn his ure taken by Kidd, but it was negatived, and
sword upon the King's officers-the arrest the House of Commons then requested the
taking place near the door of the earl's lodg- King to have Kidd proceeded against according
ings, into which Kidd rushed and ran toward to law, and he was brought to trial at the Old
him, followed by the constables. His sloop, on Bailey, in 1701, for murder and piracy upon
that, was immediately appraised, its contents the high seas.
taken possession of by certain Commissioners  At the same time, the House of Commons
appointed for that purpose, his papers, contain- was proceeding upon an impeachment of the
ing accounts of his buried treasure and of that Earl of Oxford and Lord Somers, for certain
in Mr. Gardiner's hands, were opened, and all high crimes and misdemeanors, one of which
the property was finally delivered to the earl, was their connection with Kidd, and their
with an inventory of one thousand one hun- agency in passing the commissions and grant
dred and eleven ounces of gold, two thousand to him, as prejudicial to public service and
three hundred and fifty-three ounces of silver, private trade, and dishonorable to the King,
three-score jewels, and bags, bales and pieces contrary to the law of England and to the bill of
of goods about as valuable as the precious rights. It was urged in reply that a pirate
metals. Mrs. Kidd's property, which included was hostis humant generts, and his goods beseveral pieces of plate, nearly three hundred longed to whomsoever it might be that dedollars of her own and twenty-five crowns of stroyed him, and the King granted title only to





6


THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.


that for which no owner was to be found. Before the lords were acquitted Bellomont was
dead, and Kidd was hung; while popular feeling ran high, parties took sides in the affair;
there were accusations afloat that these lords,
now on their own trial, had set the Great Seal
of England to the pardon of the arch-pirate;
and as the anti-Ministerial side was determined
to hang Kidd in order to prove the complicity
and guilt of the Ministers with him, the Ministers themselves were, of course, determined to
hang him to prove their own innocence.
Kidd made a very good appearance upon his
trial, ignorant as he was of all the forms of
law; he insisted on his innocence, and that he
had only captured ships with French passes or
sailing under the French flag, and he fought
manfully, but to no purpose. Of the men that
were tried with him, several plead that they
surrendered themselves upon a certain proclamation of the King's pardon, but the Court decided that, not having surrendered themselves
to the designated persons; they did not come
within its provisions, and they must swing for
it, and so they did. A couple of servants were
acquitted; but to Kidd himself no mercy was
shown. Justice Turton, Dr. Newton, Advocate
for the Admiralty, and the Lord Chief Baron,
all made elaborate arguments against him,
while no one spoke for him; and all his previous plunderings were allowed to be cited in
the Court, in order to prove that he plundered
the Quedagh Merchant. When he desired to
have counsel assigned him, Sir Salathiel Lovell,
the Recorder, wonderingly asks him, " What
would you have counsel for?" And Dr. Oxenden contemptuously inquires, " What matter
of law can you have?" But as Kidd quietly
answers, "There be matters of law, my lord,"
the Recorder asks again, " Mr. Kidd, do you
know what you mean by matters of law?"
Whereupon Kidd replies as quietly as before,
"I know what I mean; I desire to put off
my trial as long as I can, till I can get my evidence ready." He has had but a fortnight's
notice of his trial, and knowing how important
a delay would be to him in which the popular
feeling might die out or abate, he urges, I
beg your lordships' patience till I can procure
my papers. I had a couple of French passes,
which I must make use of to my justification,"
and presently adds, " I, beg your lordships I
may have counsel admitted, and that my trial
may be put off; I am not really prepared for
it." To which the Recorder rudely replies,
" Nor never will, if you can help it."
Kidd still contended for counsel, and at last
it was assigned to him. It then appeared that he
had already petitioned for money to carry on his
trial, and though it had, as a matter of course,
been granted to him, as to any prisoner, it had
been put into his hands only on the night before. His counsel, for whose services he had
so exerted himself, made one or two timid remarks, but, after the jury were sworn, although
the Solicitor-General plied the witnesses with
leading questions, the cowardly lawyers never
cross-examined, made any plea, or opened their
lips.
The Indictment for murder, upon which Kidd
was first tried, portrayed, with great particularity, the blow struck the gunner, saying that
of that mortal bruise "the aforesaid William
Moore, from the thirtieth day of October * * *
until the one-and-thirtieth day ** * * did


languish, and languishing did live," but on the
one-and-thirtieth day did die, and declaring
that William Kidd feloniously, voluntarily and
of malice aforethought did kill and murder him;
to all of which Kidd plead not guilty, constantly
interrupting the Court with his exclamations
and explanations. " The passes were seized by
my Lord Bellomont; that we will prove as
clear as the day!" cries he. When invited to
find cause for exception in the jury, he either
adroitly or ingenuously answers, " I shall chal.
lenge none; I know nothing to the contrary
but they are honest men." The time coming
for his defense, he told in an earnest manner a
short and simple story, but one in which, by
comparison of the various witnesses, several
discrepancies with the truth were found. " My
lord," said he, " I will tell you what the case
was. I was coming up within a league of the
Dutchman, and some of my men were making
a mutiny about taking her, and my gunner told
the people he could put the captain in a way to
take the ship and be safe. Says I, 'How will
you do that?' The gunner answered, 'We will
get the captain and men aboard.' 'And what
then?' 'We will go aboard the ship and plunder her, and we will have it under their hands
that we did not take her.' Says I, 'This is
Judas-like. I dare not do such a thing.' Says
he, We may do it, we are beggars already.'
' Why,' says I, ' may we take this ship because
we are poor?' Upon that a mutiny arose, so I
took up a bucket and just throwed it at him,
and said, ' You are a rogue to make such a motion.' This I can prove, my lord."
But he did not prove it, and though he strug.
gled hard to do so, and though his faithful
servant Richard Barlicorn, also on trial for his
life, must 'have committed a hundred perjuries
in his behalf, the Court could not find evidence
of any mutiny for more than a month before the
gunner's death, and  decided that William
Moore's outcry that Kidd had brought him and
many others to ruin was not sufficient provocation for the killing. And though Kidd plead
that striking the man in a passion, with so rude
and unpremeditated a weapon as the first slushbucket at hand) if not justifiable as a preventive of mutiny, was, at furthest, no more than
manslaughter, and exclaimed that "it was not
designedly done, but In his passion, for which
he was heartily sorry," yet, it being determined to hang him at all odds, the lawyers
were given hints, the witnesses were browbeaten, and the jury were Instructed, after
tedious iteration, to bring him in guilty; which
was done.
At the trial next day on the indictments for
piracy, Kidd did not lose heart. There were
but two important witnesses produced against
him, Palmer, one of his crew, and his ship's
surgeon, Bradlnham, who, though both of
them sharers in his adventures, had become evidence for the Crown on the promise of their
own safety.  Kidd himself cross-questioned
them, but idly, their replies being always
straightforward and consistent. His ony defense was that he had taken French passes from
every capture, that the Earl of Bellomont had
seized them, and that his men, once catching
sight of a French pass when a ship was overhauled. would not let that ship go, and for the
rest answered with indifference, " That is what~
these witnesses say," as if such depraved testimony could really be worth nothing. " Did you





THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF CAPTAIN KIDD.


7


hear me say so?" he demanded of Palmer once.
"& I heard you say so," was the reply. " I am
sure," said Kidd then, contemptuously, "you
never heard me say such a word to such a loggerhead as you."' But matters going beyond
his patience soon, "Hear me!" he cried indignantly, but was silenced by the Court, only to
break out again presently on Palmer with,
" Certainly you have not the Impudence to say
that!".and to adjure him to " speak true."
By-and-by the question of one of the passes being up, " Palmer, did you see that pass?" he
eagerly asks; and, the old subordinate manner
returning to the other man, he answers, "Indeed, captain, I did not;" whereupon, like one
who throws up his hands in despair, Kidd exclaims, " What boots it to ask him any questions? We have no witnesses, and what we
say signifies nothing." With Bradinhani he is
less contemptuous and more enraged. "This
man contradicts himself in a hundred places!"
he declared. " He tells a thousand lies * * *
There was no such thing in November; he
knows no more of these things than you do.
This fellow used to sleep five or six months together in the hold! * * It is hard," he exclaims after awhile, " that a couple of rascals
should take away the King's subjects' lives.
Because I did not turn phate, you rogues, you
would make me one 1" And, with that, hope
hllps faster and faster away from his grasp, and
when the Solicitor-General would know if he
has anything further to ask of the witnesses, he
replies, " No, no! So long as he swears it, our
words or oaths canmot be taken. No, no," he


continues, wearily, "it signifies nothing." But
he does ask at last one other question. " Mr.
Bradinham," he cries, bitterly, " are not you
promised your life to take away mine?" and a
little later he adds, with dignity,  I will not
trouble the Court any more, for it is a folly,"
and when the final word of the Judge has been
uttered, that he shall be taken thence to his
execution, he says, "t My lord, it is a very hard
sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest
person of them all, only I have been sworn
against by perjured persons."
The feeling against Kidd, though, was hardly
satisfied even by his death; and fearful lest
they had lost a victim, after all, the public circulated stories of his escape, and of the hanging
of a man of straw in his place, although if the
"blunt monster with uncounted heads" had
taken the trouble to use one of those heads, the
absurditJ of the rumor might have been evident;
for Kidd's evil fortune pursued him even from
the scaffold, and the rope breaking, doubled
and prolonged the last awful moments, and
between the first hanging and the final one
he was heard to have conversation with the
executioner, ere passing to that Bar where
he was judged, let us hope, after a different
fashion.
But the death of Captain Kidd put an end to
piracy in the American and most other seas;
and, in the meantime, so far from lying concealed to enrich the poor treasure-seekers of
our coasts, all the gains of Captain Kidd, illgotten at the best, have gone to swell the revenues of the English Kigdom,





CIHARLESTOWN.


THE traveler who seeks the cool northeast
seaside is scarcely aware how near it is to him
when, after his wearisome Journey, he crosses
the narrow and crooked streets which are Boston's crown of picturesque glory, and leaves
the city by the Eastern Railway. For no sooner
has the train moved out of the station than the
sea-views begin to open on him as he goes--
vistas of the broad, blue bay; streams just
emptying in; salt marshes, rich with every tint
and every odor; the bold bluffs of Nabant; the
long lines and lonely houses of the Chelsea
beaches; forts far away in the harbor, where
the flag waves like a blossom on its reed; and
town after town, all more or less historic, and
all full of the wild sea-breath that gives such a
bloom to the faces of their women, and such a
vigor to their men. He has hardly crossed the
first bridge before one of these towns rises on
his sight, sitting on her hill the while as fair as
any pictured city of walls and towers, and overlooking the Mystic and the Charles, and the
wide and windy bay. Indeed, a lovelier view
of any town I do not know than Charlestown,
when seen from the car window, her lights reflected in the water at her feet, and her streets
lifted in tier over tier, till the lofty spire of the
hill-top church glitters in the moon or starlight
far above them all.
It is not so charming a spot, however, upon
nearer acquaintance, for most of its streets are
as narrow as those of the neighboring metropolis, and not one-half so clean, and It is more interesting as a congregation of workshops,
foundries, and great industrial establishments,
than in any other light; for, owing to the circumstance of five towns having been set off
from it, and a part of four others, it has now
the smallest territory of any town in the State
of Massachusetts, and Is necessarily crowded.
Running along the waterside is the Navy Yard,
surrounded by a massive granite wall, ten feet
high, and encircling the barracks both for marines and officers and their families, together
with the great machine-shops, ropewalks, shipyards, wharves, dry-docks, and other Government works on a vast scale, thronged with two
thousand busy artisans, and all guarded by sentries pacing their perpetual round, and by the
receiving-ship Ohio, anchored in the stream
beyond. This whole agglomeration of men


and trades forms a strong political element In
its locality, and a prominent and potential
member of Congress has been heard to declare
that he once staid six weeks in Washington
after the session in order to secure the appointment of a common painter in the Navy Yard,
and failed at last.
The State Prison, another lion of the place,
is a machine hardly less powerfal, as any one
might easily imagine who saw It entrenched
behind Its perpendicular fortifications and rows
of spikes, and thought of the number of of.
ficials necessary to carry on Its operations and
maintain order among its unhappy denizens.
It is a gloomy-looking fabric, like all the traditional prisons " that slur the sunshine half a
mile," and a satirist has mentioned the fact as
characteristic of certain inconsistencies between
theory and practice common in Massachusetts,
that almost the only place within her borders
where a liberty-cap is displayed Is at the top of
her State Prison, not so glaring an inconsistency, nevertheless, as It at first sight appears,
since the imprisonment of criminals means the
freedom of all the rest of society.
In quite another portion of Charlestown
stands the famous Bunker Hill Monument,
making the most attractive feature of the
town, with Its gray shaft rising in perfect
symmetry from the ample space at the summit of a lofty and smoothly-swarded green
hill. Here the statue of Warren is to be found,
with various trophies of the Revolution, less
interesting in themselves than are the suggestions of the scene-a scene that calls up one
morning, almost a hundred years ago, with the
unqualling farmers gathered behind their
breastworks of sod and hay, and the flashing
bayonets and scarlet lines of British grenadiers
moving up' the hill, while the town below was
blazing in a conflagration of every dwelling
there; that calls up another morning fifty
years later, where trembling old hands, thta
when youth and chivalry Ivere at flood, helped
to lay the corner-stone of the Republic, now
in the midst of its success laid the corner-stone
of this monument to one of its first struggles
for existence, and, In the presence of the survivors of that struggle, the thunders of Webster's eloquence were answered by the thun.
ders of the people's applause. Who is it that





OHARLESTOWN.


9


declares the inclosure at Bunker Hill peculiarly remote part of the town, lately taken into the
typical of our national characteristics, inas- village of Somervfle, on a place known as
much as, being badly beaten there, we built a Mount Benedict, and smoke-blackened and
monument to the fact, and have never ceased weather-beaten, the broken walls and chimneys
boasting thereof?  One thing can certainly have stood for more than thirty years till bebe said in reply, that the moral effect in teach- coming picturesque with time. Wild cherry
Ing the enemy how sadly in earnest the brave trees have sprung up within the walls of the
rebels were, and in encouraging the dispirited cloisters, and have grown into full bearing of
patriots by sight cf raw recruits thrice break- their bitter fruit; cattle browse among them,
ing the form of the invading veterans, was and lie beneath the great trees that have arched
something inestimable; that rail fence stuffed themselves, untaught, over the old avenues;
with meadow-hay was not merely the breast- sheep crop the turf where once the nuns' flowerwork of Putnam and Prescott, it was the first garden may have been, and where, long since,
redoubt of freedom the wide world over, and the natural growth of the place has retaken its
from Bunker Hill began that march of noble own rights, and where here and there a weed
thought and grand action across this continent blooms, which is only a garden-flower returned
which is destined to overthrow all tyrannies, to its one originalstock. One side of the hill comboth of intellect and of empire, in this hemi- mands the harbor and the placid Charles, with
sphere to-day, to-morrow in the other. It aives a view of the neighboring metropolis, just reone a very satisfactory emotion of patriotism to mote enough for a haze of distance to render
stand on Bunker Hill, as well as a good idea of it poetic; and on the other side, far away
the recuperative power of the country, for across meadows and bending elms, the blue
when the enemy drove every soul out of and lovely Mystic winds to the sea, and soft,
Charlestowd, and burned every building there, low hills inclose the wide and varied landit was but five hundred houses in all that were scape. It is a retreat of peace, that now redestroyed, while to-day the population ap- mains unbroken by anything except the rudeproaches the number of forty th(usand. It is ness of the winter storms, but it bears lrpon it
a population, however, that must have under- the moss-grown marks of a violence sadly in
gone many changes; as, for instance, one contrast, for thirty-five years ago it was the
would fancy that its action of thirty years ago, scene of an outrage on human rights and freein the destruction of the Ursuline Convent, dom of thought, which, it is to be hoped. neither
would, at present, be quite impossible, since this country nor this age shall behold again.
the Catholic Church now far outnumbers any The convent had been founded in 1820 by Docother sirgle sect in the place-for the Cathohe tors Matigon and Cheverus with funds contribuChurch has a subtle, self-healing way with it ted for that purpose by a resident and native of
like that belonging to some natural organism, the city of Boston; and upon their urgency a
so that where it has received a wound, thither few Sisters of the Ursuline Order came to this
it imme lately sends its best and freshest blood country, and made Boston their home. The
to repair the harm, as the case is with the limb confinement and the city air, however, disof an animal or the branch of a tree, and thus turbed their health, accustomed as they had
mending itself and growing with greater vigor been to the out-door exercise of their gardens,
where the hurt was, it presently outstrips in- and, some half-dozen years after their arrival,
jry, and plants itself in the place of its assail- the bishop procured for them the estate in
ant.                                       Charlestown, to which they immediately reThe Ursuline Convent just mentioned be- moved, occupying a farmhouse at the foot of
longed, at the time of its demolition, to one of the hill till their own residence upon the sumthe congregations of Ursulines founded some mit should be completed. This was done in the
three hundred years earlier as a religious sis- next year. and it was shortly so crowded with
terhood for nursing the sick, relieving and in- pupils from New England, the West Indies,
structing the poor, and named for the martyred Southern States and British provinces, that a
St. Ursula, a Christian princess of Britain, and couple of years afterward two large wings were
one of the first to associate maidens with her- added to the establishment, the number of nuns
self for devout purposes. Originally every Sis- Ivarying from four to ten, and the pupils from
ter remained in her own home, and performed fifty to sixty.
from that point such duties as were hers; but  The feeling in Charlestown toward them
shortly after the death of Angela Merici, the could hardly ever have been of a hospitable
foundress, they adopted a uniform dress, their nature, for one of the Selectmen of the town,
principles and plan of action became more    ho appears to have been of a very inflammable
widely spread, and they gradually gathered temperament, told the Superior that it had
together under the same roof, chose a Direct- been his intention on the first night of the
ress, or Superior, and to k some simple vows, occupancy of the farmhouse by the nuns to
vows afterward exchanged for others of a more come with thirty men and tear it down about
solemn nature. In the year 1860 there were their ears, but he was deteired by the quiet
more than five hundred houses of Ursulines in procession of the little company taking their
the world; and, never entirely abandoning walks across the bill next day, which appears
their original purpose, they are to-day princi- to have been a moving sight to him. Welcome
pally devoted to the tuition and care of young or not, however the school prospered wondergirls; and of such benefit to the general com- fully, as indeedit could hardly help doing when
munity have they always been considered, that, the teachers were so devoted to their duties,
when certain European Governments nut an end the fact of their being devoted for life being
to the existence of convents within their ter- probably the chief secret of their success.
ritory, the Ursulines were permitted to remain There was then comparatively little attention
unmolested, and were moreover aided and en- paid to science and the severer studies gencooraged in their work.  The ruins of the erally, and the education of women was conUrsuline Convent in Charlestown stand in a fined almost ePpecially to the accomplishments





10


CHARLESTOWN.


of language, music, and painting, which were
taught here to perfection; and, thronged with
pupils and applicants, it is possible the school
aroused the jealousy of those who conjectured
the good income which it yearly added to
the revenues of a Church they abominated.
There was no need, though, of adding this
jealousy to the elements at work in the neighborhood already distrustful of Roman Catholic
institutions, keeping a vigilant lookout over
what it considered as little less than a branch
of the Inquisition introduced into the midst of
it, constantly fearful of Catholic supremacy--
not from any largeness of view concerning the
Church as a Church of authority denying the
right of individual opinion, and thus a drag
upon the wheels of progress, but with an imagination inflamed by the wood-cuts of "L Fox's
Book of Martyrs," by such legends as that old
one of the unfaithful nun, sealed up alive in a
wall, and regarding the quiet building on the
bill not as a place of innocent merriment and
girlish study. but of severe penance, of horrible punishment, of underground cells and
passages through which all the mighty power of
the Church walked abroad to crush any refractory spirit into death or submission. There were
sad rumors of barbarities exercised upon the
sick, of a child sent away in an advanced stage
of scarlet-fever, of fearful penances imposed
upon a dying nun. It was also urged that the
Convent made great effort to secure the children of Protestants for proselyting purposes,
excluding the children of Catholics; oblivious
of the truth that its doors were open to all who
were able to meet the cost of such expensive
education, that, its pupils being chiefly daughters of the wealthy, there really belonged to
Catholic parents a proportion of them corresponding to the proportion ofwealthy Catholics
in the community at large, while for poorer
Catholics a free school already existed in Boston, where their education was provided for
quite suitably to their probable station in life;
and in the meantime not a single pupil, in all
the number educated in the convent, had ever
become a nun, nor had one even been converted to Catholicism. But more than this inherited dread of' papacy and its influence were
the swarms of suspicions of another sort. It
makes one doubtful of the inherent worth of
human nature to hear the baseness of conjecture
indulged in by these people; it seems as if
they were so vile themselves that they could
believe In the virtue of no others; because
priests assumed to be celibate and nuns to be
virgin, they denounced the good bishop as a
monster and the stainless Sisters as prodigies
of impurity. And as time wore on, and all
these unfortunate feelings and fancies glowed
more and more hotly, it needed but a single
spark to kindle the flame of intolerance into
open action among this population, watchful,
and ready to give the worst possible construction to every simple circumstance.
The flame was kindled quickly enough. In
the summer of 1834 there were fifty-four young
girls, from all parts of the country, students in
the convent, and ten nuns resident there--two
of the latter being novices, and therefore doing
nothing in the schoolroom. Of these fifty-four
young girls, it is probable that nearly all took
music-lessons, while there appear to have been
but two of the nuns attending to music--one
of these an invalid already in consumption-so


that the greater part of the hundred and odd
music-lessons a week fell to the share of the
other-Sister Mary John, formerly, when in
the world and retainiug the name of her birth,
a Miss Elizabeth Harrison. Miss Harrison was
a native of Philadelphia, had passed her novitiate of two years, and had for four years been a
member in full communion. She had a brother
and a brother-in-law living in Boston, across
the bridge, and visiting her at the convent
whenever they chose; and as she had, besides,
unrestricted opportunities of reposing co fldence in her pupils, had she desired to be
taken from the convent nothing would have
been easier-all the more as no restraint was
put upon an individual there; and two nuns
who had taken the vail had left, without let or
hindrance, and still maintained friendly relations with the Superior. She had been giving
steadily fourteen lessons a day of forty-five
mirutes each; any one who has studied or
taught music, or who has been present during
a lesson in that art, knows what an exquisitely
trying thing to the nerves it is, and Miss Harrison was not only tired and weak, but her
brain was in a state of high excitement  Several members of her family had been subject
to occasional mental alienation-a  circumstance of which bad the Ursulines been aware
upon her reception among them, they would
probably have allotted her less fatiaging duties. Old Dr. Warren had already pronounced
Miss Harrison's health to be very delicate; always in excessively cold or warm weather she
had trouble in her head, and feeling this quite
badly, at about the last of July, she had foolishly taken an emetic which had acted strangely
with her; she began to manifest great restlessness, went about the house acting extravagantly, clamoring for new instruments, setting
the doors wide open as if to cool her fever,
and when, one afternoon, the Superior told
her that she looked too ill to be attending
to the lessons, she replied by a burst of
laughter, and her nervous excitement culminating in delirium as.the heat of the day increased, she slipped out of the convent, into
the grounds, and away to a neighbor's house,
unobserved by the Sisters, who would never
have dreamed of such a thing, as she was a
person incapable of disguising her feelings, and
had never before been heard to express the
least dissatisfaction, but of whom, on the contrary, it was thought that there Could not be a
happier person than she in the whole Ursuline
Order. From  the neighbor's house she was
taken by the Selectman himself another neighbor, and the one who had at first intended to
tear down the farmhouse about the nuns' earsi
to the residence of a gentleman in West Cambridge, after which, going to the convent, he
notified the Superior of what he had done, and
on the next day the brother of the young lady
went to see her. Probably the rest from her
labors and the change of scene had already
acted beneficially on Miss Harrison's mind, for
she implored her brother to bring Bishop Fenwick to her, as if she longed for his assistance
in regaining her self-control. It would seem
that the bishop had been disinclined to interfere; but, on the solicitation of the Superior, he
went with Miss Harrison's brother In the afternoon to visit her. Bishop Fenwick testified
upon oath that he found Miss Harrison in a
state of derangement, her looks haggard, ber





CHARLESTOWN..


11


expressions incoherent, while she laughed and
cried in the same moment; that his one object
in going for her was to take her to the convent,
clothe her properly, and send her to her friends,
presuming that she left because dissatisfied with
her mode of treatment; but when be proposed
her return to her home, she begged and entreated to be allowed to remain. Upon her
restoration to the convent, she declared that
" she did not know what it all meant," and she
begged the people who called upon her not to
refer any more to the circumstances of her
brief absence, for she could not be responsible
for what she then said or did. To Miss Alden,
who in past times had heard her frequently say
that she could never cease to be thankful


enough for having been called to that happy
state of life, and who now visited her, she expressed the greatest horror at the step she had
taken, and said that she would prefer death to
leaving. And upon being examined in court,
on the trial of the rioters, she averred that had
any one ever told her she should do what she
had done, she would have thought it impossible; that nothing was omitted, in the conduct
of the institution, that could contribute to her
happiness or to that of the other inmates; that
her recollection of what took place after her
flight was very indistinct, for she was bereft of
reason; and she covered her face and burst into
tears.
The worst conjecture, one would have


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EzCscA  opfiR 8d 14Y TEX=or  LADY" FROm TflU rRSmL5U COVTrT  OF MT OF aT.  RDFTICT.--" TER NERVOUS
EXCJTEMBi4T CULMINATY?0 IN DELTRIUM., SH5 ELTPPED OUT OP TITE CON-VEN'T."





12


2CHARKLESTOWN.


thought, that, in uncharity, could have been
put upon this affair, would have been that,
never of very strong mind, and now worn out
with the unceasing recurrence of her labors,
she had suddenly imagined the life unbearable,
and in a wild moment had escaped from it only
to find herself grown unused to the world, and
more unhappy there than over her old tasks in
the convent. But that was truth beside the
calumnies that instantly sprang into being upon
the foundation of this unfortunate occurrence.
It was remembered, too, that another young
woman had left Mount Benedict not lnng previously, and the atrocious slanders upon the
sisterhood which she scattered wherever she
went were revived with added burden, and
there was hardly any scandal possible to be invented but was repeated and believed, till the
stately brick edifice on the hill was honestly regarded far and near, by the bigoted and narrowminded of the untaught population, as a den of
wickedness and filth; and a conspiracy for its
suppression was hurriedly formed, not only in
Charlestown, but throughout other towns and
extending into other States. Matters probably
were greatly hastened then by the appearance
in one of th* neighboring newspapers of a paragraph entitled 1,The Mysterious Lady," and
containing the items of local vossip about Miss
Harrison's escapade, magnified and exaggerated into the flight of a nun brought back by
force, and either murdered, secreted in the
underground vaults, or sent away for some
awful punishment in remoter regions; and this
was only the visible at d audible expression of
what appears to have been in the minds of
nearly all, if not in their mouths; and the first
manner in which the generalfeeling outcropped
was by waylaying the convent-gardener and
beaiing him within an inch of his life, wreaklug in a vicarious way the vengeance that could
not yet arrive at his employers.
A lew days after Miss Harrison's return to
Mount Benedict, the Lady Superior, whom Dr.
Thompson, a Charlestown physician, has mentioned as "thoroughly educated, dignified in
her person, and elegant In her manners, pure
in her morals, of generous and magnanimous
feelings, and of high religious principles," was ]
rude y waited on by one of the Selectmen of the
toi n--the szme whose knd intentions respecting the farmhouse have been mentioned-and i
informed that the convent would be destroyed ]
if the Mysterious Lady could not be seen. The t
Superior had already told this gentleman the I
state of Miss Harrison's health, and the inci- r
dents leading to her temporary aberration of i
mind, and she knew it was quite in his power (
to contradict any wrong Impression abroad, and
to quell any uneasiness without troubling her d
rurther; but, it being Sunday, she now ap- t
pointed Monday, the next day, for the five Selectrien to be shown over the establishment,
and included In her invitation two heighbors s
who had been ins:rumental in increasing the lI
popular prejudice.  On Monday the visitors a
came, and ferreted the house through from  a
cellar to cuplola, occupying three hours, look- 1
ing even into the paint-boxes, searching every o
closet, opening every drawer, assisted by the a
Mysterious Lady, Miss Harrison, herself, in per- a
son. Ti-eir errand done, they declared them- S
selves satisfied that not only was there nothing t
to censure in the least, but, on the other hand, o
much to praise, and they adjourned to the house n


of one of their number to prepare a pronunciamento to that purpose for the morning papers.
They had but little more than left the building,
just before sunset, when a group of men
gathered about the gates of the avenue, using
Impertinent language, but, upon the Superior's
notifying the Selectmen, sne was assured there
was not the least prospect of the occurrence of
anything disagreeable.  It was shortly after
nine in the evening when she became more
seriously alarmed by a great noise on the Medford road, made by an advancing mob, with
cries of "Down with the convent! Down with
the convent!" With much presence of mind,
she instantly aroused the Community, telling
them she feared they were in danger-the rioters on the road, meanwhile, constantly increasing in force with new arrivals, on foot and in
wagons, from every quarter. After waking
those that were asleep, she went into the second story of the building, and, throwing up a
window, asked the party of forty or -ifty
gathered outside what they desired, adding
that they were disturbing the slumbers of the
pupils, some of whom were the children of
their most respected fellow-citizens. They replied that they did not mean to hurt the children, but they must see the nun that had run
away. The Superior went to fetch her, but
found that she had fainted with fright, and lay
insensible in the arms of four of the Sisters.
The Superior then returned to tell the people
that this was the case; she asserted to them
that the establishment had that day been visited
by the Selectmen, who bad been pleased with
all they saw, and would assure them of it, and
that if they would call on the next day, at a
suitable hour, they should have every satisfaotion.  They asked her if she were protected,
and she answered, " Yes, by legions!" invoking the celestial guardians. But other parties
having come to swell their numbers, they replied in indecent terms, calling her an old
figurehead made of brass, telling her that she
was lying, and that they had one of the Selectmen with them who bad opened the gates to
them. The Selectman then came forward, and
advised the Superior to throw herself on his
protection, but as he was the same Selectman
whose officiousness had already produced much
of the trouble, the Superior, after asking him
If he had secured the attendance of any other
members of the board, refused to trust her establishment to his safe-keeping, telling him, if
he wished to befriend her, first to disperse the
mob. This he feebly attempted, deterring the
rioters from firing the building, when they
called for torches, by telling them that if lights
were brought they would be recognized and
detected-after which noble effort he returned
o his house, and valiantly went to bed.
The mob then fired a gun in the labyrinth
under the willow-trees, possibly as a token of
ome sort to their accomplices, and withdrew a
ittle, while waiting for the fresh arrivals. At
ibout eleven o'clock the fences were torn up
nd a bonfire kindled, which is believed to
ave been a concerted signal for the presence
f all the conspirators, and the bells being rung
s for an alarm of fire, both iu Charlestown
nd Boston, multitudes pressed to the spot.
3everal fire-engines also appeared-the Charles*
own ones halting opposite the bonfire, and
ne from Boston passing up to the front of the
tansion, where it was seized upon by the mob





OHALESTOWN.


13


and prevented from doing any service when                              _
needed, if so inclined. Rumor still runs that
at this point, when Boston would have sent
other engines and further means to subdue the
disturbances, the drawbridges were lifted, and  _                  -       --
it was found to be impossible to get them down.                                D.
The arrival of the engine from Boston was,
however, instantly followed by an assault upon
the building in the shape of a shower of brickbats and clubs against the windows, after which
the bold assailants waited to see if any defense
were to be made, or anyresentment manifested
to this attack, which btey knew might kill or
maim many of the helpless inmates. This brief
pause allowed the Lady Superior opportunity to
marshal her little flock, whom she had refused
previously to allow to leave the building, lest                             f
that should be only betraying it to its destruction, and under convoy of the terrified Sisters
to secure their retreat down the garden, into
Sthe summer-house, and over the fence into the
adjoining grounds, where they were safe tii ll
they could be collected in a friendly house:  it
there had been sixty children to be taken care  i
of, and of the nuns that night one was in the
last stages of pulmonary consumption, one was
in convulsive fits, and Miss Harrison had been
wrought, by the agitation (f the evening, to a
raving delirium. The Superior, having per-        LEGEND OF CHARLESTOWNt.
formed this duty. lingered herself, with the RUINS OF T  URSULI-'E CONVENT OF MT. BENEDICT.
true spirit of a leader in such situation, opening the doors of every room and looking into boring towns, nor asked for the services of the
every dormitory, calling every child by name, marines at the Navy Yard, nor made a single
to be sure that none were left behind, and  arrest during all the seven hours of the riot.
then, last of all, descending to her own room  And though the outside multitude, who took
to secure the valuables there, together witn a no pait in the crime, were all Protestants, not
thousand dollars belonging to the revenue of one of them dared to protest against this cutthe institution; but before the last of th  rage, not only upon weakness and dene e-elesschildren had left the building the varlets had ness, but upon civil liberty, and all remained
poured in, and as she herself fled from it they paralyzed until the end, doubtful p.erhaps if
were but ten feet behind her. In a mo- there were enough disapprovers among them
ment afterward the house was filled with to be of any avail, and C ntirely forgetfui that a
the mob, houting, yelling, and blaspheming; stream from a single engine-hose would have
torches snatched from the engines lighted the dispersed the whole mob more quickly than a
way for them, they ransacked every room, battery could have done.
rifled every trunk, broke open every drawer,  Meanwhile the nuns, cscaping with difficulty,
stole watches, thrust the costly jewelry of the and with yet greater difficulty supporting the
Spanish children into their pockets, split up young consumptive, Sister Mary St. Ienry, and
the piano-fortes, shattered the splendid harps, getting her across the fence at the garden's
aud even made way with the altar ornaments foot, had found a kindly shelter, and were
presented by the good Archbishop of Bordeaux. shortly afterward invited by old G(eneral DearHaving satisfied their curiosity and greed, they born to his seat in Roxbury,.called Brinley
piled up the furniture, curtains, books, pic- Place, where they found once more a home,
tures, in the centre of the several rooms, and although, before thoy were fairly settled there,
deliberately set fire to every heap, threw in Mary St. Henry died, at the age of twenty.
the altar vestnients, the Bible and the cross, Though an invalid, this young woman bad been
and, the act of virtue consummated, left the able to give a lesson on the day of the destrucbuilding in flames. After this, the bishop's tion of the convent; all that night she lay in a
lodge experienced a similar fate, the farm- cold rigor, and eleven days afterward she was
house belonging to the institute followed, and dead. Her funeral was one of unusual pomp;
the grand demonstration of proper religious every Catholic in the vicinity made an object of
sentiment wound up with tearing open the attending, half the citizens of Boston were
tomb of the place, pillaging the sacred vessels organized into a special police through expectthere, stealing the coffin-plates, and scattering ation of some requital, and so deeply roused
the ashes of the dead to the four winds.  were the feelings of the injured party, that it is
Not a hand was lifted to stay these abomina- probable nothing but tf e most unremitting exerble proceedingsi by any one of the vast multi- tions of their clergy prevented severe retiliation.
tude ontside; the firemen, who declared fre- The matter, however, did not end here imqnently that they could prevent the flames if mediately. Loud expressions of disapprobation
allowed, were hindered from acting-although  were heard from all portions of the Stte, and
their sincerity may be suspected from the fact a self-constituted Committee, of the best names
that an engine returned to Boston decked with in Boston, including such as Robert C. Winthe flowers stolen from the altar; the magis- throp, William Appleton, Horace Mann, Thetrates neither made any re ronstrance, nor ophilus Parsons, and Thomas Motley, prepared
read the riot-act, nor demanded help of neigh- at once to investligate the affair, and tring, if





14                                CHARLESTOWN.
possible, the miscreants to justice. They ex- seen to be asleep; and though it was proved to
amined more than one hundred and forty per- be he that had beaten the convent-gardener,
sons, and, chiefly by their exertions, thirteen that had been seen actively encouraging the
arrests were made, of which eight were of a rioters, breaking the doors, bringing tar-barrels
capital nature. The young woman who had and firing them, and though on the retirement
scattered the atrocious slanders was visited, of the jury they stood seven to five for convicand she retracted everything but the assertions tion, on the way from their room to the courtrelative to the severe penances of the sick nun; room they became unanimous for acquittal
but even on that point her word was discredited The only person ever punished for complicity in
by means of other witnesses, the sisters by birth the affair, was a mere boy, convicted on very
of Mary St. Henry; it was proved that she had insufficient evidence, but for whom  it was
been a charity-student in the institute, desirous probably supposed the penalty would be made
of taking the vail, admitted on probation for six right; he was sentenced to imprisonment for
months to discover if she had either capacity, life, his mother died of a broken heart, and
sincerity, or strength of character, failing to dis- finally he was pardoned out, ruined, and old
play which she was about to be dismissed, when before his time. There all proceedings ended.
she left secretly. Miss Alden, a young lady The nuns were invited to establish themselves
who had taken the white vail at Mount Benedict, at Newport, in the land where Roger Williams
and afterward freely left it, testified that, upon made religious toleration a fact, but the propoliving there two years, she became convinced sition was declined, partly perhaps because the
that she had no vocation for an ascetic life, and attack showed where their work was needed,
made her feelings known to the Superior, who and partly in the belief that Massachusetts
advised her accordingly, strongly as they were would render justice, inasmuch as having alattached to each other, to depart if she could ways paid for protection, when then the protecnot be happy there, of which no one could judge tion.was withheld the State became responsible
but herself, and to her decision it should be for all damages. This responsibility has never
left, for their rules allowed no one to remain been met.  Repayment has been constantly
except such as found their happiness there, urged by all denominations; Theodore.Parker
and there only. "She told me," said Miss made himself especially prominent in the matAlden, "that I was at liberty to go when I ter; but, owing to a mistaken judgment of what
pleased, and should be provided with every- the popular opinion may be, no Legislature has
thing requisite for my departure-which was yet been found with sufficient courage to make
done two years after, having remained that an appropriation to reimburse the Convent for
length of time merely from personal attach- its losses, and in refusing this demand for payment to the Lady Superior."   And it was ment the State has virtuallyrepeated the outequally evident that others desiring to do rage year by year.
so had been allowed to separate themselves   Perhaps no more scathing commentary on the
from  the Community in the same manner, whole matter will ever be made than that to be
The charge of inhumanity to the sick was also found in the following exact copy:
sifted, and found amounting to nothing; tte
child with the scarlet-fever having been sent                  "NOVEMBER 26, 1834.
home upon the first symptom of the disease, to  " Received of Bishop Fenwick, the sum of
prevent the infection's reaching the remaining seventy-nine dollars and twenty cents, the same
children. And to an assertion in relation to being taxes assessed by the Assessors of the
secret vaults beneath the building, the mason, town of Charlestown, upon the land and buildone Peter Murphy, who laid the foundations, ings of the late Convent of Mount Benedict, for
declared, under his own signature, that nothing the year 1834, and which were this day deof the kind existed. Although unanimously manded by Solomon Hovey, Jr., Collector,
opposed to the Roman Catholic forms of re- agreeably to instructions received by him from
ligion, the Committee published a most mag- the Assessors, to that effect, although said
nanimous report of their investigation; and buildings had been destroyed by a mob in Aufinally a man by the name of Buzzell was gust last.
brought to trial as a ringleader in the late  " 19.20.          (Signed)
atrocity. He received, however, a very siogular trial; one of the jurymen was several times     " SOLOMON HOVEY, Jr., Collector."





SALEM.


WHEN the traveler loses sight of Charlestown, with its trim but incongruous monuments, his trainl Is passing out on the meadows
dotted with haycocks and alive with every tint
of red and russet, and presently is skirting the
shores of Swampscot and Lynn. Here, perhaps, he glances up at the High Rock commanding sight of the dim line of the Beverley
beaches, of the Cape Ann Shadows, the jagged
coast of Marblehead, the long sweep of the
Swampscot sands, the wild cliffs of Nahant,
and the immense horizon of the bay beyonda spot where Moll Pitcher for so many years
performed her fmysteries; and twenty minutes
afterward the train is running into a region
where witch and warlock, once holding revel,
still haunt every inch of the ground. This region, whose centre is known as the town of
Salem, is very lovely in the river-banks and
villas of its outskirts. For the town itself,
slight marks remain of the old Puritan domination, and its days of East Indian glory and
spicy argosies are over. Reminiscences of that
glory, however, continue to give caste in
the place, and every lady in Salem has a
cachemire shawl, it is said, or else has no
passport to society; and great warehouses
and great fortunes remain to tell of the
state that has passed away. Among the
smaller towns along the coast, Salem is still the
most wealthy, and is therefore the target for
much ill-nature on the part of her poorer
neighbors. Nothing equals the contempt which
a Lynn man feels for a citizen of Salem, unless
it is the contempt which a Gloucester man feels,
or that which a Salem man not only feels but
manifests, for both of the others and the rest of
creation besides. In Marblehead this hostility
reaches more open expression, and the mutual
seutiments of both populations are uttered by
the urchins there when they cry: "Here
comes a Salem boy-let's rock him round the
corner I"  Nevertheless, Salem  contrives to
creep along, to found her museum, to become
headquarters for the Essex Institute, and to
make herself, In ever so slight a measure, a
centre of culture and advance. Lately the
Scientific Societies met there, and were-undreamed-of thing-invited home to dinner:
In a town where, If necessity obliges you to
call upon a man at his club, he comes out and


shuts the door behind him, keeping a grasp
upon the handle as an Intimation of the brevity
of your visit-where Choate and Webster,
pleading in court, have picked up a luncheon,
at noontide, in hotel or eating-house, as best
they might, and where Hawthorne all but
starved. Salem is conspicuous among New
England towns for the beauty of its women; a
plain face would be an anomaly there, and the
well-fed blood of wealthy generations is told
by the bloomy skins and abundint tresses, the
expression of sweetness and dignity, the soft
eyes and fine features, of the daughters of the
place. The town still preserves a few relics of
its memorable past; the House of the Seven
Gables was standing there a little while ago,
together with the Townsend-Bishop house,
famous for its share in the old witchcraft transactions, and the Corw!n house, at the corner of
North and Essex streets, where the Grand Jury
sat upon those transactions. There are some
handsome churches and public buildings of
more modern date, and a stone Court-house,
together with a fine Registry of Deeds. There
is an interest attaching to this latter structure,
not altogether archaological though concerning itself with antiquities, but an interest in
one of the darkest problems ever presented by
human nature; for here are kept such documents as have been preserved from the witchcraft days, and among theiffthe death-warrant
of Bridget Bishop. Very few indeed are these
papers; for, when the frenzy of the period
began to subside, those "Salem  Gentlemen"
who petitioned the Government to grantnp reprieve to Rebecca Nurse, a woman who had lived.
nearly eighty years of a saintly life, were overtaken by remorse and shame, and hastened to
do away with all rememibrance of their recent action, exhibiting a better sense of the fitness of
things than their descendants do who do-day
display in a sealed vial a dozen bent and verdigrised and rusty pins purporting to be the\
identical ones with which their forefathers
plagued the witches; albeit, it is said, the
fashion of these pins was not known at the
time when those poor wretches were tor.
mented. Indeed to the stranger in the town
of Salem this is the one thought; he looks at
these people whom he meets upon the street,
and they become to him curious subjets of





SALEM.


conjecture as he reflects that intermarriage has
obliterated the ancient feud and rancor, and
wonders in what way it is that in these Individuals the blood of afflicted, persecutor, and
accused, together, accommodates itself. One
would look for the birth of strong characterIstics here, possibly for terrible developments,
out of the opposition of such material; but
nothing notable ever happens in the tranquil
town, and not a ripple of distinction breaks its
history since those first dreadful days, unless
we recall the vanished figure of Hawthorne
walking all his life long in the shadow of that
old witch-prosecuting ancestor, the Magistrate.
But much inheritance of a thing dies with the
memory of it, and when the scales dropped
from the eyes of the persecutors of-_~9-,-and
they saw themselves the shedders of innocent
blood, they destroyed all records that could be
found, reseated the church so that relatives of
the murderer and of the murdered sang their
hymns side by side from the same book, and
since those who had borne the stain of the
scaffold in their family were not likely to make
it subject of conversation, those who inflicted
that stain were glad to let it be forgotten; and
It came to pass that, when the historian sought
for it, he found less tradition existing relative to the occurrences of that dark and
bloody period than of times of quadruple the
antiquity. It reached him, though, from all
unimagined avenues, from church-records, from
registries of wills and deeds, from family papers, and we now have it in sufficient completeness to make us detest, if not the people, at
least the influences that made the people
actors in that tragedy.
Like most things of magnitude, the Salem
Witchcraft had its beginnings in small thingsin so small a thing, indeed, as a circle of young
girls meeting together, on winter evenings, at
each other's houses, to practice palmistry and
such sleight-of-hand as parlor-magic had then
attained.  Perhaps it was as remarkable a
thing as any in the whole occurrences that
such meetings were countenanced at all in
that place of the Puritan, and more remarkable still, that no connection was suspected
between these meetings and the subsequent
antics. These young girls were ten in number;
three of them were servants, and two of these
are believed to have acted from malicious
motives against the families where they were
employed, one of them afterward admitting
that she did so; and Mary Warren's guilt, as
capital witness securing the execution of seven
innocent persons, being-unless we accept the
hypothesis of spiritualism-as evident as it is
black and damning. In addition to these there
were the negro-slaves of Mr. Parris, the minister, in whose household all the first disturbances made their appearance, Tituba and her
husband.
It is worthy of remark, as the historian
urges, that Elizabeth Parris-a child of only
nine years, but of extraordinary precocity, the
daughter of the minister, himself the foremost
fomenter and agitator of the troubles--was
early removed by him from the scene, and
placed under shelter at safe distance. Of the
remainder, the most prominent were Abigail
Williams, ged eleven, a niece of the minister's, and resident in his family; Ann Putnam,
aged twelve; Betty Hubbard and Mary Walcot,
both aged seventeen; and Mercy Lewis, of the


same age, a servant in the family of Ann Putnam's mother; Mrs. Ann Putnam, aged thirty,
who afterward became as prominent as any in
the matter of afflictions. There were a Mrs.
Pope and a Mrs. Bibber, who joined tne circle;
but the one was only hysterical, and the latter
was detected in a trick, and their connection
with the phenomena was brief. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Tiluba was at the
root of the whole business. Brought by Mr.
Parris, who had formerly been a merchant, from
the West Inadis, and still but half-civilized, she
was full of her wild Obeah superstitions and
incantations, in which she had without doubt
interested the two children in her master's
family, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams.
Probably they invited Ann Putnam, a child of
nearly the same age as themselves, to witness
what they found so entertaining; and she,
confiding in her mother's servant, Mercy Lewis,
an ignorant glrl of seventeen, Mercy in turn
interested her own companions in the matter.
Sitting over the winter fires, after growing
tired of their exercises in magic, it is likely
that they rehearsed to each other all the marvelous tales of the primeval settlements, stories
full of sheeted ghosts, with wild hints of the
Indian goblin Hobbomocko, till they shuddered
and laughed at the shuddering, and their terrified imaginations and excited nerves were
ready for something beyond. Perfecting themselves in all they could discover of legerdemain,
taught by Tituba the secret of a species of voluntary cataleptic fit, and improving on her
teachings by means of their own superior Intelligence, before the winter was over they
had become adepts in their arts, and were
ready for exhibition. It is likely that at first
their object was merely to display their skill,
to make amusement and arouse wonder, and,
possibly, admiration, in their beholders, who
singularly failed to perceive that it was a concerted thing among them. Perhaps, too, they
were somewhat emulous of the fame of the
Godwin children, whose exploits had lately
been on every tongue.   When the crowds,
who afterward flocked to see those whom ministers and doctors had pronounced bewitched,
witnessed their appalling condition, they were
overwhelmed with horror; fo'r, " whatever
opinion may be formed," says Mr. Upham, "of
the moral or mental condition of the afflicted
children, as to their sanity and responsibility,
there can be no doubt that they were great
actors. In mere jugglery and sleight-of-hand,
they bear no mean comparison with the workers
of wonders, in that line, of our own day. Long
practice had given them complete control over
their countenances, intonations of voice, and
the entire muscular and nervous org nization
of their bodies; so that they could at will, and
on the instant, go into fits and convulsions;
swoon and fall to the floor; put their frames
into strange contortions; bring the blood to
the face and send It back again. They could
be deadly pale at one moment, at the next
flushed; their hands would be clinched and
held together as with a vice; their limbs stiff
and rigid or wholly relaxed; their teeth would
be set, they would go through the paroxysms
of choking and strangulation, and gasp for
breath, bringing froth and blood from  the
mouth; they would utter all sorts of screams
in unearthly tones; their eyes remain fixed,
sometimes bereft of all light and expression,





SALEM.


-   I'I' I
Ji iI I 7'
*  4~,-,.  I--r?- ~   6  II


"THE REV, GEORGE BURROUGHS WAB ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT ON THE EVIDENCE OF FEATS OF STRENCT::,
TRIED, HUNG, AND BURIED BENEATH THE GALLOWS."


cold and stony, and sometimes kindled into
flames of passion; they would pass into the
state of somnambulism, without aim or conscions direction in their movements, looking
at some point where was no apparent object of
vision, with a wild, unmeaning glare. There
are some indications that they had acquired
the art of ventriloquism; or they so wrought
upon the imaginations of the beholders that
the sounds of the motions and voices of invisible beings were believed to be beard. They
would start, tremble, and be pallid before apparitions seen, of course, only by themselves;
but their acting was so perfect that all present thought they saw them, too. They would
address and holl colloquy with spectres and


ghosts, and the fesponses cf the unseen beings
would be aunible to the fancy of the bewildered
crowd. They would follow with their eyes the
airy visions so that others imagined they also
beheld them."
M. Upham calls this a high dramatic achievement; but he goes on to state that the Attorney-General, a barrister fresh from the Inns of
Court at London, was often present, together
with many others who had seen the world, and
were competent to detect trickery; and it is,
after all, difficult to believe that this parcel cf
rude girls could have acquired so much dexterity, and that no diseased condition of mind
and nerve assisted them, and that the fith,
which were at first voluntary, did not at la t





18       '                            SALEM.
take control of them and all their powers. Just coming to the fuul sense of life, and occuNotwithstanding this doubt, it is plain that pied with that, and generally with a nervous
their magic came in on such occasions as the system so delicately organized as easily to be
pin-pricking; as, for instance, when one of tnrown out of balance, they seem to be desti.
them, not wishing to reply, had a pin appa- tute of all natural feeling, of all moral perceprently run through both her upper and lower tion, and pliant to any wickedness. These young
lip, and no wound or festering following. On girls of Salem Village, some of greater presuch occasions, too, as that when they were cocity than others, were probably all of them
found with their arms tied, and hung upon a within the scope of this declaration, and at an
hook, or their wrists bound fast with a cord, age when they needed careful shielding and
after the manner of the Davenport Brothers of observation, instead of being left, as they were,
to-day; as that, when an iron spindle, missing to the companionship of servants-servants
for some time from a house in the village, was whose duller minds and lower breeding resuddenly snatched out of the air from the hand duced all aifference of age to nothing; and the
of an apparition; or that, when one of them written and signed confession of their ringbeing afflicted by a spectre in a white sheet, in- leader still remains to render one very cautions
visible to other than herself, caught and tore in assigning the explanation of their misdeeds
the corner of the sheet, and showed the real to any preternatural or even abnormal cause.
cloth in her hand to the spectators, who received It is known, at any rate, that they were several
it undoubtingly. Their catalepsy, though, or times discovered in deception; once, on being
whatever it may be called, was of use to them  reproved for it, they boldly answered that they
throughout - whether they chewed soap till must have a little sport; on another time, one
they foamed at the mouth, and expertly twisted of them was plainly seen to be practicing a trick
their supple bodies into long-practiced contor- with pins; and, again, one of them crying out
tions, or whether what was feigned at first that she was being stabbed with a knife, a
grew real afterward, and they were seized by broken piece of a knife was found upon her, but
the flame they had kindled, and became de- a young man in the audience immediately demented by the contagious delirium. It is well clared that, on the day before, he had broken
understood that the Shakers of the present his knife, this afflicted person being present,
day are capable of producing similar condi- and thrown the broken part away, and he protions-fits, distortions, trances in which visions duced the haft and remaining portion of the
are imagined to be seen; and something of blade to prove it, and though the girl was reprithe same sort is frequent in the camp-meeting manded, she was used, just the same, for witrevivals, while shrieking hysterics are now  ness in other cases.
known to be as voluntary as winking; and it  The state of feeling in the Colonies and elsehas even been discovered that fixing the eyes where could not have been more propitious to
and the attention upon a bright spot at a short their undertaking than it was at the time when
distance away will induce a state of coma. they opened their drama.    Cotton Mather,
Whether they bad learned the possibility of whose mind was a seething caldron of superstisuch things, or merely simulated* them, it is tions, had just published the account of the
almost impossible to believe that these girls, afficted Goodwin children; Goody Morse was
in the depth of depravity to which they de- living in her'bn house at Newbury, under
scended, were not victims of a temporary in- sentence of death, sentence pronounced in/
sanity. Their ready wit and make-shift would Boston, it having been found impossible hith-'
lend a color to this supposition, as being only erto to convict a person for witchcraft in Essex
the cunning of the insane, if there had not County; and Margaret Jones, and Mistress
been so much method in tneir madness, and Anne Hibbins, a sister of Governor Bellingham
there were not too much evidence of a direct- and one of the figures of the '" Scarlet Letter,"
ing hand behind them.                      had, not long before, been hung for practicing
Mr. Upham thinks that they became intoxi- the black art; they were the free-thinkers of
cated with the terrible success of their impos- that day who doubted the verity of witchcraftture, and having sewed the wind, were swept Addison believed in it, Edmund Fairfax, the
away by the whirlwind; they appeared, he translator of Tasso, believed in it, Sir Thomas
says, as the prosecutors of every poor creature Browne gave in court his testimony in behalf of
that was tried, to such degree that their wick- its reality; Blackstone. the fountain of law,
edness seems to transcend the capabilities of asserted that to deny the existence of witchcratt--
human crime; but he goes on to remark that was to contradict the word of God; King James
" there is, perhaps, a slumbering element in had written diatribes on witches and had persethe heart of man that sleeps forever in the cuted them; Queen Elizabeth had persecuted
bosom of the innocent and w ood, and requires them; William Penndhad presided at the trial
the perpetration of a great sin to wake it into of two women for witchcraft; thirty years after
action; but which, when once aroused, impels the executions in Salem, Dr. Watts expressed
the transgressor onward with increasing mo- his persuasion that there was much agency of
mentum, as the descending ball is accelerated the devil and some real witches in that affair;
in its course. It may be that crime begets an and so deeply rooted and long in dying was the
appetite for crime, which, like all other appe- superstition, that in 1766 a Presbyterian synod
tites, is not quieted, but inflamed by grati- in Scotland denounced, as a national sin, the
fication."                                 repeal of the penal laws against witchcraft; in
A large part of thedifficulty In determining the 1808 women were abused for witches Dy a
truth abt:ut these girls may vanish if we recall Iwhole population within sixty miles of London,
the declaration of the British Judge, a few years and so lately a the beginning of this century
since, upon the case of Constance Kent, con- Father Altizzo, s imprisoned at Rome for
fessing the murder of her little half-brother, sorcery, and the-. were prosecutions for witchwhere he remarked it to be a fact that there craft in some of the interior districtsof our own
was a point in the existence of the young, when, Southern States. In the midatof such universal





SALEM.


19


darkness. the people of Salem were not behind
the spirit of their age when fancying that their
village had become the battle-ground of Antichrist; and possibly they recovered sooner
from their delusion than other communities of
less sturdy and self-asserting habits of thought
might have done. The village, too, presented
an excellent field of operation, for it had for
many years been torn with dissensions; there
had been violent jealousies, wrangles and lawults over the acquisition of large property,
rough industry and enterprise, by people
once in less prosperous circumstances, as for
example, the Nurses, and quarrels with the
"Topsfield Men," connections of the Nutses, in
relation to boundaries, resulting in fisticuff encounters and lasting enmities.  There had,
moreover, been trouble in the parish in relation
to the impossibility or procuring a minister who
should please all parties. Mr. Bayley, Mr. Burroughs and Mr. Deodat Lawson having been
obliged to leave, owing to the hostilities, and
Mr. Sam. Parris being settled in their place.
Mr. Parris, among several singular qualities,
seems to have been almost destitute of sympathy-he once told some men whose mother's
execution he had been instrumental in Drocuring, that while they thought her innocent and
he thought her guilty, the matter between them
was merely a diffe ence of opinion; he was
possessed of great talent, and of an inordinate
ambiilon; passionately fond of power, and constantly stirring up scenes that might lead to it,
during the whole time of his career he kept the
parish in a broil; he had at last grown so unpopular, that some bold stroke became necessary
in order to regain lost ground, and when the
children in his family commenced their performances, it is thought that he saw his advantage, and used it, to the pulling down of
those who opposed him, and the setting-up of
the standard of the Church, in his person, over
all other authority. Probably, as Cotton Mather
did, he aspired to be the chief champion of
Christianity, and therefore the more exceedingly he could inflame the people, and then
the more effectually quench the flame, the
greater glory must redound to him and his
ministry; and it is possible that neither he nor
the " aflicted children " had originally any idea
of the lengths to which the thing would go; but
once committed, there was no retreat.
When now the girls began to exhibit their
new accomplishments at home, their frightened
parents gave them medicine; of course this
did not modify their symptoms, and presently
the physician was summoned. Finding that
none of his appliances changed their condition,
Dr. Griggs took refuge in a common saying of
the time, which had sheltered the ignorance of
many another doctor, and declared that an evil
Uand had been laid upon them. Then Mr.
Parris scented his prey in an instant; he kept
the children in an agitation, noised the affair
abroad till it became the talk of town and
countryside, and the neighbors ran to see the
convulsions of the afflicted, shivered with awe
when the Sabbath meetings were disturbed by
their outbursts, believed they saw the yellowbird that Ann Putnam saw " sitting on the minIster's hat as it hangs on the pi, in the pulpit;"
the families of the various affli  a  ones fasted
and prayed, and finally Mr. Patis called a convocation of the ministers to witness th, proceedings of these crazy children, half  nsf d,


half evil. Upon this the children brought out
all the scenes in their repertory at once, and
the ministers were astounded; always ready
for combats with Satan, here they had him on
open ground; they appointed a day of exhortation over the afflicted, and increased the excitement of the people to fury, so that nothing was
thought of but the sufferings of these victims of
the wrath of the Evil One, sufferings whose
reality no one disbelieved; all business became
suspended, all labor was left, and the whole
community was in a frenzy of fanaticism. A few
individuals did not join the outcry: Martha
Corey did not believe there were any witchespresently she was accused for one and hung;
the Nurses and Cloyses and Joseph Putnam objected to the minister's allowing the children of
his family to dislurb the meeting without so
much as a rebuke, and withdrew from their
attendance at the church-Rebecca Nurse was
hung, Sarah Cloyse was imprisoned, and Joseph
Putnam escaped only by arming every member
of his family and keeping a horse under saddle
night and day for six months, determined, if the
marshal came for him with a small posse, to resist. but if with an overwhelming force, to fly,
choosing rather the mercies of the savage
heathen of the forest than the barbarities of
these frantic Christians.
It is a common error to suppose that the
three learned professions lead the people in
point of intelligence. On the contrary, trained
in grooves not easy to leave, they remain as
they were in the beginning, and almost all advance comes from the outside. This was never
better exemplified than in the Witchcraft delusion. If the poysicians then had possessed
either acuteness, skill, or candor, they would
have checked the girls in their first spasms; if
the ministers had been what they should have
been ere daring to undertake the cure of souls,
instead of lending countenance to their pretensions and praying over the girls, they would
have punished them and made them fear the
consequences of their manoeuvres; if the lawyers had exercised any quality which a lawyer
should possess, they would have sifted their
testimony till it blew away in the wind, and
would have utterly cast out the evidence of
spectres, instead of greedily receiving it and
hounding on the poor wretches to their death.
When justices, deacons, doctors and gentry
hurried to wonder over and sympathize with
the young impostors, when their leaders came
to be mad, It is no marvel that the people lost
their head and followed after. In the faith
that the girls were bewitc, ed, and that Satan
acted only through human agencies, they
clamored to know who it was that had bewitched them; and thus beset, the girls, either
at random or because there was no one to befriend her, or at Mr. Parris's half-hinted suggestion, timidly pronounced a name.  " Good,"
they said, ' Good "-cheating their consciences,
perhaps, by making it only a surname; they
had no such timidity by-and-by; and Sarah
Good was consequently apprehended. When
she was examined, two others had been named,
arrested, and were examined with her.
Sarah Good was a poor creature-homeless,
destitute, deserted by her husband, with a
family of children to support by odds and ends
of work, by begging from door to door, and
scraping together in any way what little she
could. Doubtless she was a nuisance in the





20


SALEM.


neighborhood, as most impecunious and shiftless people are, and her reputation was not
satisfactory. Her fate was certain from the
onset. The people-who were full of horror
and of pity for the tortured girls; who had
been told by the physicians that they were bewitched; who had seen the ministers oracularly
confirm this statement; who had heard Mr.
Parris make it the subject of his vehement discourses Sunday after Sunday, while the distemper of the girls alarmed the congregation; who
had lately done nothing but look for the guilty
author of this diabolism, drew a breath of relief when at last the witch was named; so plausible a person. a vagrant and friendless; and it
must be admitted that Sarah Good and Mrs.
Osburne-an elderly person, sometimes bedridden, sometimes distracted, who absented
herself from meeting-and the slave Tituba,
were the best possible selections that the cunning hussies could have made; and the people
were satisfied. Mrs. Osburne died in prison
nine months afterward; Tituba confessed-as
she sub equently averred, under stress of beatings from Mr. Parris-and, lying in jail a year
and a month, was finally sold for her fees; but
Sarah Good drank her cup, bitter all her life
long, to the bitter dregs. The meeting-house
was thronged at her examination; she was
placed on a platform in full sight of all there;
Mr. Parris had excited every one with his impassioned opening prayer; the array of magistrates, marshal and constable were enough to
strike awe into her soul at any time, much
more when her life was at stake. Acquainted
with want, with sorrow and obloquy, her heart
had been hardened, and she gave back no mild
answers to the catechisinr. The justices assumed her guilt to be already established, endeavored to make her involve herself, gave
leading questions to the witnesses, allowed all
manner of abominable interruptions, and browbeat and abused her. When the afflicted children were introduced, at a glance of her eye
they straightway fainted and went into spasms,
cried out that they were pinched and pricked
and throttled, and fell stiff as the dead. Upon
being taken to her and touched by her, the
color returned to their faces, their limbs relaxed, they immediately became calm and well;
so that it seemed to be demonstrated before the
eyes of the credulous audience that the malign
miasm had been received back again into the
wttch.
She herself could not tell what to make
of it, and never doubted the fact that the girls
suffered as they seemed to do; she only declared that it was not she that caused it, and
must be the others-which simple exclamation
the justices used as a confession of her own
guilt, and accusation and evidence against the
others. " What is it that you say," asked Hathorne, "Iwhen you go muttering away from
persons' houses?" " If I must tell, I will tell,"
she answers. " Do tell us, then," he urges.
"6 If I must tell, I will tell: It is the Commandments. I may say my Commandments, I hope."
"4 What* Commandment is it?"  Poor Sarah
Good could not for the life of her remember ai
Commandment. "If I must tell you, I will
tell," she ays then-" It is a psalm;" and after
a time she murmurs some fragment that she
has succeeded in recalling. Before long her
husband was brought in to testify against her.
She was sent to prison-thrice leaping off her


horse, railing against the magistrates, and
essaying to take her own life-and afterward
loaded down with Iron fetters and with cords,
since it was supposed a witch needed double
fastenings, till led out, lour months later, to
her execution. Meanwhile her child, five years
old, was apprehended for a witch; the marks
of her little teeth were shown on Ann Putnam's
arm; Mercy Lewis and the others produced
pins with which she had pricked them; she
was committed to prison and loaded with chains
like her mother. Outraged, oppressed, and
feeling there was no justice in the world unless
the Powers that rule it made her word true,
when, upon the scaffold, the cruel minister,
Nicholas Noyes, told Sarah Good s".e was a
witch, and she knew she was a witch, she
turned upon him and cried, " You are a liar!
and God shall give you blood to drink!"
Twenty-five years afterward, and unrepenting,
Nicholas Noyes Jied of an internal hemorrhage,
the vital torrent pouring from his mouth and
strangling him with his own blood.
After the first three witches had been proclaimed, the business began in earnest, and the
girls "cried out upon" enough to keep the
magistrates' hands full; consternation and terror ran like wildfire through the community,
which was unlettered and ignorant to a large
degree, the learning of the fathers having died
with them, and the schools not being yet established; presently everybody was either accused
or accusing, there was a witch in every house,
the only safety for any was in suspecting
a neighbor.   If one  expressed doubt of
the alllicted children, he was marked from
that. moment. The Rev. Francis Dane suspected them; his family were cried out
upon. two of his children and many of his
grandchildren being imprisoned, and some
sentenced to death. The lev. John Higginson
-of whom it was said, " his very presence
puts vice out of countenance. his conversation
is a glimpse of heaven "-disbelieved in them
his daughter Anna was committed as a witch.
Husbai ds were made to criminate their wives,
children, tlheir parents; when one of the accusing girls fell away, she was herself accused,
but knowing what to do, was saved by a confession of impossibilities. Anything was taken
for evidence, the nightmares of this one, the
drunken fantasies of that, the hysterics of the
other, and any careless gossip that never
should have been uttered at all. If a prisoner
dared use any self-vindication, the vanity and
anger of the magistrates were kindled against
that one in especial. Hundreds were under
arrest; hundreds confessed to what they never
did, as the only means to save their lives,
though afterward frequently retracting their
confessions and going cheerfully to death;
the prisons were full, and executions began. The accusations of the afflicted girls
mounted by degrees from simple witchcraft
and writing in the Black Man's book, with the
familiar of a yellow-bird, suckling the fingers,
to that of h baptism and sacrament of blood
administered by the devil hiltself, and finally
to that of fell and terrible murders. Their
narratives were all of the same character, their
imaginations filthy and limited in flight, and
the only assertions in the'whole of their rodcmontade of any brilliance was Tituba's reply as
tohow they went to their place of meeting. "We
ride upon sticks, and are there presently," and





SALEM.


21


the description of Mr. Burroughs's trumpetstone to convene his witches---a sound that
reached over the country far and wide, sending
Its blasts to Andover, and wakening its echoes
along the Merrimack to Cape Ann and the uttermost settlements everywhere." Kindness
had no effect upon the girls; when Mrs. Procter-three of whose children their representations had cast into prison, and whom they had
torn away from her home, leaving her forlorn
"little maid" of four years old to come out
and scan the passers-by, in hopes each one
might be her father or her mother, her brother
or her sister come back-when Mrs. Procter
mildly said to one of them, " Dear child, it is
not so," and solemnly added, ".There is another judgment, dear cild," they redoubled
their convulsions, and grew so outrageous that
John Procter, protecting his wife from their
Insults, was himself accused and hung. The
prisoners, meanwhile, were crowded in such
noisome dungeons, that many died and many
lost their reason; some also were tortured to
procure confession-feet and head bound together till the blood poured from eyes and
nose.
The accusations were by no means confined to Salem; Andover, Beverly, Boston,
were ransacked to fill them-the girls had
tasted blood and were pitiless. A Mrs. Easty
was taken from the old Crownlngshield Farm
in Topsfield (now owned by Mr. Thomas W.
Pierce), and brought to court; she was a woman of station and character; even the magistrates were affected by her mien; and though
Ann Putnam and others cried, "Oh, Goody
Easty, Goody Easty, you are the woman, you
are the woman!" she was discharged, havingendured several weeks' confinement; but upon
that there arose such an uproar among the
girls, such fresh fits and tormentings, that,
after having enjoyed her home for only two
days, she was again arrested by the brutal Marshal Herrick, and presently hung. But even
in her last hour this noble woman sent to the
Governor a petition in behalf of her fellowprisoners, yet asking no favor for herself. Mr.
Upham describes a scene at the trial of Sarah
Cloyse, taken every incident from the record,
which perfectly illustrates the callousness of
these girls.
"Then Sarah Cloyse asked for water, and sat
down, as one seized with a dying faintingfit; and several of the afflicted fell into fits,
and some of them cried out, ' Oh, her spirit
has gone to prison to her sister Nurse I'
" The audacious lying of the witnesses; the
horrid monstrousness of their charges against
Sarah Cloyse, of having bitten the flesh of the
Indian brute, and drank herself and distributed
to others as deacon, at an infernal sacrament,
the blood of the wicked creatures making these
foul and devilish declarations, known by her to
be utterly and wickedly false; and the fact
that they were believed by the deputy, the
council, and the assembly, were nmore than she
could bear. Her soul sickened at such unimaginable depravity and wrong; her nervous
system gave way; she fainted and sank to the
floor. The manner in which the girls turned
the incident against her shows how they were
hardened to all human feeling, and the cunning
art which, on all occasions, characterized their
proceedings. Th:.t such an insolent interruption and disturbance, on their part, was per

mitted without rebuke from the Court, is a
perpetual dishonor to every member of it. The
scene exhibited at this moment, in the meetinghouse, is worthy of an attempt to imagine.
The most terrible sensation was naturally produced by the swooning of the prisoner, the
loudly uttered and savage mockery of the girls,
and their going simultaneously into fits, screaming at the top of their voices, twisting into all
possible attitudes, stiffened as in death, or
gasping with convulsive spasms of agony, and
crying out. at intervals. 'There is the Black
Man whispering in Cloyse's ear.' 'There is a
yellow-bird flying round her head.' John Indian, on such occasions, used to confine his
achievements to tumbling and rolling his ugly
body about the floor. The deepest commiseration was felt by all for the 'afflicted,' and men
and women rushed to hold and soothe them.
There was, no doubt, much loud screeching,
and some miscellaneous faintings through the
whole crowd. At length, by bringing the sufferers into contact with Goody Cloyse, the diabolical fluid passed back into her, they were all
relieved, and the examination was resumed."
In fact, neither age nor condition had any
effect upon the prosecutors. Rebecca Jacobs,
partially deranged, was snatched from her four
young children, one of them an infant, and the
others who were able to walk following after
her, crying bitterly. Martha Carrier, who the
children said had promise from the Black Man
of being Queen of Hell, and who had sternly
rebuked the magistrates, and declared she had
seen no man so black as themselves, was made
to hear her caildren, seven or eight years
old, confess themselves witches who had set
their hands to the book, testify against her, and
procure her death. Rebecca Nurse, past three
score and ten, wife of a wealthy citizen, venerated by high and low, was brought to trial in
her infirm condition, accused by the girls at the
very time when she was praying for them. On
the jury's bringing in a verdict of innocence,
they were reprimanded by the Chief-Justice,
and remanded to confinement till they brought
in a verdict of guilty; and though her neighbors
made affidavits and petitions in her behalf, she
was condemned; after which Mr. Parris, who
had long since gotten affairs into his own
hands, had intimidated outsiders, and was
having everything his own way, prepared one
of his most solemn scenes to further excite the
people; and Mrs. Nurse, delicate, if not dying
as it was. after her shameful trial, her cruel
and indecent exposures, was brought into
church, covered with chains, and there excommunicated by her old pastor, Nicholas Noyesthe crowd of spectators believing they saw a
woman not only lost for this life, but barred
out from salvation in the life to come. She
was thrown, after death, into a hole beneath
the gallows; but her husband and sons recovered her body in the night, brought it home to
her weeping daughters, and buried it in her
own garden.
With that, the girls, grown bold, had flown
at higher game than any, the Rev. George
Burroughs, one of Mr. Parris's rivals and predecessurs. This person had suffered almost
everything in Salem ere leaving it for Casco
Bay; he had last his wife and children there,
his salary had not been pail him, and he had
even been arrested in his pulpit for the debt
of his wife's funeral expenses, which he had





22


SALEM.


previously paid by an order on the church- a witch herself! When his wife was arrested,
treasurer. The malignities that he now endured these words of his were remembered; he was
are only explicable by remembering his un- plied in court with artful questions, whose repopularity in Salem; he was cast in:o a black plies must needs be unfavorable to her; two of
dungeon, accused of witchcraft on the evidence his sons-in-law testified to his recent disagreeof such feats of strength as holding out a gun ment with her, to his bewitched cattle, and
by Inserting the joint of a finger in the muzzle, other troubles, and he was obliged to give a
and after that accused of the murder of his two deposition against her.  But he could not be
wives and of his children, of Mr. Lawson's wife forced to make the deposition amount to anyand child, and of various others, covered with thing; and, indignant with him for that conall abuses, and finally hung, and buried beneath tumacy, his wife's accusers became his own,
the gallows, with his chin and foot protruding and he was cast into jail for a wizard. Once
from the ground. Mr. Upbam gives a chapter imprisoned, with leisure to reflect, conscious
in his trial too graphically to escape quotation that he had never used witchcraft in his life,
here:                                      he began to believe that others might be as in" The examination of Mr. Burroughs pre- nocent as he, to be aware of the hallucination
sented a spectacle, all things considered, of to which he had been subject, to see that his
rare interest and curiosity: the grave dignity wife, by that time sentenced to execution, was
of the magistrates; the plain, dark figure of a guiltless martyr, to feel his old love and tenthe prisoner; the half-crazed, half-demoniac derness for her return upon him, to be filled
aspect of the girls; the wild, excited crowd; with remorse for his anger with her, for his
the horror, rage, and pallid exasperation of testimony and deposition, and with his old hot
Lawson, Goodman Fuller, and others, also of wrath against his two sons-in-laws, whose word
the relatives and friends of Burroughs's two had done her to deatn.
former wives, as the deep damnation of their  He comprehended the whole situation, that
taking off and the secrets of their bloody graves unless he confessed to a lie nothing could save
were being brought to light; and the child on him, that if he were tried he would certainly
the stand telling her awJul tales of ghosts in be condemned, and his properly would be conwinding-sheets, with napkins round their heads, fiscated under the attainder.  He desired in
pointing to their death-wounds, and saying that his extremity some punishment on his two unStheir blood did cry for vengeance' upon their faithful sons-in-law, some reward for his two
murderer. The prisoner stands alone: all were faithful ones. He sent for the necessaryinstruraving around him, while he is amazed, as- ments and made his will, giving all his large
tounded at such folly and wrong in others, and property to his two faithful sons-in-law, and
humbly sensible of his own unworthiness, bowed guarding the gift with every careful form of
down under the mysterious Providence that words known to the law. That properly done
permitted such things for a season, yet strong and witnessed, his resolve was taken.  He
and steadfast in conscious innocence and up- determined never to be tried. If he was not
rightness."                               tried, he could not be condemned; if he was not
But though such countless arrests and trials condemned, this disposition of his property
and condemnations were had, and so many could not be altered. The only way to accomexecutions, the most startling incident among piish this was by refusing to plead either guilty
them all was the death of old Giles Corey.  or not guilty. And this he did. When taken
Giles Corey was a man of marked traits, not into court he maintained a stubborn silence, he
the least marked of which was an unbending refused to open his lips; and till the prisoner
will and a heart that knew no fear. In the answered "guilty" or "not guilty," the trial
course of his long life he had never submitted could not take place. For this, also, there was
to a wrong without retaliation, he had suffered but one remedy, and old Giles Corey knew it;
no encroachments on his rights, he had cared but his mind was made up; it was the least
nothing for the speech of other people, but had atonement he could make his wife-to requite
always spoken his own mind, let who would the sons that had been loyal to her, and to meet
stand at the door; he had quarreled with his himself a harder fate than he had given her.
acquaintances, beaten his servants, sued his Perhaps, too, he saw that it needed such a
neighbors for slander, and, such experience thing to awaken the people, and he was the
tending toward small self-cont ol, he had been voluntary sacrifice. lie received un:;inclingly
involved in ceaseless litigation, and as often the sentence of the Peine forte et dure, and from
as not had teen in the right. Late in life he that moment never uttered a syllable. This
married, for his third wife, Martha. a woman of unspeakably dreadful torture condemned one
intelligence beyond her time, and joined the to a dark cell, there, with only a strip of clothChurch; and he was eighty years old when the ing, to be laid upon the floor with an iron
Witchcraft excitement began. With his ardent weight upon the chest, receiving the alternate
and eager temperament, nothing abated by fare of three mouthfuls of bread on one day,
age, he was immediately interested in the and on the next three draughts of the nearest
atllicted children, and soon as fanatical as the stagnant water, till obstinacy yielded or death
worst in regard to them. That his wife should arrived. In Giles Corey's case-excommunicalaugh at it all, should suppose those God-fear- tion having been previously pronounced on a
inl  men, the magistrates, blind, should assert self-murderer by the inexorable church-memthere was no such thing as a witch at all, and, bers-the punishment was administered in the
when he had seen their agonies with his own outside air, and the weights were of stone; he
eyes, that the afflicted children did but dissem- was strong, in spite of years; the anguish was
ble, and should hide his saddle that he might long; pressed by the burden, his tongue prostay at home, and no longer swell the press that truded from his mouth, a constable struck it
urged the matter on, filled him with amazement back with his staff, but not a word came with
and rage; he exclaimed angrily that the devil It, and he died unflinching, never pleading
was in her, and, for all he knew, she might be either guilty or not guilty. With this before





SALEM.


unheard-of Judicial murder in the Colonies, a
universal horror shuddered through the people
already surfeited with horrors, and all at once
their eyes opened to the enormity of these proceedings. Three days afterward, the last procession of victims, once hooted and insulted as
they went, jolted now in silence through the
long and tedious ways to the summit of Witch
Hill, and, taking their farewell look at the wide
panorama of land and sea, the last witches were
hanged. It was in vain for Cotton Mather to
utter his incendiary eloquence beneath the
gallows and endeavor to rekindle the dying
ires in the breasts of the sorry and silent
people; for Mr. Noyes to exclaim, as the bodies
swung off, " What a sad thing it is to see eight
firebrands of hell hanging tMlere!" The ministers exhorted, the frantic girls cried out on
one and another, and flew at so high a quarry
as the wife ot the Rev. John Hale, a woman of
almost perfect life; and though Mrs. Hale's
husband had persecuted* others, when the
thunderbolt fell on his own roof, he awoke to
his delirium: then the Commoners of Andover
instituted suits for slander, and with that the
bubble burst, and not another witch was hung.
The whole Colony was shaken with remorse,
and the reaction from the excitement was like
death. The accusing girls came out of their
convulsions unregarded; one or two afterward
married; the rest, with the exception of Ann
Putnam, led openly shameless Jives. Seven
years afterward, bereft of her father and
mother, and with the care of a large family ot
young brothers and sisters, and a constitution
utterly broken down by her career of fits and
contortions, Ann Putnam read in the open
church a confession of her crimes, partook of
the communion, and the tenth year following
she died. It is a brief and very strange confession; in it all the sin is laid upon Satan, and so
artlessly that one can but give her innocence
the benefit of a doubt; and whether the girl
was the subject of delusive trances or of wickedness, must remain a mystery until the science
of psychology has made further advances than
it has done to-day. When the people had fully
come to their senses, the jury that had passed
verdict on the accused wrote and circulated an


avowal of their regret; Judge Sewall rose in
his place in the Old South Church in Boston and
made a public acknowledgment of his error,
and supplication for forgiveness, and every year
thereafter kept a day of humiliation and prayer;
but Chief-Justice Stoughton remained as infatuated at the last as at the first; and of the ministers who had been active in the vile work,
Cotton Mather, Sam. Parris, Nicholas Noyed,
there is not a particle of evidence that one of
them repented or regretted it.  But Salem
Village was ruined, its farms were neglected,
its roads broken up, its fences scattered, its
buildings out of order, industrial pursuits were
destroyed, famine came, taxes were due and
lands were sold to meet them, whole families
moved away, and the place became almost
depopulated. One spot there, says the historian, bears marks of the blight to-day-the old
meeting-house road. "The Surveyor of Highways ignores it. The old, gray, moss-covered
stone walls are dilapidated and thrown out of
line. Not a house is on either of its borders,
and no gate opens or path leads to any. Neglect
and  desertion  brood over the contiguous
ground. On both sides there are the remains
of cellars, which declare that once it was lined
by a considerable population. Along this road
crowds thronged in 1692, for wveks and months.
to witness the examinations."
It is a satisfaction to the vindictive reader of
the annals of this time to know that Sam. Parris
-guilty of divination by his own judgment, since
he had plainly used the afflicted children for
that purpose-was dismissed from his pastorate,
where he had played the part rather of wolf than
of shepherd, and finished his days in ignominy
and want. While every reader will be glad to
know that a good man, Joseph Green, came to
soothe the sorrows and bind up the wounds,
and destroy as much as might be all memory of
wrong and suffering in the place. But though,
for a few year., various L gislatures passed
small acts of acknowledgment and compensation, yet, wars and other troubles supervening,
and possible shame at reopening the past, it so
happens that for several ot the murdered people the attainder has never been taken off to
the present day.





NEWBURYPORT.


LfAvi, N  Salem behind, the traveler passes
beautiful Beverly, the home ot Lucy Larcom,
and whose beach is neighbor of the wonderful
singing one where the sands make mystical
music under foot, passes the little town which
Gall Hamilton renders interesting by living
there, passes Ipswich, the old Agawam, the
picture of an English village, in a dimple between hills, and with the tides of its quiet
river curving about it, passes ancient Rowley,
and arrives at another historic and famous
town, whose rulers once changed its name to
Portland, but whose people scorned to do so
much as even to refuse the new name, but continued to the present day to call it Newburyport.
Newburyport is in some external respects
not unlike the neighboring towns of note, but
in others she is a place by herself. Situated
on the Merrimack-the busiest river in the
world, and one of the loveliest, and whose
banks, owing to the configuration of the
coast, seem here, like the Nile banks, to run
out and push back the sea that it may have the
greater room  to expand its beauty in-the
town has both a scenic and a social isolation
which has had a great deal to do with the
characteristics of its population. These characteristics, with but one or two exceptions,
have been the same for all time, since time
began for Newburyport. It is true that the
municipality, which once petitioned General
Court to relieve it of the burden of the old
wandering negress Juniper, has so far Improved
as now to be giving a pauper outside the almshouse an allowance out o which he has built him
a cottage in an adjoining town, and bought him
some shares of railroad stock; but for the rest,
the place has known no change; it has not
varied from its dullness since the Embargo laid
a heavy hand upon it and the Great Fire scattered ashes over it, and the people mind their
own business to-day just as thoughtlessly as
they did when they pronounced the verdict
upon the body of Elizabeth Hunt in 1693, "We
judge, according to our best light and contlents,
that the death of said Elizabeth Hunt was
* * * by some soden stoping of her breatr."
Strangers come into town, stay a while, and depart, leaving behind them some trail of ron;auce or of misbehavior-the citizen takes


small heed of them, and presently forgets them;
so rarely do they assimilate themselves with
the population, that the names there to-day are
the names to be found in the chronicles of
1635, and, unmixed with strange blood, generations hand down a name till it comes to stand
for a trait. The people, too, have a singular
intelligence for a community not metropolitan,
possibly because, being a seafaring tribe, their
intercourse with foreign countries enlightens
them to an unusual degree. The town, except
for one religious revival that lasted forty
days, suspended business. drew up the shipping
in the dock, and absorbed mastqr and mistress,
man and maid, has seldom been disturbed by
any undue contagion of popular feeling, has
seldom followed a fashion in politics unsuggested by its own necessities, and has been in
fact as sufficient to itself as the dew of Eden.
The dissimilarity of its population from that of
other places is only illustrated by the story'of a
sailor, impressed into the British Navy too
hurriedly to get the address of a friend, and
who, after tossing about the world for fit.y
years, returned home and advertised for * an
old shipmate whom he desired to share a fortune with." Neither has the town ever been
a respecter of persons, but, democratic In the
true acceptation of the term, wealth is but
little accounted where almost every one Is
comfortable, talent gives no more pre-eminence
than can be grasped by means of it, and if it
were the law now, as it was then, five leading
citizens would just as easily be arrested and
fined for being absent from town-meeting at
eight o'clock in the morning as they were in
1638. United to all this there is an extremely
independent way of thinking hereditary among
the people. In 1649 Thomas Scott paid a fine
of ten shillings rather than learn the catechism,
and was allowed to do so; a century later, Richard Bartlet refused communion with a church
whose pastor wore a wig, asserting with assurance that all who wore wigs, unless repenting before death, would certainly be damned; not long
before, the Rev. John Tufts here struck a
death-blow at Puritanism by Issuing a book of
twenty-seven psalm-tunes to be sung In public
worship, five tunes only having previously been
used; an act so stoutly contested as an Inroad
of the Scarlet Woman-for, said his opponents,
#I





NEWLUItYPORT.


it Is first singing by rule, then praying by rule, piety and privateering, but in these instructions
and then popery-that it was probably owing the piety and privateering are oddly interto the persecutions of the long warfare that mingled. This same independence of thought
subsequently the innovator left his parish in found notable expression when, in the early
dudgeon under a charge of indecent behavior; days, Boston and Salem, alarmed at the incurand though none of the churches reached the sions of the Indians, proposed to the next setpoint attained by one some dozen miles away, tlements the building of a stone wall eight
which voted, t" This meeting, not having unity feet high to inclose them all, as a rampart
with John Colllns's testimony, desires him to be against the common foe; which proposition
silent till the Lord speak by him to the satis- Newburyport scoutedwith disdain, and declared
faction of the meeting," yet there stands on the wall should be a living one, made of men,
the record the instruction to a committee ap- and forthwith built a garrison-house on her borpointed to deal with ceitain recusants, "to see ders. And it is the same quality that afterif something could not be said or done to draw  ward appeared when, some time previous
them to our communion again, and if we can- to the Boston tea-party, the first act of the
not draw them by fair means, then to determine Revolution was signalized in Newburyport by
what means to take with them." Some one the confiscation of a cargo of tea under direconce said that Newburyport was famous for its tion of the town authorities: and that prompted
~ ( ,  :_',_     ,11,.\ 'A.",


"STANDING ON THB QUARTEB-DECK, BH SUDDENLY TURNED AND ORDERED THE BRITISH FLAd TO BE STRUCK 1"





NEWBURYPORT.


the Stamp Act Riots, and made It a fact that
not a single British stfmp was ever paid for or
used in Newburyport; and that, during all the
long and trying struggle of the Revolution, did
not allow a single town-school to be suspended.
The old town has no trivial history, as these
circumstances might intimate. Long before
the Revolution, at the popular uprising and the
imprisonment of Sir Edmund Andros, old Sam
Bartlet galloped off, so eager for the fray, that
" his long rusty sword, trailing on the ground,
left, as it came in contact with the stones in the
road, a stream of fire all the way." It was Lieutenant Jacques, of Newburyport, who put an
end to the war with the Norridgewook Indians,
by killing their ally and inciter, the Prench
Jesuit, Sebastian Rall~. Here Arnold's expedition against Quebec encamped and recruited;
and here were bui't and manned not only the
privateers, that the better feeling of to-day calls
pirates, which raked British commerce to the
value of millions into this port, but the sloop
Wasp, which fought as fiercely as her namesake
fights, in three months capturing thirteen merchantmen, engaging four ships-of-the-line; and
finally, after a bitter struggle, going down with
all her men at the guns and all her colors flying.
It is still interesting to read of her exploits,
copied in the journal of the old Marine Insurance rooms as the news came in day by day,
and to fancy the ardor and spirit with which
those lines were penned by hands long since
ashes; ardor and spirit universally shared,
since, before that brief career of valor, Newburyport had on the 31st of May, anticipated
the Declaration of Independence, published on
the 19th of July following, by instructing the
Congress at Philadelphia that, if the Colonies
should be declared independent, " this town
will, with their lives and iortuneS, support them
in the measure." Here, too, was built the first
ship that ever displayed our flag upon the
SThames, a broom at her peak that day, after
Van Tromp's fashion, to tell the story of how
she had swept the seas. Nor is the town unfamiliar with such daring deeds as that done,
during the Revolution, when a British transport of four guns was observed in the bay veering and tacking to and Iro through the fog, as
if uncertain of her whereabouts, and, surmising
that she supposed herself in Boston Bay, Captain Oflin Boardman, with his men, went off in
a whaleboat and offered his services to pilot her
in, the offer being of course accepted, the ship
hove to, and Captain Offin Boardman presently
standing on the quarter-deck exchanging the
usual greetings with the master of the transport while his companions mounted to his side;
that done, he suddenly turned and ordered the
British flag to be struck, his order was executed, and, wholly overpowered in their surprise, the crew and the transport were safely
carried over the bar and moored at the wharves
in Newburyport. Indeed, her history declares
the place to have been in other respects far in
advance of many of her contemporaries; she
had, not only the first of our ships upon the
Thames, but the first ch in-bridge in Amerlca,
as well as the first toll-bridge, Initiated the first
insurance company, had the first incorporated
woolen mill, the first incorporated academy,
the first female high school, two of the first
members of the Anti-Slavery Society, which
numbered twelve in all, the first volunteer
company for the Revolution, the first volunteer


company against the Rebellion, the first bishop,
and the first graduate of Harvard-the last at a
time when sundry students guilty of misdemeanors were publicly whipped by the president, a punishment, whether unfortunately or
otherwise, now out of date in that institution, to
which Newburyport has given some presidents
and many professors. Washlngtop, Lafayette,
Talleyrand, have all made some spot in the
town famous, one living here, one being entertained here, and one performing his great sleeping-act In a bed in the old Prince House. From
here Brissot went back to France to die on the
scaffold of the Girondists. Here Whitelield
died and lies entombed. Here Parson Milton,
that son of thunder, used to make his evening
family prayer a pattern for preachers: 40
Lord! keep us this night from the assassin, the
incendiary, and the devil, for Christ's sake,
amen." Here the weighty jurist Theophilus
Parsons was born and bred; here John Quincy
Adams and Rufus King studied law; here
Cusbing rose. and Garrison, and Gough; here
the rreat giver Georug Peabody once dwelt and
often came; here John Pierrepoint wrote his
best verses; here the artist Bricher first found
Inspiration; here Harriet Livermore, that
ardent missionary of the East whom "Snowbound " celebrates, was born; here the Lowells
sprung; hardly more than a gunshot off, on
one side, is the ancestral home of the Longfelows, and, on the other, Whiltier lives and
sings. Here, also, has been the home of varions inventors of renown; the compressibility
of water was here discovered; here steel engraving by a simple and beautiful process was
invented; here the machine for making nails,
which had previously been painfully hammered
out one by one; here an instrument for measuring the speed with which a ship 'oes through
the sea, and here a new span for timber bridges,
used now on most of our larger rivers, bridging
the Merrimack, Kennebec, Connecticut, and'
Schuylkill; almost every mechanic, indeed, has
some fancy on which he spends his leisure, one
amusing himself with making the delicate calculations necessary, and then just as delicately
burnishing brazen reflectors for telescopes, before his heart was broken by those refiactors
with which Safford and Tuttle (both connected
with the town) have swept the sky; another
occupying himself, to the neglect of business,
with the model of a machine in which all his
soul was rapt, and which, unknown to him, an
ancient had invented a couple of thousand
years ago, while, others are busy with the
more useful low-water reporters, and with
those improvements in the manufacture of
tobacco which have all sprung from a son of
the town. It is in mechanics that Newburyport has always excelled; her shipyards once
lined all the water-side there; shortly after
the Revolution, wishing to export lumber, and
having but few ships, she bound the lumbter
together in firm rafts, with a cavity in the
centre for provisions and possible shelter, and
furnishing them with secure though rude sahing apparatus, consigned them to the winds
and waves, and after voyages of twenty-six
days they were registered in their ports on
the other side of the Atlantic; but before that
experiment her ships were, and they still are,
models to the whole world, for here were
launched those fleetest clippers that ever cut
the wave, the Dreadnaught and the Racer





NEWBURYPORT.


27


They go out, but they never come back; great a flaming Nemesis fell upon the town, perhaps
East Indlamen no longer ride at anchor in her for having allowed the boy's execution, and
offing as they used to do; the bar of the Merri- ever since that time other incendiaries, emumack, which once in about a hundred years lous of his example, have constantly made it
accumulates into such an insuperable obstacle their victim; one, In particulat, being so frethat the waters find a new channel, is a foe quent in his attempts, that on a windy or
they do not care to face when once piloted safely stormy night the blaze was so sure to burst
over its white line; and, though many things forth that the citizens could not sleep in their
have been done with piers, and buoys, and a beds; he appeared to be the subiect of a mania
breakwater built by Government and crushed for burning churches, almost all of the sixteen
like a toy by the next storm, it still binds its in town having been fired, sometimes two tospell about Newburyport commerce. Possibly gether, and on several occasion. successfully;
If, by any other magic, the town could ever and no dweller in Newburyport will easily forgrow sufficiently to require the filling up of the get the night on which the old North Church
flats, then the stream, inclosed in a narrower was burned, when every flake of the wild snowand deeper channel, would find sufficient force storm seemed to be a sark of fire, and more
to drive before It the envious sands which now  than one superstitious wretch, plunging out
the Cape Ann currents sweep into its mouth.  into the gale, could find no centre to the uniNevertheless, the bar alone is not adequate versal glare, and shuddered with iright in
to account for the financial misfortunes of the belief that the Day of Judgment had come at
town; ships go up to New Orleans over much last.
more dangerous waters; and the Embargo of    But one extraordinary thing or another is
the early part of the century bears by far the always happening in Newburyport; if it is not
greater responsibility. Then the great hulks a fire, it is a gale; and if it is not a gale, it is
rotted at the wharves unused, with tar-barrels, an earthquake. The situation of the town is
which the angry sailors called Madison's Night- very fine. As you approach it by land, bleak
caps, inverted over the topmasts to save the fields and lichened boulders warn you of the
rigging, while their crews patrolled the streets inhospitable sea-coast; but once past their barin riotous and hungry bands, and observed the rier, and you are in the midst of gardens. The
first anniversary of the Embargo Act with toll- town lies on a gentle hillside, with such slope
ing bells, minute-guns, flags at half-mast, and and gravelly bottom that an hour after the
a procession with muffled drums and crapes. heaviest rains its streets afford good walking.
Perhaps it was owing to this state of feeling in  Behind it lies an excellent glacial moraine and
the town that the old slanders of her showing a champaign country, shut in by low bills, and
blue-lights to the befogged enemy arose. To- once, most probably, the bed of the river. Its
gether with the Embargo came the Great Fire; adjacent territory is netted in rivers and rivuevery wooden town has suffered a conflagra- lets; the broad Merrimack, with its weird and
tion, and Newburyport has always been a prey strange estuary, imprisoned by Plum Island;
to the incendiary; but her celebrated fire broke the Artichoke, a succession of pools lying in
out on a spring night some sixty years ago, soft, semi-shadows beneath the overhanging
when nearly every one was wrapped in the growth of beech and oak, and feathery elms
first slumber, and spread with the speed of the lighting the darker masses, each pool enfolded
llghtnings over a track of more than sixteen in such wi-e that one sees no outlet, but slides
acres, in the most compact and wealthy portion  along with the slow tide, lifts a bough, and
of the town. Such an immense property was slips into the next, where some white-stemmed
destroyed that the whole place was impover- birch perhaps sends a perpetual rustle through
ished; many families were totally beggared; the slumberous air, a wild grape-vine climbs
people hurried to the scene from a dozen from branch to branch, or an early reddening
miles away; women passed the buckets in the tupelo shakes its gay mantle in the scattered
ranks, and helpless crowds swung to and fro sun, and with its reflex in the dark transin the thoroughfares.  The spectacle is de- parency, wakens one from half the sleepy spell
scribed by an old chronicle as having been of tLe enchantment there; these streams, with
terribly sublime; the wind, changing, blew  the Quascacurquen or Parker, the Little, Powstrongly, and drove the flames in fresh direc- wow, Back, and Rowley rivers, with their
tions, where they leaped in awful columns high slender, but foaming black and white affluents.
Into the air, and stretched a sheet of fire from  all make it a place of meadows; and he who
street to street; the moon became obscured in desires to see a meadow in perfection, full of
the murky atmosphere that hung above the emerald and golden tints, and claret shadows,
town, but the town itself was lighted as bril- withdrawing into distance till lost in the spailiantly as by day, and the heat melted the kle of the sea, must seek it here, where Heade
glass In the windows of houses not destroyed; found material for his exquisite and,dainty
while the crash of falling walls, the roaring of marsh and meadow views.
chimneys like distant thunder, the volumes of  The scenery around the town, it may thus be
flames wallowing upward from the ruins and imagined, is something of unusual beauty; on
filling the air with a shower of fire into which one side are to be bad the deciduous woods of
the birds fluttered and dropped, the weird re- the Stackyard Gate, where the carriage-wheels
flection in the river, the lowing of the cattle, crackle through winding miles of fragrant
the cries of distress from the people, made the brake and fern, and on the other the stately
scene cruelly memorable; and though after- pines and hemlocks of Follymill, the air sweet
ward that portion of the town was rebuilt as an orange-grove with resinous perfume,
with brick, Newburyport never recovered from  while the river-road to Haverhill, with West
the shock and loss. Some years subsequently Amesbury swathed in azure mist upon the opa boy of seventeen was convicted of another posite hill, and sapphire reaches of the stream
arson, and in spite of much exertion to the unfolding one after another, is a series of rapcontrary, expiated the penalty of the law. But tures. The people, well acquainted with the





28                                NEWBURYPORT.
beauty that surrouncs them, are very fond of one meeting-house and to lift another with all
their chief river; it is the scene of frolicking the the people in it and set it In a different spotsummer long, and in winter its black and Ice- whirlwinds coming a quarter of a century too
edged tides seem to be the only pulses of the soon, as, If they had but moved a meeting-house
frozen town. To some the life upon this river there at a later day, a parish would not have
is only play, to others it is deadly earnest, for a been so divided on the question of location as
large portion of those who live along the banks straightway to become, one-half of them, Epison the Water street, the most picturesque of copalians for whom Queen Anne endowed a
the highways, are fishermen and their house- chapel. But worse than whirlwinds, storms,
holds, familiar with all the dangers of the seas fires, or the devastating yellow-fever that once
-the babies there rocked in a dory, the men, nearly decimated the place, were the earthsooner or later, wrecked upon the Georges; quakes that for more than a hundred years, at
meanwhile the men mackerel all summer down one period, held high carnival there, and are
in the Bay of Chaleurs, pilot off and on the still occasionally felt. The first of these occoast dark nights and dreary days, run the bar curred in 1638, on the noon of a summer day,
and the breakers with a storm following the as the colonists, assembled in town-meeting,
keel; many of them, as they advance in life, were discussing their unfledged affairs. We
leave their seafaring and settle down at shoe- can well imagine their consternation, just three
making, or buy a plot of land and farm it in years established, their houses built, woods
an untaught way, but just as many find their felled, fields largely cleared, and the June corn
last home in a grave rolled between two just greenly springing up, to find that their enwaves.                                     campment on this spot, so rich in soil, so conWhen a storm comes up, and the fog-banks venient to the sea, so well guarded from the
sweep in from sea, hiding the ray of the twin Indian, had left them the prey to an enemy
harbor-lights, and the rote upon the beach- whose terrors were so much worse than all
which every night is heard through the quiet others in the degree in which they partook of
streets beating like a heart, swells into a sullen the dark, unknown, and infinite. It was not
and unbroken roar-when the shipyards are long before another earthquake followed the
afloat, the water running bleast-high across first, its trembling and vibration and sudden
the wharves, the angry tides rising knee-deep shocks preceded, as that had been, by a roar
in the lower lanes, and the spray tossed over like the bursting of great guns, while birds for.
the tops of the houses there whose foundations sook their nests, dogs bowled, and the whole
begin to tremble and whose dwellers fly for brute creation manifested the extreme of terror;
safety, then the well-sheltered people up in the by-and-by there came one that lasted a week,
remo e High street, whiere nothing is known of with six or eight shocks a day, then one where
the storm but the elms tossing their boughs the shocks were repeated for half an hour withabout, may have sorry fancies of some vessel out any cessation, and presently others where
driving on Plum Island, of parting decks and of the ground opened and left fissures a foot in
inpitied cries in the horror of blackness and width, where sailors on tle coast supposed their
breaker-may even hear the minute-guns in vessels to have struck, the sea roared and
pauses of the gale; but the stress of weather swelled, flashes ot fire ran along the ground,
falls upon the homes and hearts of these amazing noises were heard like peals and claps
watchers on the Water street, for to them each of thunder, walls and chimneys fell, cellars
swell and burst of the blast means danger to opened, floating i7lands were formed, springs
their own roof and the life snatched from a were made dry in one site and burst out in anhusband's or a father's lips.  Mrs. E. Vale other, and tons of fine white sand were thrown
Smith in her history of Newburyport makes up, which, being cast upon the co:ls, burnt like
thrilling mention of these storms, with the brimstone. Various causes have been assigned
wrecks of the l'rimrose, the Pocahontas, the to these earthquakes, not the least absurd of
Argus, and others, and every resident of the which was the supposition of a cave reaching
place has had before his eyes the picture which from the sea to the headwaters of the Merrishe draws of " the heavy moaning of the sea-  mack, filled with gases, into which the high
a bark vainly striving to clear the breakers-  tides rushing made the occurrence of the
blinding snow-a slippery deck-stiff and phenomena; but as they hare always appeared
glazed ropes-hoarse commands that the cruel in connection with more tremendous disturbwinds seize and carry far away from the ear of ances in other pajts of the world, it is probable
the sailor-a crash of tons of falling water that they are but the same pulsations of the
beating in the hatches-shrieks which no man old earth's arteries, felt in Vesuvius or Peru
heard, and ghastly corpses on the deceitful, with more terrible effect. Although there have
shifting sands, and tue great ocean-cemetery been more than two hundred of these convulstill holding in awful silence the lost bodies of siona, nobody was ever seriously injured by
the dead." Such things, of course, make the their means, and so used to them did the peoplace the home of romance, and Mr. George pie become, that finally they are spoken of in
Lunt, a poet of no mean pretensions and a their records merely as "the earthquake," as
native of the town, has founded his novel of one would speak of any natural event, of the
"Eastford" on the incidents its daily life tide or ot the moon.  For the last century,
affords.                                   however, their outbursts have been of very inNewburyport has also known the effects of frequent occurrence, and have nowise marred
other convulsions of nature; a hailstorm, with the repose of the sweet old place, which now
a deposit twelve inches in depth, is still spl ken and then awakens to storm or fever sufficient
of there, together with snow-teorms tunneled to prevent stagnation, but for the most part
from door to door, a northeaster thai blew the slumbers on serenely by its riverside, the ideal
spray of the ea a dozen miles inland and of a large and ancient country-town, peaceful
loaded the orchard boughs with salt crystals  enough, and almost beauthiul enough, lor Paruand whirlwinds mighty enough to blow dow adise.





DOVER.


A DOZEN miles above Portsmouth lies thb old
town of Dover, on the route to the White
Mountains, which hills, as it has been said, were
first explored by a party from the place, and
always previously believed (both by the Indians
and many of the settlers) to be haunted by
powerful and splendid spirits. Dover is the oldest town in the State, and though Portsmouth
may have the first church-organ, Dover has the
honor of having possessed the first churchPdidce, strongly palisaded in the days of primitive worship there. This town is the Cocheco
of the early settlers, and is situated upon a
stream of that name, a branch of the Piscataqua, which by its cascades-one of more than
thirty-two feet-offered good opportunity of
mill sites to the first fellers of the forest, allowing them to clear their ground and manufacture
their lumber at once. Of these opportunities
later generations have not been slow to take
advantage, and the flow of water now turns the
ponderous machinery of multitudes of looms,
the yards of whose manufacture are numbered
only by millions, while an enormous backwater
exists in the reserve of the neighboring town of
Strafford, sufficient at any time to drown out a
drouth.
Of all the manufacturing towns of New England, Dover is one of the most picturesque, and,
from some of the loftier points within its
limits, meadow, lake, river and phantom
mountain-ranges combine to make a varied
view of pastoral beauty. But there are other
views to the full as interesting for the lover of
humanity, when at night all the mill-windows
blaze out and are repeated in the river, or
when at noon the thousands of operatives pour
forth from the factory-gates, and busy Peace
seems half disguised. Still it is Peace, and
Prosperity beside her; and much it would
amaze some ghost of the dead and gone could
he, without losing his thin and impalpable
essence altogether, obtain a noonday glimpse
of the scene of his old troubles. For the place
has not been in the past a haunt of Peace-from
the time, during the last war with England,
when the ships, kept from going to sea by the
American powers, were drawn up the river to
Dover let they should be destroyed at the
% harves of Portsmouth by the British powers,
to the time, a hundred and seventy-five years


before, when the followers of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson, with their Antinomian heresies, stirred
up sedition among a people for whose preservatlon from English tyranny on the one hand,
and Indian cruelty on the other, perfect unanimity of heart and mind was necessary-with
all the troubles in the meantime occasioned
by Mason, who made claim, by royal grant, to
the land the settlers had purchased of the
Aborigines and all the troubles witU the Aborigines themselves.
Dover is more peculiarly the scene of the old
Indian outrages than any other New England
town can be considered, inasmuch as it was not
only there that the famous Waldron Massacre
occurred, but the place was also the stage of
most of the events that, during a dozen years,
led up to that terrific night's work, and that
constitute a bit of interesting history never
faithfully written out, and which now probably
never will be, several of the links being lost,
and remaining only to be conjectured from
their probabilities.
In 1640 there were four distinct settlements
on the Piscataqua and its confluent streams;
but each having an individual and voluntary
management, and all of them being too much
divided in opinion to establish a government
of mutual concessions among themselves, and
hope of any protection from the King, then in
sorry plight himself, being out of the question,
the four settlements agreed in one thing, and
unanimously requested permission to come
under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts
Colony--a request very gladly granted, as,
while reserving rights of property to the
owners, it afforded that Colony better opportunity to establish the boundaries, three miles
north of the Merrimack and any branch thereof,
which she had always claimed; and in return
for this opportunity she allowed deputies who
were not Church-members to sit in the General
Court-a privilege she had not given her own
people, but which was perhaps necessary where
but few, as in New Hampshire, were of the
Puritan persuasion. Under this arrangement,
Richard Waldron was for more than twenty
years a deputy, and several years Speaker of
the Assembly; he was also a Justice, and the
Sergeant-Major of the Militia In that part of
the country; and when the connection with





B0


DOVER.


Massachusetts had been severed, he was, for a
time, the Chief Magistrate of the Province.
He had married in England; and, being a
person of some wealth, on his arrival here he
had bought large tracts of land, received large
grants for improvement, had built the first
saw-mill on the Cocheco, followed it with
others, and established a trading-post with the
Indians. He was evidently a man of remarkable character, respected by his neighbors
for his uprightness, and everywhere for his
ability.
Whatever he did was done with a will; as a
magistrate he persecuted the Quakers to the
extent of the law, though he was known to
shed tears when passing sentence of death
upon an offender; as a landlord he fought the
claims of Mason and his minions persistently,
being thrice suspended from the Council, and
twice sentenced to fines which he paid only
after an arrest of his body; while as a soldier
he was no less zealous in behalf of the public
interest than in private capacity he had proved
himself in behalf of his own. He appears to
have exercised a certain tascination on the
Indians of the locality, being able for many
years to do with them as he would, and Cocheco
having long been spared by them when the
wir-whoop resounded over almost every other
settlement in the land-a circumstance aptly
illustrating the adage that things are what 3ou
make them, since, so long as the Indians were
treated like brothers, they fulfilled the law ol
love, in rude but faithful manner; but once
trapped like wild beasts, and wild beasts they
became.
These Indians were chiefly the Pennacooks,
a tribe belonging to the region of t!:e Merrimack and its tributaries, who traded their
pelts at Waldron's post for ammun'tion, blankets, fineries, and such articles as they were
allowed to have, and who on more than one
occasion showed their capability tor gratitude
just as strongly as they subsequently showed it
for revenge. They sometimes took advantage
of Waldron's absence to procure from his partner the liquor which he would not sell to
them; but in the main they seemed to have a
wnolesome fear of him, not unmixed with
affection and trust in his honor. This tribe
had been almost annihilated by the Mobawks,
or Men-eaters, of whom they intertained a
deadly terror, and by an ensuing pestilence;
and being once accused of unfriendly intintions. by messengers sent from the settlements,
they did not scruple to disarm suspicion by betraying their own weakness, and averring that
they consisted of only twenty-four warriors,
with their squaws and pappooses; while their
wise old sachem, Passaconaway, whose people
believed that he could make water burn, raise
a green leaf from the ashes of a dry one, and
metamorphose himself into a living flame, had
early seen the tutility of attempts upon the
English, had always advised his subjects to
peace, and had imbued his son, Wonnelancet,
so strongly with his opinions, that the latter
never varied his rule from that which his
father's had been. When the war with King
Phitip of the Wampan'oags broke out, a body
of soldiery was sent to the Pennacooks to ascertain the part they intended to play; but
seeing so large a company approaching, the
Indians, who had had no idea of Joining the
war, concealed themselves; upon which, in


mere wantonness, the soldiery burned their
wlgwams and provisions. Instead of revenging tills injury, they only withdrew further
away, to the headwaters of the Connecticut,
and passed a quiet winter in their usual pursuits. In the meanwhile, however, the other
tribes-Tarratines, Ossipees, and Pequawketsbecame restless, and presently commenced hostilities upon the outlying points; and Falmouth, Saco Scarborough, Wells, Woolwich,
Kittery, Durham, Salmon Falls, and other spots,
were red with slaughters, and in three months
eighty men were killed between the Piscataqua
and the Kennebec.    With the winter there
came a tremendous fall of snow, and that, to.
Igetber with the severity ot the season and the
famine that distressed them, occasioned these
Indians to sue for peace; and, coming to
Major Waldron, they expressed sorrow for
their conduct, and made repeated promises of
better behavior for the future. But, this being
done, the survivors among King Philip's men.
who, at his death, fearing total extirpation,
had fled from their own forests and disseminated themselves among the northern tribes,
inflamed them anew with memory of wrong
and outrage, endured doubtless, as well as committed, and the hostilties began again by a demonstration at Falmouth, and were continued,
the savages burning the homesteads as the
dwellers abandoned them. till between Casco
Bay and the Penobscot not a single English
settlement was lelt. At this time, the Pennacooks, who had not been concerned in the"
butcheries at all, seem to have been used,by
Major Waldron to secure a peace which he
almost despaired of obtaining in any other
way; and it was through their agency, it may
be supposed, that some four hundred of the
Eastern Indians, of all tribes, with their women
and children, assembled in Cocheco, on the
6th of September, 1676, to sign a full treaty
of peace with Major Waldron, whom, the historian Belknap says, they looked upon as a
friend and father.
At this instant a body of soldiery, that bad
been dispatched to the northward, with orders
to report to Major Waldron, the various settlements on theii way being directed to reinforce
them as they might be able, arrived at Cocheco;
and, obediently to the instructions which they
brought, Major Waldron had no choice but to
surround and seize the whole four hundred of
the confiding Indians.
To Major Waldron this must have been an
exceedingly trying moment: his plighted word,
his honor, his friendship for this poor people
whom he knew so well, all his sentiments as a
man and a Christian, must have drawn him one
way, while his duty as a soldier compelled him
the other  To resign his command in the face
of the enemy and under such instructions
would doubtless have involved him In most
serious difficulties; to disobey these Instructions imposed upon him a too fearful responsibility in case of future depredations by those
whom he should have spared against his orders; he was a soldier, and his first duty was
obedience; and, for the rest, the young captains of the force sent by the Governor were
on fire with eagerness, and it was with difflculty he could restrain their martial spirit
while he took counsel with himself. In this
strait the Major unfortunately thought of *e
stratagem that might be uaed, and having, It is





DOVER.


said, assured the Indians, who had been a little
alarmed by the arrival of the soldiery, that they
had nothing to apprehend, be proposed to them
a sham fight with powder, but without balls,
and on the signal of the discharge of their guns
-making that a pretext for considering that
the Indians had violated the understandingthe soldiery surrounded them, by an artful military movement, and with one or two exceptions
made prisoners of the whole body. One of
these exceptions was a young Indian who,
escaping, sought and found refuge with Mrs.
Elizabeth Heard, and in his thankfulness promised hei a recompense of future safety, and
one day redeemed the pledge.
Although the Pennacooks were immediately
separated from the other prisoners and discharged, upon which Ma3or Waldron had perhaps relied for his own exculpation with them,
and only half of the whole number were sent
to Boston, where some six or eight, being convicted of old murders, were hanged, and the
rest sold into foreign slavery, yet they, together
with all other Indians both far and near, regarded it as a treachery upon Major Waldron's
part that absolved them from all ties and demanded a bitter reparation. It is said that
there is no sutficient evidence of their having
been' nvited to treat for more definite peace,
and that they had no guarantee of protection in
their assemblage at Cocheco; but the mere tact
of their quiet presence in that number, an unusual if not unprecedented thing with them,
implies that the occasion was a special one,
and that they must have had Major Waldron's
verbal promise of safety at least, while, if it had
been otherwise, it would have been absurd and
impossible for them to regard the affair as so
signal and abominable a treachery of his,
worthy to be remembered with such undying
hatred and expiated in his own person with
such torture. This view of the facts is fortified, moreover, by the subsequent action of the
Pennacooks. That they should have fancied
themselves so peculiarly aggrieved as they did,
should so long in all their wanderings have
cherished their rancor, and should at last have
executed vengeance through their own tribe,
in itself testifies sufficienl.y that they had been
used by Major Waldron to allure the other Indians into the treaty under promises of protection, and felt the course which they pursued Io
be a necessary vindication of their honor as
well as a gratification of their passions.
They were not, however, in any situation to
pay their debt at once, and on being set at
liberty they withdrew to their hunting-grounds,
and as season after season rolled away had
apparently forgotten all about it. A grandson
of old Passaconaway at last ruled them-Kancamagus, sometimes called John Hagkins. He
was a chief of different spirit from the previous
sachems, and the njuries hiss people had received from the English rankled in his remembrance; his thinned and suffering tribe, his
stolen lands, his old wrongs, were perpetual
stings; and when finally the English, dispatching emissaries to the Mohawks, engaged their
co-operation against the Eastern Indians, nothing but impotence restrained his wrath. It
is possible that even then, by reason of his distresses, he might have been appeased, if the
English could ever have been brought to consider that the Indian's nature was human
nature, and to tleat him with an thiing but


violence when he was strong and contempt
when he was weak.    Several letters which
Kancamagus sent to the Governor of New
Hampshire, and which are curiosities, are adduced to prove his amenable disposition at thia
time:
" MAY 15th, 1685.
" Honor Governor my friend You my friend.
I desire your worship and your power, because
I hope you can do some great matters-this
one. I am poor and naked and I have no men
at my place because I afraid allways Mohogs he
will kill me every day and night. If your worship when please pray help me you no let
Mohogs kill me at my place at Malamake
Rever called Panukkog and Natukkog, I will
submit your worstip and your power.-And
now I want ponder and such alminishun, shatt
and guns, because I have forth at my home and
I plant theare.
" This all Indian hand, but pray you do consider your humble servant, JOHN HAGKINS."
This letter was written for Kancamagus by an
Indian teacher, who signed it, together with
King Hary, Old Robin, Mr. Jorge Rodunnonukgus, and some dozen others, by making their
respective marks. The next letter is a much
more complicated affair in style; it is dated on
the same day.
"Honor Mr. Governor:
" Now this day I con your house, I want se
you, and I bring my hand at before you I want
shake hand to you if your worship when please
then you receive my hand then shake your
hand and my hand. You my friend because I
remember at old time when live my grant
father and grant mother then Englishmen corn
this country, then my grant father and Englishmen they make a good govenant, they friend
allwayes, my grant father leving at place called
Malamake Rever, other name chef Natukkog
and Panukkog, that one rever great many
names, and I bring you this few skins at this
first time I will give you my friend. This all
Indian hand.   JOHN HAWKINS, Sagamore."
These letters winning no notice from the
contemptuous official, on the same day were
followed by another:
"Please your Worship-I- will intreat you
matther, you my friend now; this, if my Indian
he do you long, pray you no put your law, because som my Indians fooll, some men much
love drunk then he no know what he do, maybe
he do mischif when he drunk, if so pray youmust let me know what he done because I will
ponis him what have done, you, you my friend,
if you desire my business then sent me I will
help you if I can.   Mr. JOHN HOGKINS."
None of these letters having produced any
effect, the sachem abandoned the one-sided correspondence, and on the next morning indited
another epistle to Mr. Mason, the claimant of
the Province.
"Mr. Mason--Pray I want speake you a few
words if your worship when please, because I
corn parfas. I will speake this governor but
he go away so he say at last night, and so far
I understand this governor his power that your
power now, so he speak his own mouth. Pray It
you take what I want pray come to me because
I want go horn at this day.
"'Your humble servant,
JoaHN HAUINs, Indian Sogmon."





o'A                                   DOVER.
There was something touching in these let- his influence, and it was great, to excite the
ters, to any but an early settler; but appa- Indians to avenge the injury and insult; and
rently they were quite disregarded, and Kan- from unheeded complaints that their fisheries
camagus had every right to feel ill-used by were obstructed, their corn devoured by cattle,
the neglect which his petition for protection their lands patented without consent, and their
from the Mohawks met, and it is probable that trading accounts tampered with, they prothis waiting at rich men's gates only deepened ceeded to reprisal, and the old difficulties
the old grudge. At the close of the summer broke out afresh. They were all at an end,
various affronts were put upon the settlers at however, before the next summer. The crops
Saco, and their dogs were killed; after which were in. the Indians went peaceably to and fro
the Indians gathered theil own corn and re- through the settlements, their wrongs seemed
moved their families to some unknown place. to be righted, their wounds to be healed; thirThis resembling a warlike menace, messengers teen years had elapsed since the capture of
were sent, to discover its meaning, who were the four hundred, the settlers no longer reinformed that the Pennacooks had received membered it, the Indians themselves never
threats from the Mohawks, and had withdrawn made allusion to it; Waldron, now nearly
from the settlements that the English might eighty years old, but full of vigor, relied
not suffer on their account-far too plausible a securely on his power over the savages, his
reply and too magnanimous action for the acquaintance with their character, and his
truth. But an agreement of friendship was long-acknowledged superiority; the village,
then made, and was signed, among the rest, with its five gartison-houses, into which the
by Kancamagus and another chief named neighboring families withdrew at night, but
Mesandoult.                                kept no watch, feeling safe behind the bolted
Kancamagus had no intention of making this gates of the great timber walls, reposed in an
anything but a brief truce, and he improved atmosphere of tranquillity and contentment,
the time to gather around himself the little and no one suspected any guile.
band of the sullen Pennacooks, and to strike  It was while affairs were in this comforthands with the Pequawkets, and the rem- able condition that, on t e 27th of June, 1689,
nant of the more northeriy tribes, while several the Indians were observed rambling through
of the Strange Indians, who were among the the town, on one errand and another, In
four hundred prisoners of that 6th of Sep- far more frequent numbers than usual or than
tember, escaped from their slavery, returned seemed necessary for trade.  Many strange
to New England, found their way to the haunts laces were among them; and it was noticed
of the Pennacooks and Ossipees. and with the that their sidelong glances scrutinized the aerecital of their sufferings assisted him in fan- feases very closely. To more than one housening the steadily smoldering fires of hate to a wife a kindly squaw muttered hints of mischief,
fury against their betrayer on that unforgotten but so darkly as to give only a vague sense of
day.                                       danger. As night drew near, one or two of
Nor had Major Waldron endeavored at all to the people, a little alarmed, whispered to
pacify the Indians, in the meautime. His Major Waldron a fear that evil was in the air.
prominent position alone would have ket his Waldron laughed at them, told them to go and
gr'eat misdeed fresh in their remembrance, plant their pumpkins, and he would let them
even without his accustomed hot-headed en- know when the Indians were going to break
ergy of action. No little act of his that could out; and being warned again at a later hour
embitter one savage remained untold by an- by a young man, who assured him there was
other; they fancied deceit in all his dealings great uneasiness in the settlement, he said ie
now, and used to tell that in buyingtheir peltry knew the Indians perfectly, and there was not
he would say his qwn hand weighed a pound, tlfe least occasion for concern. That night
and would lay it on the other scale. He had the sachem, Mesandouit, was hospitably enterbeen in command, too, on a frontier expedition, tained at Waldrou's table. " Brother Waldron,"
where, a conference being held with arms laid said he, " what would you do it the Strange
aside, Waldron, suspecting foul play, seized Indians were to come now?" and Waldron
the point of a lance which he espied hid be- carelessly answered that he could assemble a
neath a board, and, drawing it forth, advanced hundred men by the lifting of his finger. It is
brandishing it toward the other party, who not said whether Mesandouit remained in the
had probably concealed it there to be used garrison-house or not; but on the same evenonly in case of a second act of treachery on ing a couple of squaws requested a night's
his own part, and the conference broke up in lodging on the hearth, telling the Major that
a skirmish, in which several of the Indians, a company of Indians were encamped a few
including a powerful chieftain, were killed, a miles off, who were coming to trade their
canoe-tull drowned, and five were captured, beaver on the next day. Several of the housetogether with a thousand pounds of dried beef hold objected to the society of the squaws that
-and another mark was made on the great night, but It being dull weather, Waldron comscore which at some time the Indians meant to passionately said, "Let the poor creatures
cross out.                                lodge by the fire;" and by-and-by, in total mnSir Edmund Andros was the Governor of suspicion, setting no watch, and thinking no
New England now, and in the spring of 1688, harm, the family retired to bed, while at three
fired with ambitious projects or with cupidity, of the remaining garrison-houses other squaws
he sailed down the coast in a man-of-war, and had obtained entrance and shelter on a similar
failing to achieve any other doughty action, pretense.
plundered, in the absence of its master, the  Five days before, Major Hinchman, of Chelmshouse of the Baron de St. Castine, a French ford, having heard from two friendly Indians
ofticer, who had married the daughter of the a strange story of hostile intentions against
great Trarratine chief, Modokawando. Castine  Cocheco, had dispatched an urgent letter to
burning with indignation, Immediately used ali the Governor acquainting him with toe rumor.





DUVEI.


Lt tCe rame time, he wrote to Mr. Danforth of
t'.e C)uncil, and Mr. Dafctrth instanL'y forwarded the letter, aad begged the Governor to
lose no time, but to send to Cocheco " on purpose rather than not at all;" yet for some
unexplained reason-whether the Governor reGarded the rumor as idle, or could do nothing
till his Council could be gathered -although
Major Hinchman's letter was dated on tne 22d
of June-it was not till the 27th that any
ittempt was made to apprise Waldron of his
danger.
"1BOSTON, 27th June, 1689.
"IIONORABLE SnR-The Governor and Council
having this day received a letter from Major
Kinchman, of Chelmsford, that some Indians
are come into them, who report that there is a
gathering of Indians In or about Pennacook,


with design of mischief to the English. Among
the said InClans OLe L.awvkins Is s.id to be a
principal designer, and that they have a particular design against yourself and Mr. Peter
Coffin, which the Coun il though t it necessary
presently to dispatch a Ivice thereof, to give
you notice, that you take care of your own safeguard, they intending to endeavor to betray
you on a pretension of trade.
"1 Please forthwith to signify the ImDort hereof
to Mr. Coffin and others, as you shall think necessary, and advise of what Information you
may at any time receive of the Indians' motions.
"By order in Council,
" II.I ADDINGTON, Sec'y.
"To Major Richard Waldron and Mr. Peter
Coffin, or either of them, at Cocheco; these
with all possible speed."


_         _-                                                                 - 4--------------
"THE INWrTANS PTOTr PFF lIN T'TS )ORNING AND LEFT TIHE LTTTITE GRANDDAIOUGTER O?FTnPt. WALERON
CO-   BYT T.E 8-0, L A- 0  IN THE WOODS WITH TLiE WILD BEASTS AND HU.OGERl.





~                            DOVER.
The speed, however, came too late. When probably the Indian whom she had protected
Mr. Weare, the bearer of this agitated and ill- on the day of which this day was the result.
written letter, on the night of its date reached Mrs. Heard's own garrison had been saved by
Newbury, a freshet had swollen the stream so the barking of a dog, which wakening William
that it was impassable; and while he was rxd- Wentworth-the ancestor of all the WentIng up and down the bank the squaws had been worths in this country-he pushed the door to,
admitted into the garrison-houses and had and, throwing himself on his back, held it with
stretched themselves before the fires. These his feet till assistance came, various bullets
squaws.had asked In an incidental way to be piercing the oak meanwhile, but missing its
told how to go out if they should wish to leave valiant and determined old defender. But in
the place after the others were asleep, and had two other garrisons the Indians had worked
willingly been shown the way; and accordingly their bloody will; and, having been refused enin the dead of the night, noiselessly as he com- trance into that of Mr. Coffin's son, they
ing of darkness itself, the bolts were withdrawn brought out the father, captured at an earlier
by them, and a low whistle crept out Into the hour, and threatened the old man's murder
thickets and the ambush of the river-banks, before the son's eyes, upon which he also surand sounding their dreadful war-whoop in re- rendered; but while the house was being
ply, the Indians leaped within the gates. The plundered, all the Coffins escaped together.
squaws, who had faithftlly informed themselves, After this, setting fire to the mills and houses,
hurriedly signified the number of people in each the Indians, having killed twenty-two persons
apartment, and the invaders divided in every and made prisoners of twenty-nine, retreated
direction, and missed none of those they sought, by the light of the blaze, so rapidly as to be beWaldron himself lodged in an inner room, and, yond danger before any of the other settlers
wakened by the noise, he leaped out of bed were aroused to a sense of what had been
crying, " What now! what now!" and, seizing done.
only his sword, met the Indians, and,,old as he  But in their flight the Indians inaugurated a
was, with his white wrath blazing loftily over system that for years continued to plague the
the fierce devils, he drove them before him  settlers--alleviate, though it did, the previous
from door to door till he had passed the third, horrors of Indian warfare-and, sparing the
As he sprung back then for other weapons, the lives of their prisoners, they sold them to the
Indians rushed up behind him and stunned him  French. Among the captives of that night was
with their hatchets, felled him, and dragged a little granddaughter of Major Waldron's,
him to the hall, where they seated him in an who, having been sent by the Indians, while at
armchair placed on the top of a table, and, their dark work in the garrison-house, to bid
tauntingly asking him, "Who shall judge In- forth those hiding in another room, had crept
dians now?" left him to recover his senses into a bed and drawn the clothes about her;
while they compelled such of the family as they she had been found again, though, and had
had spared to prepare them some food. Their been forced to undertake the march with them,
hunger being appeased, they returned to Major half-clad and on her little bare feet. She was
Waldron, had his books, in which their trade only seven years old, and her trials were
had been registered, brought forth, and as each bitter.
Indian's turn came, he stepped up, crying, " I  At one time her master made her stand
cross out my account!" and with his knife drew against a tree while he charged his gun and
a deep gash across the breast of the old hero. took aim at her; again, an Indian girl pushed
Tradition adds that, cutting off the hand whose her off a precipice into the river, and, having
weight they had so often felt, they tossed it into clambered out, she dared not tell, when questhe scales to discover for themselves if Indeed tioned, the reason of her being so wet; once
It weighed a pound, and were struck with con- the Indians stole off in the morning and left
sternation on finding that it did. It is not re- her, covered by the snow, alone in the woods
corded that Waldron uttered a cry of pain or with the wild beasts and hunger, and, tracing
an entreaty for their mercy. " Oh, Lord!" he them by their foot-prints, the poor little thing
said, "oh, Lord!" and, spent with anguish and went crying after them through the wilderloss of blood from the shocking mutilation to ness; and at another time, building a great fire,
which he was further subjected, he fell forward they told her she was to be ro:.sted, whereupon
on his sword, which one of the tormentors held bursting into tears she ran and threw her arms
ready to receive him, and the vengeance that round her master's neck, begging him to save
had brooded and waited thirteen years was sat- her, which, on the condition that she would
isfied.                                    behave well, he promised her to do. Another
That night Mrs. Elizabeth Heard, coming up capture of more subsequent importance was
the river with her sons, from Strawberry Bank, the wife of Richard Otis, the ancestress of Hon.
was alarmed by the turmoil and the light, and John Wentworth, of Illinois, and of Mr. Charles
sought protection at Waldron's garrison; but, Tuttle, late of the Cambridge Observatory.
discovering the terrible state of things there, The unhappy Mrs. Otis had seen her husband
Mrs Heard was so prostrated that she had no killed as he rose in bed, a son share his father's
power to fly, and her children were obliged to fate, a daughter's brains beaten out against the
leave her-though it would seem as if the three stairs, and with her little daughter Judith, who
sons might, at least, have dragged her into the.was subsequently rescued, and her baby of
shelter of the bushes, where afterward she three months old, she was led up through the
contrived to crawl. With the daylight an In- White Mountain Notch to Canada. This infant
dian got a glimpse of her. and hastened to part of three months became a personage of great
the bushes, pistol in hand, but, looking at her interest in her day. Baptized by the French
an instant, turned about and left her; he had priests and given the name of Christine, and
taken only a stride away when, as If a doubt intended by them for conventual life, on reachcrossed his mind, he came back, gave her an- ing maturity she declined taking the vail,
other glance, and with a yell departed. It was and wiu  married to a Frenchman by the





DOVERI


35


name of Le Beau. Upon her husband's death
an inextinguishable desire to see her native
land took control of her, and not being permitted
to carry her children with her, she left them in
the hands of.riends, upon the liberation of
prisoners, and at the loss of all her estate,
which was not inconsiderable, as she herself
says, lourntyed back to Dover. A few years
afterward she returned to Canada, where she
appears to have been greatly valued, made an
unsuccessful effort to recover her children, and
again underwent the hardships of the perilous
pilgrimage home. She must have been a woman of rather remarkable nature to prefer the
New England wilds with their discomforts to
the comparatively stmptuous life of the French
in Canada; but she was still young, and whether
from pure preference, or because Ese formed
another attachment there at an early date, she
remained in New England and married the adventurous Captain Thomas Baker, who had
himself been a captive of the Indians some
Syears previously, and who had accompanied
her on the voyage home; and, abjuring the religion of her baptism, she embraced the Protestant faith. Her apostasy appeared greatly
to distress the priest whose especial charge she
had been, and more than a dozen years after
her return led to quite a controversial tilt between representatives of the two forms of belief-Father Seguenot addressing her a long
and affectionate letter, in which he made her
and her husband handsome promises if they
would go to Montreal, wrought upon her feelings in describing the death of her daughter,
set forth quite ably the distinctive doctrines
of his Church and besought her to return
to it:
" Let us add, dear Christine," said he, " that
the strange land in which you are does not afford you the Paschal Lamb, the true and
heavenly manna, the bread of angels; I mean
Jesus Chrst contained really within the holy


Eucharist, which is only to be found in the
Catholic Church; so that you are in that place,
like the prodigal son, reduced to feed on improper and insipid food, which cannot give you
life, after having fed here on the most exquisite, most savory, and most delicious food of
Heaven-I mean the adorable oody and precious
blood of Jesus Christ at the holy sacrament of the
altar." By this letter, written in a crabbed and
almost Illegible hand, but in the language of
her childhood and of countless dear associations, Christine seems to have been unshaken,
and Governor Burnett made a learned and
masterly reply to it, among other things declaring, in reference to the passage quoted,
that the upholders of this interpretation of the
Eucharist did, in St. Paul's words, " crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh and put him
to an open shame." These letters attracted
much attention throughout the Colonies, and
rendered Christine a person of importance durIng all her life of nearly ninety years, and she
received many favors and several grants of
land, one of five hundred acres under the
guardianship of Colonel William Pepperrell.
But though the greater part of that long
term of life was passed in Dover, it was untroubled by any foray of the Indians who once
had desolated her friends' and father's dwellings. For, having glutted their vengeance, the
Pennacooks were content to pay the penalty.
to fly from tleir old hunting-grounds, to abandon their territory and their name, to find refuge in Canada and lose themselves among
the Indians of the St. Francis, and, except
when some solitary wanderer roamed alone by
the graves of his fathers, the Pennacooks never
again were seen on the pleasant banki of the
"L winding water" And no one who surveys
the busy, bustling town of Dover co-day, would
think that less than two hundred years ago it
was the scene of such a tragedy as Waldron's
Massacre.





PORTSMOUTH.


AN hour after leaving Newburyport, having
crossed th a Merrimack, no longer on the bridge
that Blondin refused to walk, the traveler is in
Portsmouth, a town which, without possessing
the vitality of Newburyport or the world-known
traditions of Salem, is in some regards as interesting as either. Few spots in the whole
country can boast the primeval grandeur of
which It was the possessor, and traces of
which are still to be found both in place and
people. Being the only seaport of an independent State-for, before our present confederation, New Hampshire was a little Republic,
governed by a President and two Houses of Congress- much home wealth naturally centred
there, much foreign wealth and many dignitaries
were drawn there; and being a provincial capItal, for so long a time the home of Presidents
and Governors, and afterward a garrisoned and
naval place of the United States, its society has
always been of the choicest description, and its
homes and habits sumptuous. The greater part
of the old families have died out or have left
the place, but many of their dwellings remain
to tell of the degree of splendor which characterized not only their hospitality, but their
common life.
The town lies very prettily upon land between
several creeks, just where the Piscataqua
widens-to meet the sea three miles belowinto a harbor of extraordinary but placid picturesqueness. Martin Pring was its first visitor,
and after him John Smith, and it was originally
part of the Mason and Gorges grant, although
Mason bought out Sir Ferrlinaido's interest,
built a great house, and established the settlement here himself, sending from Dover an explor ng party to the White Mountains, or Crystal
Hills, as they were then called, in the hope of
adding diamond LJnes to his possessions. In
the first days the central part of the -town was
known as Strawberry Bank, and so many an
aged resident still speaks of it; and by a singular circumstance it happens that nearly all this
portion of Portsmouth, containing public buildIngs, banks, offices, stores and dwellings, is
owned in fee by the old North Church, being
some twelve acres in the centre of the city, together with thirty-eight acres through which
runs the Islington Road, all of it constituting
glebe land leased to the present holders for


nine hundred and ninety-nine years, and at the
expiration of that little term to fall back wi b
all its improvements inio the hands of the
Church, if the Church be still in existence-a
prospective wealth bearing favorable comparison with the present wealth of Trinity Church
in New York.
The place still does a very fair business for
one of its size, Portsmouth lawns and hosiery being known the country over, and its principal
rone-walk furnishing nearly all the rigging of
the Maine and Massachusetts marine. Many of
the well-shaded streets are paved, and there
are library and athenaeum, fine schools and
churches; among the latter, St. John's, succeeding that to which Caroline, the Queen of
George the Second, gave altar and pulpit books,
communion service, chancel furniture and a
silver christening-basin-a stately and interesting edifice, with its mural tablets and the
porphyry font taken at the capture of an African
city.
Although Portsmouth probably shared the
prevailing sentiment of New England to some
extent, she was never thoroughly Puritan,
having been planted more for mercantile than
religious ends, and she is still a young settlement when we read of the profane game of
shovel-board being openly played there, and
the character of its banqueting and merrymnaking has at all times more of the Cavalier than
the Roundhead. In 1711 she built an almshouse
at an expense of nearly four thousand pounds,
a thing contrary to the genius of all Puritanism;
and to the honor of Portsmouth be it known
that this was not only the first almshouse in
this country, but In the whole civilized world.
It was in Portsmouth, too, that there was made
perhaps the earliest attack on African slavery,
by a decision of the local court that it was a
thing not to be tolerated, although, having
eased their consciences by the declaration and
the law-a famous habit not confined to Portsmouth-the good people went on keeping such
property in slaves as they chose.
The rank of the early population there was of
a much higher social type than could be found
In other settlements. There were the Parkers,
the gravestone of whose ancestress was recently uncovered, Lady Zerviah Stanley, who
made a love-match and escaped to this country





_1


PORTSHIOUTM                                    37
from the wrath of hr father, the Earl of Derby. worth, baroneted for illustrious deeds; and
There are the Chaunveys, immigrants here there are to be found the lirst miention of the
through the persecutions of Arcubishop Laud, old names of Langdon, Frost, Newmarch, Cush.
sprung ofChauaceyde Chauncey, from Onauncey  ilg, She-fe, Peahallow, names which revive
near Amlens in Fraace, who entered England t"e traditiuns of a nagnilicent hospitality.
with the Conqueror; their head in thlis country  Here was born Tobias Lear, the friend and
could trace his noble descent back to Charle- secretary of Washington, and his house rcmagne, and back to Eabert in the year 800, mains to-day full of mementoes of his chIef;
lineage not excelled by Queen VIctoria's own, there lived John Langdon, first President of the
There were the families ofcPepperreli and Went-  United States Senate; the haLdsome face ot
i//
0 I'
k~,


"BELE HUNU OUT MANY A SIGNAL FROM HER WINDOW FOR THE GOVEBNOB TO BEAD ACROSS TUE OPENsPAcE BETWEE" THEIR DWELLINGS.?"





38                                PORTSMOUTH.
Madame Scott, the widow of John Hancock, has mighty elms; and, on the other side of the
many a time looked out of that window; there river, in Little Harbor, two miles from the
stands the house in which successively lived business centre, the old house erected by GovJeremlah Mason and Daniel Webster; there the ernor Benning Wentworth, but now passed out
handsome dwelling of Levi Woodbury, and of the bands of his family, remains to delight
there were born the Blunts, whose charts to- the antiquary. This house, built around three
day define the courses of all modern cornm- sides of a square, though only two stories in
merce.                                     height, contains fifty-two rooms, and looks like
Many other mansions of note are still stand- an agglomeration of buildings of various dates
ing. Here on the corner of Daniel and Chapel and styles; in its cellars a troop of horse could
streets, with' its gambrel-roof and luthern- be accommodated in time of danger, and here
lights, is the old Warner House, the first brick are still kept in order the council-chamber and
house of the place, and whose material was the billiard-room, with the spinet and buffet
brought from Holland; there are still p, eserved and gun-rack of their time, and the halls, finin it the gigantic pair of elk-horns presented to ished in oak and exquisitely carved with the
the Dead of the house by the Indians with whom  year's work of a chisel. are lined with ancient
he traded, and who, out of their skillfully- portraits. Here lived and kept a famous table
painted portraits, still look down at the guest the old Governor Benning Wentworth, as headwho mounts the staircase; there are paintings strong and self-willed and passionate as any
by Copley hanging in another place within, and Wentworth of them all. It is told of him that,
on repapering its hall, a few years since, four when long past his sixtieth year, he lost what
coatings of paper being removed, a ful!-length was left of his heart to pretty Patty IilLon, his
likeness of Governor Phipps on his charger was maid-servant; and, assembling a great dinnerdiscovered, together with other life-sized fres- party round his bo rd, with the Rev. Arthur
coes, of more or less value, of whose existence Browr, wLe i the walnuts and the wine were
people of eighty years had never heard; this on, he rung for Patty, who came and stood
house ought to be as secure from the fires of blushingly beside him, and then, as Governor
Heaven as a person vaccinated by Jenner ot:ght of -Ne,' Bampshire, he commanded the clergyto be from disease, for it has a lightning-rod man, who had hesitated at his request as a prilput up under Dr. Franklin's personal inspec- vate gentleman, to marry him; and Patty
tion, and the first one used in tl;e State,; Fire straightway became Lady Wentworth, in the
has destriyed the spacious house where, a bun- parlance of the day, and carried things with a
dred years ago, in the midst of guests assem- high hand ever afterward, until, the old Govbled with all the ilumination and cheer of the ernor dying, she married Colonel Michael Wenttimes, the beautiful Miss Sheale sat in her worth, who ran through the property and then
bridal-dress waiting for the bridegroom who killed himself, leaving the legacy of his last
never came, but who left his great wealth, his words: lI have had my cake, and ate it."
love, and his good name, left his bride to her  Theze Wentworths were a powerful and hotdestiny of alternating doubt and terror, and blooded race-nothing but the rigor of the law
disappeared out of the world for ever. This ever stood between them and a purpose; their
same fire, or another, has left no mark of the talent- made New Hampshire a power, and for
house to which High Sheriff Parker once hur- sixty years they furnished her with Governors.
ried so hungrily with Ruth Blay's blood upon On Pleasant street, at the head of Washington,
his hands-a young girl condemned for murder- is still to be found the house of Governor John
ing her child, though afterward found to be in- Wentworth, a successor of Benning; old as it
nocent, and her reprieve sent forward to arrive is, the plush upon its walls Is as fresh as newlyonly two minutes too late, for she had been pressed velvet, and valuable portraits of the
driven to the scaffold, clothed in silk and filling Governors and their kin a few years since still
the air with her cries, and hurried out of life hung upon them. Into this house, with its
before the appointed hour because the sheriff pleasant garden running down to the river,
feared lest his dinner should cool by waiting. once came a bride under circumstances that
But there still stands the old "Earl of Halifax'" the customs of to-day would cause us to coninn, shabby enough now, but once a place of sider peculiar. It was Frances During, the
Tory revelry and Rebel riot; a house that has pet and darling of old Sam Wentwtr, h of
had famous guests in its day, for, not to men- Boston, and for whom the pretty vllUJ^,es of
tion the platitude of Washington's and Lafay- Francestown and Deering were named. When
ette's entertainment, here John Hancock had very young, she was in love with her cousin
his headquarters, with Elbridge Gerry, Rut- John, who, on leaving Harvard, went to Engledge, and General Knox; here General Sul'i- land, no positive pledge of marriage passing
van, President of New Hampshire, convened between them; as he delayed there some years,
bis council; and here, something later, Louis before his return she had married another
Philippe and his two brothers of Orl ans were cousin, Theodore Atkinson by name. Some
cared for. On an island in the harbor, whence years subsequently to their marriage, and after
is seen the wide view of fort and field and light- a lingering illness, Theodore died. But John
house, and the sea stretching away till the Isles had, In the meantimn, returned, clothed with
of Shoals and Agamenticus lie in the horizon honor and with the regalia of Governor, and,
like clouds, stands the old Prescott mansion, finding his cousin a woman of far lovelier apwhere the Legislatiire was wont to be enter- pearance than even her lovely youth had'protained, but whose wide-doored hospitality has mised, had not hesitated to pay her his devoirs,
given place to that of the State, since it is now  which, tne gossips said, she had not hesitated
another almshouse. In Kittery, a sort of sub- to accept, hanging out many a signal from her
urb of Portsmouth, the garrison-house, two window for the Governor to read across the
hundred years old, is still shown, and Sir Wi- open space between their dwellings. On one
liam PepperrelPs residence by the water, with day Theodore breathed his last.  His burial
its once deer-stocked park and avenues of took place on the following Wednesday; by





PORTSMOUTH.


89


the Governor's order all the bells In town were
tolled, flags were hung at half-mast, and minuteguns were fired from the fort and from the
ships-of-war in the harbor. On Sunday the
weeping widow, clad In crapes, listened in
church to the funeral eulogies; on Monday
her affliction was mitigated; on Tuesday all
the fingers of all the seamstresses of the country
roundabout were flying; and on the next Sunday, in the white satins and Jewels and fardingales of a bride, she walked up the aisle the
wife of Governor Wentworth. When the Revolution came, the Governor, a Tory, had to fly;
but his wife's beauty won favor at the Court,
she was appointed a lady-in-waiting there, and
her husband was rewarded for his loyalty to
the Crown by the governorship of Nova Scotia,
where he held his state till death humbled it.
Portsmouth, it may be seen, abounds in such
traditions as these of the Wentworths.  Of
another sort is the story of Captain Samuel
Cutts. He had sent out his vessel to the SpanIsh coasts, and his clerk, young William Bennett, who had been reared in his counting-room,
and who, after the old-fashioned way, made
his master's interests his own, went supercargo;
the vessel fell among thieves, but thieves who
consented to restore their booty upon receipt
of several thousand dollars, a sum of much less
value than the. vessel and cargo.  Captain
Leigh, of course, had not the money with him,
nor did it seem practicable to keep the vessel
on full expense while a messenger was sent
home for it; but upon condition of leaving
hostages he was suffered to sail away, young
Bennett and a friend remaining. The terms
were carefully impressed on Captain Leigh's
memory: so many days and it would be time
for the money-till then the hostages were to
be well treated; the money not forthcoming,
the hostages were to be imprisoned on bread
and water; so many days more, and they were
to be left unfed till they starved to death. Captain Leigh, to whom Bennett was dear as a
son, crowded on all sail for home, arrived,
told his story, and, on sacred promise that the
money should instantly be paid, delivered the
ship that still belonged to her captors into the
hands of Captain Samuel Cutts, and waited
breathlessly for the promise to be kept. Meanwhile the friend of Bennett had escaped, Ben-.nett himself trusting so in his master's faith
that he refused to go. Captain Leigh waited
silently a while, but, seeing no prospect of the
ransom's being paid, he began to urge the
matter-precious time was passing;- then Bennett's parents urged, and were assured that
the money had been sent. But when, if the
money had been sent, it was time for Bennett's
return and yet he did not come, anxiety
mounted again to fever-heat; there were agonized prayers offered in church by the parents,
and Captain Leigh heard them ringing in his
ears; he could think of nothing else; he knew
the gradations of the cruel days apportioned
to Bennett: on such a day he went into solitary confinement; on such a day he was deprived of food; on such a day he must have
ceased to live. When that day came, Bennett
had truly undergone all his sentence and was
dead, and Captain Leigh was mad.
But all the traditions of splendor are not
confined to the gentility of Portsmouth. A
colored man, steward of a ship sailing from the
Plscataqua, went into loftier society than many


of his betters ever saw. He was in a Russian
port, during a review held by the Emperor in
person, and went on shore, only to attract as
much attention as the Emperor himself, for a
black skin was rarer than black diamonds
there. The next day officials came on board
the ship, to learn if the black man's services
could be had for the imperial family, and the
fortunate fellow left his smoky caboose, hard
fare and half-contemptuous companions, to
become an object of admiration behind an Emperor's chair; and, being allowed to return to
Portsmouth for his wife and children, had the
satisfaction of parading his gold-laced grandeur
before the humbler citizens to his heart's content.
It is not only in legends of the elegancies of
colonial life, however, that Portsmouth is rich.
She had her valiant part in all the old French
and Indian wars, and the only ship-of-the-line
owned by the Continental Government was
here constructed, on Badger's Island, where a
hundred ships had been built before. Congress
having in 1776 ordered her agents to procure,
among others, three seventy-four-gun ships,
the America was begun, being the heaviest
ship that had ever been laid down on the continent. Little was done about her, though, till
nearly three years afterward, when John Paul
Jones. was ordered to command her. Jones
came to Portsmouth, found the ship only a
skeleton, and, without material or money and
in the face of countless obstacles, pushed forward her construction, though declaring it the
most tedious and distasteful service he was
ever charged with. As soon as the British
heard of the progress the ship wr[s making,
they devised a thousand plans to destroy her,
intelligence of which was constantly furnished
to Jones, in cipher; and at last, on an alarm
sent by General Washington himself, failing to
obtain a guard from New Hampshire, he prevailed upon the carpenters to keep watch by
night, and paid them from his own purse; and
they were otherwise rewarded by the sight of
large whaleboats stealing into the river on
muffled oars, and creeping, with their armed
companies, up and down by the A merica, without
daring to board her. At the birth of the
French Dauphin, Jones mounted artillery in
the ship, decorated her with the flags of all nations, fired salutes, gaye a great entertainment
on board, and alter dark illuminated her from
truck to keelson, kept up a feu le joie till midnight, and on the anniversary of Independence
repeated his rejoicings. The America was superbly built-both stern and bows made so
strong that the men might always be under
cover. Her sculpture, also, is said to have
been of a noble' order: America, at the head,
crowned with laurels, one arm raised to heaven,and the other supporting a buckler with thirteen
silver stars on a blue ground, while the rest
of the person was enveloped in the smoke of
war. Other large figures in relief were at the
stern and elsewhere, representing Tyranny
and Oppression, Neptune, and Mars, and Wisdom surrounded by the lightnings. Jones,
however, was destined never to command this
ship on which he bad lavished so much. The
Magnflque, a seventy-four-gun ship of the
French, having just been wrecked in Boston
Harbor, Congress magnanimously presented to
France the only ship-of-the-line in the American
possession, and for the tenth time Jones was





4)


PORTSMOUTH.


deprived of a command. Nevertheless, he completed the ship, and at last launched her; the
launching being no easy task In that little bay,
with the bluff of the opposite shore but a hundred fathoms distant, and ledges of rock and
conflicting currents everywhere between. But,
letting her slide precisely at high water, dropping the bow anchors and slipping the cable
fastened to the ground on the island, at a signal she was off and afloat in safe water, and
given over to the late commander of the


Magniflque. It was not long, though, before
the Brtlsh captured her-admiring her structure a.,d ornament so much, that they added to
her carvings the crest of the Prince of Wales,
and considered her peerless In all their fine
navy.
During the last war with England she did
service against her builders, and is still afloat, a
flfty-gun ship of the Queen's, " an honor," says
Mr. Brewster in his Rambles, "to Piscataqua
shipwrights and to our coast oak."





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