Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 50

While on his way to the American head-quarters, Prescott was horse-whipped by an innkeeper whom he insulted. The situation of the house from which he was carried off is easily distinguished by the pond before it, whose overflow falls in a miniature cascade into the road.

Very little, if any, of the original building is remaining.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SILAS TALBOT.]

Talbot's achievement the next year was in carrying off a British armed vessel, the _Pigot_, that guarded Seconnet Pa.s.sage and the communication between the islands and the main-land. With a few troops from the camp at Providence he manned a small vessel and set sail. On coming near the _Pigot_, Talbot caused his vessel to drift down upon her, when he carried her by boarding. He took his prize successfully into Stonington.

The absence of forest-trees on the island gives it a general resemblance to the rolling prairie of the West. The slopes are gracefully rounded as the Vermont hills--ground-swells, over which the road rises or descends in regular irregularity. Over this road that discarded vehicle, the stage-coach, once rolled and lurched, and was more wondered at than the train that now rattles along under the hills by the sh.o.r.e.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRESCOTT'S HEAD-QUARTERS.]

It is said that Dexter Brown, "an enterprising man," set up a four-horse stage-coach between Boston and Providence as early as 1772. When "well regulated," it left Providence every Monday, and arrived in Boston on Tuesday night; returning, it left Boston on Thursday, reaching Providence on Friday night. The coach was chiefly patronized by people who visited Newport for their health. On a long route, the change from one coach into another, equally cramped, might not inaptly be said to resemble an exchange of prisoners.

All travelers here have remarked on the productiveness of Rhode Island.

Its dairies and its poultry have always been celebrated. Orchards bursting with blossoms somewhat relieved the bare aspect of the hills.

Fields of spinach and of clover varied the coloring of the pastures, which were shaded off on cool slopes into the dark green of Kentucky blue-gra.s.s. Groups of brown hay-ricks, left from the winter's store, stood impaled in barn-yards. Flocks of geese waddled by the roadside.

Ox-teams, market-men, boys with droves of pigs, made the whole way a pastoral. On lifting the eye from the yellow band of road a windmill would be seen with its long arms beating the air. I liked to walk through the green lanes that led up to them, and hold brief chat with the boy or maid of the mill. I shall never look at one without thinking of Don Quixote and of Sancho Panza. The lack of streams and water-power is thus supplied by air-currents and wind-power. It is an ill wind indeed that blows n.o.body good on Rhode Island.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AGRICULTURAL PROSPERITY.]

I have said nothing of the fish-market of the island, and that market is of course centred in Newport. Dr. Dwight enumerates twenty-six different species, to be found in their season. Sheep's-head, considered superior to turbot, were sometimes caught off Hanging Rocks. Blackfish (tautog) and scup, or scuppaug, are much esteemed. When I was last on the island, the fishermen were emptying their seines of the scup, which were so plenty as to be almost valueless, a string of fine fish, ready dressed, bringing only twelve cents. The flesh of a tautog is very firm, and he will live a long time out of water. The boats used here by fishermen have the mast well forward, in the manner known to experts along sh.o.r.e as the "Newport rig." Formerly they used "pinkeys," or Chebacco boats, so called from a famous fishing precinct of Ess.e.x County, Ma.s.sachusetts.

The quartz imbedded in the stone makes the roadside walls appear as if splashed with whitewash. I saw few ledges from Newport to Lawton's Valley. The stones brought up by the plow were all small and flat, but at the upper end of the island I observed they were the round ma.s.ses or pebbles met with on the opposite main-land. There is also on the western sh.o.r.e a coal vein of inferior quality. The dust from it mingles with that of the road before you arrive at Bristol ferry.

I made a brief halt at the old gra.s.s-grown earth-work on the crest of the hill overlooking Lawton's Valley. No wayfarer should lose the rare views to be had here. The fort forms a throne from which the Queen of Aquidneck, a voluptuous rather than virgin princess, a Cleopatra rather than an Elizabeth, might behold her empire. At the foot of the hill is the remarkable vale intersecting the island, sprinkled with cottages among orchards; on the left, part of Canonicut and all of Prudence lie outstretched along the sunny bay; farther north the steeples of Bristol distinctly, and of Providence dimly, are seen; to the right Mount Hope, Tiverton, and perhaps a faint spectral chimney or two at Fall River. The long dark line on the water from the island to Tiverton is the stone bridge.[303]

Turning to the southward is the battle-field of 1778, where Sullivan and Greene fought with Pigot and Prescott, and where Lafayette, though he had ridden from Boston in six hours, was not. This campaign, begun so auspiciously, terminated ingloriously. New England had been aroused to arms. Men of all ranks of society shouldered their firelocks and marched. Volunteers from Newburyport, a company of the first merchants of Salem, artillery and infantry corps from Boston, thronged the roads to Sullivan's camp. It was a good and salutary lesson to the Americans, not to put their faith in French appearances.[304]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM b.u.t.tS'S HILL, LOOKING NORTH.]

When Coddington and his a.s.sociates determined to remove from Ma.s.sachusetts, they meant to settle upon Long Island or in Delaware Bay.

While their vessel was making the dangerous pa.s.sage around Cape Cod without them, they came by land to Providence, where Mr. Williams courteously entertained and afterward influenced them to settle upon the Isle of Aquidneck. Plymouth having disclaimed jurisdiction over it, and promised to look upon and a.s.sist them as loving neighbors, in March, 1637-'38, the exiles organized their political community upon the northern end of the island. Sir H. Vane and Roger Williams were instrumental in procuring Rhode Island from the Narraganset chieftains, Miantonimo and Canonicus. By the next spring their numbers were so much augmented that some of the settlers removed to the southern or western sh.o.r.es. The island was divided into two townships--Portsmouth, which now engrosses its upper half, and Newport. In 1644 they named it the Isle of Rhodes, which was merely exchanging one pagan name for another.[305]

[Ill.u.s.tration: QUAKER HILL FROM b.u.t.tS'S HILL, LOOKING SOUTH.]

Mount Hope is scarcely more than two hundred feet high, though in its isolation it looks higher. It is commandingly situated on a point of land on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Bristol Neck, giving its name to a broad expanse of water that receives Taunton River in its course to the sea.

On the eastern side the hill is precipitous, vastly more so than Horse Neck, down which the valiant Putnam urged his steed when pursued by British dragoons. Down this declivity Philip is said to have rolled like a cask when surprised by white enemies. Here, on the sh.o.r.es of Taunton River, is the scene of those hand-to-hand encounters between settler and savage in which the old historians are wont to mix up gunpowder with religion so perplexedly. In those days the fall of a red chieftain on the hunting-grounds of his fathers was hailed as a special providence.

Mount Hope was the sequel of Samoset's "Welcome, Englishmen."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BATTLE-GROUND OF AUGUST 29, 1778.]

By the river, in the forked branches of blasted sycamores, the fish-hawk builds and broods. Their nests are made of dried eel-gra.s.s from the sh.o.r.e interwoven with twigs. The shrill scream of the female at my coming was answered by the cry of the male, who left his fishing out on the river at the first signal of distress. An old traveler says this bird sometimes seems to lie expanded on the water, he hovers so close to it. Having by some attractive power drawn the fish within his reach, he darts suddenly upon them. The charm he makes use of is supposed to be an oil contained in a small bag in the body. In defense of his mate and her young the bird seems to forget fear.

After many agreeable surprises already encountered, I was unprepared for what I saw from the summit of Mount Hope. I felt it was good to be there. Every town in Rhode Island is said to be visible. All the islands dispersed about the bay are revealed at a glance. Glimmering in the distance was Providence. On the farther sh.o.r.e of Mount Hope Bay, Fall River appeared niched in the sheer side of a granite ledge. Here were Warren and Bristol, there Warwick; and, far down the greater bay, Newport was swathed in a hazy cloud. I had made a long walk, yet felt no fatigue, on the top of Mount Hope.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KING PHILIP, FROM AN OLD PRINT.]

Near the brow of the hill Philip fixed his wigwam and held his dusky court. He has had Irving for his biographer, Southey for his bard, and Forrest for his ideal representative. In his own time he was the public enemy whom any should slay; in ours he is considered as a martyr to the idea of liberty--his idea of liberty not differing from that of Tell and Toussaint, whom we call heroes.

Philip did not comprehend the religion of the whites, but as he understood their policy he naturally distrusted their faith. When the prophet Eliot preached to him, he went up to that good man, and, pulling off a b.u.t.ton from his doublet, said he valued his discourse as little as the piece of "bra.s.s--the monster!" exclaims pious Cotton Mather.

Such hills as Mount Hope were the settlers' sun-dials, when clocks and watches were luxuries known only to the wealthy few. The crest is a green nipple, having quartz cropping out everywhere; in fact, the basis of the hill is nearly a solid ma.s.s of quartz. Between the site of Philip's wigwam and the sh.o.r.e, where the escarpment is fifty feet, is a natural excavation, five or six feet from the ground, called "Philip's Throne." A small gra.s.s-plot is before it, and at its foot trickles a never-failing spring of water, known as "Philip's Spring."

The manner of Philip's death, as given in Church's history, is considered authentic. Church's party crossed the ferry, and reached Mount Hope about midnight. Detachments were placed in ambush at all the avenues of escape. Captain Golding, with a number of picked men and a guide, was ordered to a.s.sault the stronghold by break of day. One of Philip's Indians having showed himself, Golding fired a volley into the camp. The Indians then fled to the neighboring swamp, Philip the foremost. Having gained the sh.o.r.e, he ran directly upon Church's ambuscade. An Englishman snapped his gun at him without effect, when his companion, one of Church's Indian soldiers, sent a bullet through the heart of the chief. He fell on his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him. After the fight was over, Church ordered the body to be quartered and decapitated. The executioner was also an Indian, and before he struck the body made a short speech to it. Philip's head was taken to Plymouth in triumph, where, arriving on the very day the church was keeping a solemn thanksgiving, in the words of Mather, "G.o.d sent 'em in the head of a leviathan for a thanksgiving feast."

I made the ascent of Mount Hope from the south, where it is gradual; but on the west, where I descended, I found it abrupt, and covered with a grove of oak-trees sprinkled with stones among fern. With the exception of a few tumble-down stone walls that cross it, and now and then a cow quietly cropping the herbage, it is as wild as when it was the eyrie of the proud-spirited chieftain, "the Last of the Wampanoags."

[Ill.u.s.tration: INSCRIPTION ON DIGHTON ROCK.]

At Bristol the railway will set you down opposite to Fall River, or by returning to Bristol ferry you may take, on the Rhode Island side, the rail for Dighton and its sculptured rock. This rock, which has puzzled so many learned brains both of the Old World and the New, lies near the eastern sh.o.r.e of Taunton River, opposite Dighton wharves.[306]

I wanted two things in Dighton--direction to the rock, and a skiff to cross the river to it. An ancient builder of boats, very tall and very lank, having his adze in his hand and his admeasurements chalked on the toes of his boots, supplied me with both.

"What on airth do you want to look at that rock for?" he expostulated rather than questioned. "I'd as lief look at the side of that house,"

pointing to his work-shop.

"You do not seem to value your archaeological remains overmuch," I submitted.

"Bless you, I knew a gal born and brought up right in sight of that air rock, who got married and went to Baltimore to live, without ever having sot eyes on it. When she had staid there a spell she heard so much about Dighton Rock, she came all the way back a purpose to see it. _Fee_-male curiosity, you see, sir."

The river is half a mile broad at Dighton, with low, uninteresting sh.o.r.es. The "Writing Rock," a large boulder of fine-grained greenstone, is submerged either wholly or in part by the tidal flow, but when uncovered presents a smooth face, slightly inclined toward the open river. When so close as to lay hold of it, you are aware, of faint impressions on its surface, yet these have become so nearly effaced by the action of the tides and the chafing of drift ice as to be fragmentary, and therefore disappointing. As is usual, the action of the salt air has turned this, as other rocks by the sh.o.r.es, to a dusky red color. Seventy years ago the characters or lines traced on the rock were by actual measurement an inch in breadth by half an inch in depth, and distinct enough to attract attention from the decks of pa.s.sing vessels.

The rock is first mentioned, says Schoolcraft, in a sermon of Dr.

Danforth, of 1680. The river had then been frequented by white men for sixty years. It is next alluded to in the dedication of a sermon to Sir H. Ashurst by Cotton Mather, in these words: "Among the other curiosities of New England one is that of a mighty rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high tide covers part of it, there are very deeply engraved, no man alive knows how or when, about half a score lines near ten foot long and a foot and a half broad, filled with strange characters, which would suggest as odd thoughts about them that were here before us as there are odd shapes in that elaborate monument, whereof you shall see the first line transcribed here."

In the "Philosophical Transactions" of the Royal Society of London, covering a period from 1700 to 1720, are several communications from Cotton Mather, one of which (part iv., p. 112) is as follows:

"At Taunton, by the side of a tiding river, part in, part out of the river, is a large Rock; on the perpendicular side of which, next to the Stream, are seven or eight lines, about seven or eight foot long, and about a foot wide, each of them ingraven with unaccountable characters, not like any known character."[307]

Schoolcraft believed the work to have been performed by Indians.

Washington, who had some knowledge of their hieroglyphics, was of this opinion. Dr. Belknap a.s.serts that they were acquainted with sculpture, and also instances their descriptive drawings on the bark of trees.

Sculptured rocks, of which the origin is unknown, have been found in other locations in the United States. Since the unsettling of Norse traditions, the characters on Dighton Rock are generally admitted to be of Indian creation; but if the work of white men, it would strengthen the theory of Verazzani's presence in these waters.

Another link of the supposed discovery by Northmen was the skeleton exhumed about 1834 at Fall River. It was found in a sitting posture, having a plate of bra.s.s upon its breast, with arrow-heads of the same metal lying near, thin, flat, and of triangular shape. The arrows had been contained within a quiver of bark, that fell in pieces when exposed to the air. The most remarkable thing about the remains was a belt encircling the body, composed of bra.s.s tubes four and a half inches in length, the width of the belt, and placed close together longitudinally.

The breastplate, belt, and arrow-heads were considered so many evidences that the skeleton was that of some Scandinavian who had died and been buried here by the natives.

An antiquary would of course prize a dead Scandinavian more than many living ones. These mouldering bones and corroded trinkets were not, however, the key to Dighton Rock. The mode of sepulture was that practiced by the natives of this continent. In Archer's account of Gosnold's voyage he speaks of the Indians on the south of Cape Cod as follows:

"This day there came unto the ship's side divers canoes, the Indians appareled as aforesaid, with tobacco and pipes steeled with copper, skins, artificial strings, and other trifles, to barter; one had hanging about his neck a plate of rich copper, in length a foot, in breadth half a foot, for a breastplate."

John Brereton, of the same voyage, tells us more of the Indians of the Elizabeth Islands: "They have also great store of copper, some very red, and some of a paler color; none of them but have chains, ear-rings, or collars of this metal: they had some of their arrows herewith, much like our broad arrow-heads, very workmanly made. Their chains are many hollow pieces cemented together, each piece of the bigness of one of our reeds, a finger in length, ten or twelve of them together on a string, which they wear about their necks; their collars they wear about their bodies like bandeliers, a handful broad, all hollow pieces like the other, but somewhat shorter, four hundred pieces in a collar, very fine and evenly set together." Were this evidence less positive, we know from Champlain that the Indians would never have permitted the body of a stranger to remain buried longer than was necessary to disinter and despoil it.

Verazzani's letter mentions the possession of copper trinkets by the Indians.

About two miles and a half from Taunton Green is the Leonard Forge, the oldest in America. The spot is exceedingly picturesque. The brook, overhung by trees, which of yore turned the mill-wheel, glides beneath a rustic bridge ere it tumbles over the dam and hurries on to meet the river. James and Henry Leonard built the forge in 1652.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD LEONARD HOUSE, RAYNHAM.]

Near the spot is the site of the dwelling they occupied, one of the distinctive old structures of its day. Philip lived in amity with the Leonards, who made for him spear and arrow heads when he came to hunt at the Fowling Pond, not far from the forge, where he had a hunting-lodge.

When he had resolved to strike the English, it is said he gave strict orders not to hurt those Leonards, his good friends of the forge.

Tradition has it that his head was afterward kept in the house some days.