A DELIGHTFUL group of writings belonging to our earliest age is made up of those which preserve for us, in the very words of the men themselves, the curiosity, the awe, the bewilderment, the fresh delight, with which the American Fathers came face to face for the first time with the various forms of nature and of life in the new world. We have already seen examples of this class of writings produced by the early men of Virginia; and among the founders of New England there was no lack of the same

sensitiveness to the vast, picturesque, and novel aspects of nature which they encountered upon the sea and the land, in their first journeys hither. The evidence of this fact is scattered thick through all their writings, in letters, sermons, histories, poems; while there remain several books, written by them immediately after their arrival here, describing in the first glow of elated feeling the vision that unfolded itself before them, of the new realms of existence, the “vast and empty chaos,”¹ upon which they were entering.

     The first of these books consists of a journal² kept by two renowned passengers upon the Mayflower, William Bradford and Edward Winslow, from the ninth of November, 1620, the day on which they caught their first glimpse of American land, until the return to England of the good ship Fortune, more than thirteen months afterward. Of course, in a book of this kind, made up of extemporized jottings, we ought not to look for careful literary workmanship; and yet, the deliberation and the conscientiousness of the Pilgrim character are stamped upon every line of it. It has the charm of utter sincerity, the effortless grace that we might expect in the language of noble-minded men casting their eyes for the first time, and with unhackneyed enthusiasm, upon the face of a new universe.

     “After many difficulties in boisterous storms, at length, by God’s providence . . . we espied land. . . . And the appearance of it much comforted us, especially seeing so goodly a land, and wooded to the brink of the sea.”³ Coming round “the spiral bending” of the outermost point of Cape Cod, they found themselves suddenly in “a

good harbor and pleasant bay,” “wherein a thousand sail of ships may safely ride.”¹ Upon land “there was the greatest store of fowl that ever we saw. And every day we saw whales playing hard by us, of which in that place, if we had instruments and means to take them, we might have made a very rich return; which to our great grief we wanted.”² Some of the pioneers going on shore for the purpose of discovering a place of habitation, they wondered at the density of the forests, and at the scarcity of the inhabitants. “We marched through boughs and bushes, and under hills and valleys, which tore our very armor in pieces, and yet could meet with none” of the inhabitants “nor their houses, nor find any fresh water.” At last, “about ten o’clock we came into a deep valley, full of brush, wood-gaile, and long grass, through which we found little paths or tracks; and there we saw deer, and found springs of fresh water, of which we were heartily glad, and sat us down and drunk our first New England water, with as much delight as ever we drunk drink in all our lives.”³ “We went ranging up and down till the sun began to draw low, and then we hasted out of the woods, that we might come to our shallop, which . . . we espied a great way off, and called them to come unto us. . . . They were exceeding glad tc see us. . . . So being both weary and faint, for we had eaten nothing all that day, we fell to make our rendezvous and get firewood. . . . By that time we had done, and our shallop come to us, it was within night; and we fed upon such victuals as we had, and betook us to our rest, after we had set our watch. About midnight we heard a great and hideous cry; and our sentinels called ‘Arm! Arm!’ So we bestirred ourselves, and shot off a couple of muskets, and the noise ceased. We concluded that it was a company of wolves or foxes; for one told us he had heard such a noise in Newfoundland. About five o’clock in the morning we began to be stirring. . . .

After prayer we prepared ourselves for breakfast and for a journey; and it being now the twilight in the morning, it was thought meet to carry the things down to the shallop. . . . As it fell out, the water not being high enough, they laid the things down upon the shore and came up to breakfast. Anon, all upon a sudden, we heard a great and a strange cry, which we knew to be the same voices, though they varied their notes. One of our company, being abroad, came running in, and cried, ‘They are men! Indians! Indians!’ and withal their arrows came flying amongst us. Our men ran out with all speed to recover their arms. . . . In the meantime, Captain Miles Standish, having a snaphance ready, made a shot, and after him another. After they two had shot, other two of us were ready; but he wished us not to shoot till we could take aim, for we knew not what need we should have. . . . Our care was no less for the shallop. . . . We called unto them to know how it was with them; and they answered ‘Well! Well!’ every one, and ‘be of good courage!’ . . . The cry of our enemies was dreadful. . . . Their note was after this manner, ‘Woach, woach, ha ha hach woach.’ . . . There was a lusty man, and no whit less valiant, who was thought to be their captain, stood behind a tree within half a musket-shot of us, and there let his arrows fly at us. He was seen to shoot three arrows, which were all avoided; for he at whom the first arrow was aimed, saw it, and stooped down, and it flew over him. The rest were avoided also. He stood three shots of a musket. At length, one tools, as he said, full aim at him; after which he gave an extraordinary cry, and away they went all. We followed them about a quarter of a mile. . . . Then we shouted all together two several times, and shot off a couple of muskets and so returned. This we did that they might see we were not afraid of them, nor discouraged. Thus it pleased God to vanquish our enemies and give us deliverance.”¹

     On Saturday, the third of March, “the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly. At one of the clock it thundered, which was the first we heard in that country. It was strong and great claps, but short; but after an hour it rained very sadly till midnight.”¹

     On Friday, the sixteenth of March, “we determined to conclude of the military orders, which we had begun to consider of before. . . . And whilst we were busied hereabout, we were interrupted again; for there presented himself a savage, which caused an alarm. He very boldly came all alone, and along the houses, straight to the rendezvous; where we intercepted him, not suffering him to go in. . . . He saluted us in English and bade us ‘welcome.’ . . . He was a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage. We questioned him of many things; he was the first savage we could meet withal. He said he was not of these parts, but of Morattiggon, and one of the sagamores or lords thereof. . . . He discoursed of the whole country, and of every province, and of their sagamores, and their number of men, and strength. The wind beginning to rise a little, we cast a horseman’s coat about him; for he was stark naked, only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long or little more. He had a bow and two arrows. . . . He was a tall, straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all: He asked some beer, but we gave him strong water, and biscuit, and butter, and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of mallard; all which he liked well. . . . All the afternoon we spent in communication with him. We would gladly have been rid of him at night, but he was not willing to go this night. . . . We lodged him that night at Stephen Hopkins’s house, and watched him.”²

     On the twenty-second of March, the Pilgrims received a visit from the great sagamore, Massasoit. “After salutations,

our governor kissing his hand, the king kissed him; and so they sat down. The governor called for some strong water, and drunk to him; and he drunk a great draught, that made him sweat all the while after. . . . All the while he sat by the governor, he trembled for fear. In his person he is a very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech; in his attire little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers, only in a great chain of white bone beads about his neck. . . . The king had in his bosom, hanging in a string, a great long knife. He marvelled much at our trumpet, and some of his men would sound it as well as they could. Samoset and Squanto, they staid all night with us; and the king and all his men lay all night in the woods, not above half an English mile from us, and all their wives and women with them. That night we kept good watch; but there was no appearance of danger.¹ “For the temper of the air here,” writes Edward Winslow, in a letter appended to the journal from which we have been quoting, “it agreeth well with that in England; and if there be any difference at all, this is somewhat hotter in summer. Some think it to be colder in winter; but I cannot out of experience so say. The air is very clear, and not foggy, as hath been reported. I never in my life remember a more seasonable year than we have here enjoyed; and if we have once but kine, horses, and sheep, I make no question but men might live as contented here as in any part of the world. . . . The country wanteth only industrious men to employ; for it would grieve your hearts if, as I, you had seen so many miles together by goodly rivers uninhabited; and withal, to consider those parts of the world wherein you live to be even greatly burthened with abundance of people.”²

     Thus, with words of happy import, do these earliest Americans close up the story of their first year in their

new home; and three years afterward, in 1624, Edward Winslow had a second report to make, which was published in London under the title of “Good News from New England.”¹

     He takes up the narrative at the very point where the previous report had dropped it, and carries it forward in luminous and spirited style down to September, 1623. It is a story of the griefs and perils and escapes of the young settlement, of their various encounters, in amity and in enmity, with mean red men and meaner white ones; of the interior administration of the little commonwealth, and of its steady advancement through all obstructions into solid security; above all else, it is a description of the country, with reference to its desirableness as the seat of a new English community. Winslow was a brave man, most expert in dealing with the Indians, and was several times sent upon embassies to them; and his book abounds in vivid and amusing descriptions of these savages, and of the manner of their lives. In one place, for example, he gives this account of their mode of preserving the memory of historical events: “Instead of records and chronicles, they take this course. Where any remarkable act is done, in memory of it, either in the place or by some pathway near adjoining, they make a round hole in the ground, about a foot deep, and as much over; which when others passing by behold, they inquire the cause and occasion of the same, which being once known, they are careful to acquaint all men, as occasion serveth, therewith; and lest such holes should be filled or grown up by any accident, as men pass by, they will oft renew the same; by which means many things of great antiquity are fresh in memory. So that as a man travelleth, if he can understand his guide, his journey will be the less tedious, by reason of the many historical discourses [which] will be related unto him.”² Perhaps nothing in all the book is more graphic or entertaining

than his description of a journey which in the company of “one Master John Hamden, a gentleman of London, who then wintered with us,” he made for the medical relief of Massasoit.¹

     The conclusion of the work is a racy and vigorous admonition addressed to Englishmen who might meditate emigration to America, and warning them against the danger of entering upon that grim business without sufficient consideration of its inevitable tasks and pains: “I write not these things to dissuade any that shall seriously, upon due examination, set themselves to further the glory of God and the honor of our country, in so worthy an enterprise, but rather to discourage such as with too great lightness undertake such courses; who peradventure strain themselves and their friends for their passage thither, and are no sooner there, than seeing their foolish imagination made void, are at their wit’s end, and would give ten times so much for their return, if they could procure it; and out of such discontented passions and humors, spare not to lay that imputation upon the country, and others, which themselves deserve. As, for example, I have heard some complain of others for their large reports of New England, and yet, because they must drink water and want many delicates they here enjoyed, could presently return with their mouths full of clamors. And can any be so simple as to conceive that the fountains should stream forth wine or beer, or the woods and rivers be like butchers’ shops or fishmongers’ stalls, where they might have things taken to their hands? If thou canst not live without such things, and hast no means to procure the one, and will not take pains for the other, nor hast ability to employ others for thee, rest where thou art; for, as a proud heart, a dainty tooth, a beggar’s purse, and an idle hand, be here² intolerable,

so that person that hath these qualities there, is much more abominable. If, therefore, God hath given thee a heart to undertake such courses, upon such grounds as bear thee out in all difficulties, namely, his glory as a principal, and all other outward good things but as accessories, . . . then thou wilt with true comfort and thankfulness receive the least of his mercies; whereas on the contrary, men deprive themselves of much happiness, being senseless of greater blessings, and through prejudice smother up the love and bounty of God; whose name be ever glorified in us, and by us, now and evermore. Amen.”¹

     Among the Argonaut, of the first decade of New England colonization there was perhaps no braver or more exquisite spirit than Francis Higginson, a graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, who, entering the ministry of the Church of England, soon became noted for his eloquence, and who, turning away from very brilliant prospects of promotion, became a resolute non-conformist, and finally accepted the office of religious teacher to the little pioneer community of Salem, in Massachusetts. It was in April, 1629, that this saintly and gifted man, with his wife and eight little children, sailed away from England, on the Talbot, “a good and strong ship,” carrying “above a hundred planters, six goats, five great pieces of ordnance, with meal, oatmeal, pease, and all manner of munition and provision for the plantation for a twelvemonth.”²

     Of this journey over the Atlantic, then a thing of great novelty and risk, Francis Higginson kept a journal, which he promptly sent back to England, and which was circulated in manuscript under the title of “A True Relation of the last Voyage to New England, declaring all circumstances,

with the manner of the passage we had by sea, and what manner of country and inhabitants we found when we came to land, and what is the present state and condition of the English people that are there already; faithfully recorded, according to the very truth, for the satisfaction of very many of my loving friends, who have earnestly requested to be truly certified in these things.” Arriving at Salem on the twenty-ninth of June, the author passed the next three months in getting established in his new home, and in making himself acquainted with the youthful-seeming world he had come to live in. The results of his observations were compressed into a little book, entitled “New England’s Plantation,” giving a “description of the commodities and discommodities of that country.” This work was instantly printed in London; and so eager was the thirst of the English people for information concerning their recent settlements in New England, that three editions of the book were called for within a single year. In a little more than thirteen months from his arrival in America, however, Francis Higginson died, in the prime of his life, and on the threshold of a great career.

     Upon the title-page of his first book there is the hint of an apology to any “curious critic” who may look into it “for exactness of phrases;” and yet, unlabored as is the composition of both his books, we find in them a delicate felicity of expression, and a quiet, imaginative picturesqueness. Thus, for Wednesday, May thirteenth, he writes: “The wind still holding easterly, we came as far as the Land’s End, in the utmost part of Cornwall, and so left our dear native soil of England behind us; and sailing about ten leagues further, we passed the isles of Scilly, and launched the same day a great way into the main ocean. And now my wife and other passengers began to feel the tossing waves of the western sea.”¹

     Again, under the date of May twenty-seventh, he gives

this forcible description of a storm: “About noon there arose a south wind which increased more and more, so that it seemed to us that are landmen, a sore and terrible storm; for the wind blew mightily, the rain fell vehemently, the sea roared, and the waves tossed us horribly; besides, it was fearful dark, and the mariner’s mate was afraid, and noise on the other side, with their running here and there, loud crying one to another to pull at this and that rope. The waves poured themselves over the ship, that the two boats were filled with water. . . . But this lasted not many hours, after which it became a calmish day.”¹ What pathos and simple beauty are in these words, which were written for Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of June: “This day we had all a clear and comfortable sight of America.”²

     Two days afterward the author wrote the following sentences, so vivid and real in their descriptiveness, that they enable us to enjoy the very luxury of drawing near to America and of beholding it with the eyes of the Fathers themselves: “Friday a foggy morning, but after clear, and wind calm. We saw many schools of mackerel, infinite multitudes on every side of our ship. The sea was abundantly stored with rockweed and yellow flowers, like gillyflowers. By noon we were within three leagues of Cape Ann; and as we sailed along the coasts, we saw every hill and dale and every island full of gay woods and high trees. The nearer we came to the shore, the more flowers in abundance, sometimes scattered abroad, sometimes joined in sheets nine or ten yards long, which we supposed to be brought from the low meadows by the tide. Now, what with fine woods and green trees by land, and these yellow flowers painting the sea, made us all desirous to see our new paradise of New England, whence we saw such forerunning signals of fertility afar off.”³ On Monday, the

twenty-ninth of June, “as we passed along, it was wonderful to behold so many islands, replenished with thick wood and high trees, and many fair, green, pastures. . . . We rested that night with glad and thankful hearts that God had put an end to our long and tedious journey through the greatest sea in the world. . . . Our passage was both pleasurable and profitable. For we received instruction and delight in beholding the wonders of the Lord in the deep waters, and sometimes seeing the sea round us appearing with a terrible countenance, and, as it were, full of high hills and deep valleys; and sometimes it appeared as a most plain and even meadow. And, ever and anon, we saw divers kinds of fishes sporting in the great waters, great grampuses and huge whales, going by companies, and puffing up water-streams. Those that love their own chimney-corner, and dare not go beyond their own town’s end, shall never have the honor to see these wonderful works of Almighty God.”¹

     In describing New England with reference to its fitness as the seat of an English commonwealth, the author arranges his facts, rather quaintly, under the topics of “the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire.” All his pages are full of sunshine, and the fragrance of flowers, and the gladness of nature in New England during the balmy season in which he came to it. Indeed, he was accused by some who came afterward, of having given too attractive a picture of the country; but for this he was hardly to blame. When he wrote, he had seen only the season of roses: no wonder that his descriptions were rosy. After a voyage of six weeks upon the ocean, any land seems good, much more a delicious, flowery summer-land; and Francis Higginson wrote in the first flush of excitement at being on shore, in a bounteous realm, in an exhilarating new life. It seems to him a paradise regained. All things are delightful. He even exults in the domestic felicity of having

“already a quart of milk for a penny,”¹ and in having candles of “the wood of the pine tree cloven in two little slices something thin, which . . . burn as clear as a torch.”² Concerning the climate of the country, he declared that “a sup of New England’s air is better than a whole draught of Old England’s ale.”³ He was not long in making a study of the Indians, whom in one passage he describes with great zest, even weaving into his account a stroke of gentle raillery at a certain English fashion then prevalent, and very distasteful to the Puritans. The Indians “are a tall and strong-limbed people. Their colors are tawny. . . . Their hair is generally black, and cut before, like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion, I think, came from hence into England.”⁴ But best of all, “we have here plenty of preaching, and diligent catechising, with strict and careful exercise. . . . And thus we doubt not but God will be with us; and if God be with us, who can be against us?”⁵

     A very sprightly and masterful specimen of descriptive literature, embodying the results of precise observation directed toward the topography, climate, and productions of the country, is “New England’s Prospect,”⁶ published in London in 1634, and written by William Wood, whose residence in America is supposed to have begun five years

before that date. It will not be easy for us to give a more felicitous account of the book than it gives of itself, when, upon its old title-page, it assures us that it is indeed “a true, lively, and experimental description “of the region that it treats of. The author had attained the fine art of packing his pages full of the most exact delineation of facts, without pressing the life and juice out of them; and, besides the extraordinary raciness and vivacity of his manner, he has an elegance of touch by no means common in the prose of his contemporaries. His style, indeed, is that of a man of genuine literary culture, and has the tone and flavor of the best Elizabethan prose-writers; almost none of the crabbedness of the sermon-makers and pamphleteers of his own day. There are dainty strokes of beauty in his sentences; a forceful imaginative vigor; gayety, and good-hearted sarcasm; all going to make up a book of genial descriptions of nature such as Izaak Walton must have delighted in, if perchance his placid eye ever fell upon it. The book is broken into two parts, the first being a description of the country, the second an account of its Indian inhabitants. Under the first division, we have in twelve chapters a sketch of the geographical features of New England; of the seasons; of the climate, “with the suitableness of it to English bodies for health and sickness;” of the soil; “of the herbs, fruits, woods, waters, and minerals;” “of the beasts that live on the land,” or in the water, or both; finally, of the colonies already established there, and of the best preparations to be made by those who intended to remove into the new world. The second division of the work contains twenty chapters, all relating to the Indian tribes of New England; their places of abode; their apparel, ornaments, paintings; their food; their personal characteristics, such as friendship, fortitude, intellectual condition; their politics; their worship; their wars, diversions, domestic customs, and means of livelihood.

     Thus the book has a wide range of topics and a multitude of details; but it moves easily through them all, with

an alert and thorough treatment, not once blundering out of the straight path or lapsing into dulness. In the preface, the author has a spirited passage avowing that in all his statements he had been careful of the truth, and wittily defending the reputation of travellers against the calumnies of those home-keeping souls who denounce as false whatever is beyond the petty sweep of their own hori zons. “I would be loath to broach any thing which may puzzle thy belief, and so justly draw upon myself that unjust aspersion commonly laid on travellers; of whom many say, ‘They may lie by authority, because none can control them;’ which proverb had surely his original from the sleepy belief of many a home-bred dormouse, who comprehends not either the rarity or possibility of those things he sees not; to whom the most classic relations seem riddles and paradoxes; of whom it may be said, as once of Diogenes, that because he circled himself in the circumstance of a tub, he therefore contemned the port and palace of Alexander, which he knew not. So there is many a tub-brained cynic, who because anything stranger than ordinary is too large for the strait hoops of his apprehension, he peremptorily concludes that it is a lie. But I decline this sort of thick-witted readers, and dedicate the mite of my endeavors to my more credulous, ingenious, and less censorious countrymen, for whose sake I undertook this work. . . . Thus, thou mayest, in two or three hours’ travel over a few leaves, see and know that which cost him that writ it, years, and travel over sea and land, before he knew it.”

     It is a discovery soon made by us, as we turn over the pages of this writer, that in a book in which description needs to be the principal thing, his style is most happily descriptive. He seems to have the very gift of picture-making, describing objects so well that, as the Arabs say, the ear is converted into the eye. For example, having to tell us of Massachusetts Bay, he lets us look at it for ourselves. It “is both safe, spacious, and deep, free from

such cockling seas as run upon the coast of Ireland, and in the channels of England. . . . The mariners . . . may behold the two capes embracing their welcome ships in their arms, which thrust themselves out into the sea in form of a half-moon, the surrounding shore being high, and showing many white cliffs in a most pleasant prospect. . . . This harbor is made by a great company of islands, whose high cliffs shoulder out the boisterous seas.”¹

     Another literary trait of the author, which he shares with many of the writers of his period, is that of sprinkling verses, along the landscape of his prose; and his verses have this singularity, that they are often of considerable poetic merit. In giving a description of the forest trees of New England, he compresses a multitude of particulars into these terse lines, in which the literary aptness and even imaginative force of his epithets are as striking as is their scientific precision

     In his chapters on animals are many paragraphs illustrating an amusing quaintness and quiet mirthfulness of tone, as well as the author’s power of condensed and graphic description in verse: “Having related unto you the pleasant situation of the country, the healthfulness of the climate, the nature of the soil, with his vegetatives and other commodities, it will not be amiss to inform you of such irrational creatures as are daily bred and continually nourished in this country, which do much conduce to the well being of the inhabitants, affording not only meat for the belly, but clothing for the back. The beasts be as followeth:

     Concerning lions I will not say that I ever saw any myself; but some affirm that they have seen a lion at Cape Ann, which is not above six leagues from Boston; some likewise being lost in woods have heard such terrible roarings as have made them much aghast; which must either be devils or lions; there being no other creatures which use to roar saving bears, which have not such a terrible kind of roaring. Besides, Plymouth men have traded for lions’ skins informer times.”¹ “The Porcupine is a small thing not much unlike a Hedgehog; something bigger, who stands upon his guard, and proclaims a ‘Noli me tangere’ to man and beast that shall approach too near

him, darting his quills into their legs and hides.”¹ “The beasts of offence be Skunks, Ferrets, Foxes, whose impudence sometimes drives them to the good-wives’ hen roost to fill their paunch.”² “The Oldwives be a fowl that never leave tattling day or night; something bigger than a duck.”³

     Altogether the most remarkable literary quality of this writer is shown in his delineation of objects in natural history: he has in these an extraordinary union of comprehensiveness, minute accuracy, brevity, and pictorial vividness. Thus, in his account of wolves and hummingbirds are passages that indicate in the author an uncommon power of close and definite observation, together with an easy command of the words that are at once nicely, concisely, and poetically descriptive. Wolves “be made much like a mongrel, being big-boned, lank-paunched, deep-breasted, having a thick neck and head, prick ears, and long snout, with dangerous teeth, long staring hair, and a great bush-tail. It is thought of many that our English mastiffs might be too hard for them; but it is no such matter, for they care no more for an ordinary mastiff, than an ordinary mastiff cares for a cur; many good dogs have been spoiled with them. Once a fair greyhound hearing them at their howlings, run out to chide them, who was torn to pieces before he could be rescued. One of them makes no more bones to run away with a pig than a dog to run away with a marrow bone. . . . Late at night and early in the morning they set up their howlings, and call their companies together at night to hunt, at morning to sleep; in a word they be the greatest inconveniency the country hath, both for matter of damage to private men in particular, and the whole country in general.”⁴ “The Humbird is one of the wonders of the country, being no bigger than a hornet, yet hath all the dimensions of a bird, as bill and wings, with quills, spider-like

legs, small claws. For color she is as glorious as the rainbow; as she flies she makes a little humming noise like a humblebee: wherefore she is called the Humbird.”¹

     ”Having done with these,” he says, “let me lead you from the land to the sea, to view what commodities may come from thence;”² and in the course of this description, he mentions with his usual excellence of apt epithets:

     It was not the author’s plan to deal at any length with the history and social development of the colonies established in New England; yet he does not altogether pass them over, nor does he forget the needs of those in the mother-land who might be considering the project of coming to America. He speaks sarcastically of the ignorant questions often asked in England concerning the new land, as, “whether the sun shines there or no;”⁴ and of the “groundless calumniations” of those who had come to the country with fantastic and impossible notions of what was to be found there, and had of course abandoned it in disgust I have myself heard some say that they heard it was a rich land, a brave country; but when they came there they could see nothing but a few canvas booths and old houses, supposing at the first to have found walled towns, fortifications and cornfields, as if towns could have built themselves, or cornfields have grown of themselves without the husbandry of man. These men, missing of their expectations, returned home and railed against the

country.”¹ The Second part of the book is devoted to the Indians, and is written, as the author says, “in a more light and facetious style, . . . because their carriage and behavior hath afforded more matter of mirth and laughter, than gravity and wisdom; and therefore I have inserted many passages of mirth concerning them, to spice the rest of my more serious discourse and to make it more pleasant.”² But the author’s merry eye, never failing to catch a glimpse of whatever is amusing, is likewise alert for whatever is instructive; and the really fine and wise sketch which he has given of the various savage tribes of New England, is not likely to be scorned by us, even though he may have committed the crime of paving the highway of knowledge with entertainment. His study of the Indians seems to have embraced not only their habits in this world, but their notions about the world to come; and in his chapter on “their deaths, burials, and mourning,” we find these nimble and affluent sentences, which, besides giving us considerable amusing information, reproduce for us the very manner of the best Elizabethan prose: “Although the Indians be of lusty and healthful bodies, not experimentally knowing the catalogue of those health-wasting diseases which are incident to other countries, . . . but spin out the thread of their days to a fair length, numbering three score, four score, some a hundred years, before the world’s universal summoner cite them to the craving grave; but the date of their life expired, and death’s arrestment seizing upon them, all hope of recovery being past, then to behold and hear their throbbing sobs and deep-fetched sighs, their grief-wrung hands, and tear-bedewed cheeks, their doleful cries, would draw tears from adamantine eyes, that be but spectators of their mournful obsequies. The glut of their grief being passed, they commit the corpse of their deceased friends to the ground, over whose grave is for a long time spent many a briny tear, deep groan

and Irish-like howlings. . . . These are the mourners without hope; yet do they hold the immortality of the never-dying soul, that it shall pass to the South-West Elysium, concerning which their Indian faith jumps much with the Turkish Alcoran, holding it to be a kind of paradise, wherein they shall everlastingly abide, solacing themselves in odoriferous gardens, fruitful cornfields, green meadows, bathing their tawny hides in the cool streams of pleasant rivers, and shelter themselves from heat and cold in the sumptuous palaces framed by the skill of Nature’s curious contrivement; concluding that neither care nor pain shall molest them, but that Nature’s bounty will administer all things with a voluntary contribution from the overflowing storehouse of their Elysian hospital.”¹

     So vigilant an observer as was this author, would not be likely to let slip any trait that might illustrate the grotesque and droll effects wrought by the contact of English culture with the mental childhood of the Indians. Nothing in this kind has ever ministered more to the white man’s mirth than the impression made upon the savages by our improvements in the arts, which of course seemed to them to be things enormous, superhuman, and dreadful “These Indians being strangers to arts and sciences, and being unacquainted with the inventions that are common to a civilized people, are ravished with admiration at the first view of any such sight. They took the first ship they saw for a walking island, the mast to be a tree, the sail white clouds, and the discharging of ordnance for lightning and thunder, which did much trouble them; but this thunder being over, and this moving island steadied with an anchor, they manned out their canoes to go and pick strawberries there; but being saluted by the way with a broadside, they cried out ‘what much hoggery,’ ‘so big walk,’ and ‘so big speak,’ and ‘by and by kill,’ which caused them to turn back, not daring to approach till they

were sent for. They do much extol and wonder at the English for their strange inventions, especially for a windmill, which in their esteem was little less than the world’s wonder, for the strangeness of his whisking motion and the sharp teeth biting the corn (as they term it) into such small pieces. They were loath at the first to come near to his long arms, or to abide in so tottering a tabernacle, though now they dare go anywhere so far as they have an English guide.”¹

     His chapter on the Aberginians, a tribe of savages renowned for their stalwart and superb physical proportions, furnishes us with another instance of his remarkable gift of concentrated, exact, and vivid description. They are “between five or six foot high, straight-bodied, strongly composed, smooth-skinned, merry-countenanced, of complexion something more swarthy than Spaniards, black-haired, high-foreheaded, black-eyed, out-nosed, broad-shouldered, brawny-armed, long- and slender-handed, out-breasted, small-waisted, lank-bellied, well-thighed, flat-kneed, handsome-grown legs, and small feet. In a word, take them when the blood brisks in their veins, when the flesh is on their backs, and marrow in their bones, when they frolic in their antique deportments and Indian postures, and they are more amiable to behold (though only in Adam’s livery) than many a compounded fantastic in the newest fashion.”² “But a sagamore with a humbird in his ear for a pendant, a black hawk on his occiput for his plume, mowhackees for his gold chain, good store of wampompeage begirting his loins, his bow in his hand, his quiver at his back, with six naked Indian spatter-lashes at his heels for his guard, thinks himself little inferior to the great Cham; he will not stick to say, he is all one with King Charles. He thinks he can blow down castles with his breath, and conquer kingdoms with his conceit.”³

     A writer of more pronounced scientific intentions, though of far less literary skill, was John Josselyn, who, belonging to an ancient and aristocratic family in England, had the distinction of being able to subscribe his name with the proud affix, “Gentleman.” His father, Sir Thomas Josselyn, of Kent, was an associate of Sir Ferdinando Gorges in schemes of American colonization; his brother was that Henry Josselyn, who, from about the year 1634 onward for forty years, was a leading land-holder and magistrate in the province of Maine, and who, in life-long contests with white men and Indians, displayed an unslumbering activity of courage and of hate,—a characteristic exactly touched by Whittier in a single vivid line of Mogg Megone—

     John Josselyn, the author, was twice an inhabitant of this country. He came first in 1638, remaining only fifteen months; he came again in 1663, and remained eight years in both cases passing the most of his time on his brother’s plantation at Scarborough. In connection with his first arrival in Boston, he mentions a fact that gives us a pleasant glimpse of the intellectual exchanges already begun between the men of books in America and the men of books in England: he states that he first paid his respects to “Mr. Winthrop, the governor,” and that he next called upon the great pulpit-orator, John Cotton, to whom he “delivered from Mr. Francis Quarles, the poet, the translation of the 16th, 25th, 51st, 88th, 113th, and 137th Psalms, into English metre, for his approbation.”¹ Though his family in England appear to have been attached to the Puritan party, he himself certainly had little sympathy with the Puritans of New England, concerning whom he

in one place frees his mind, with a refreshing copiousness of frank words. Their leading men, he tells us, “are damnable rich, . . . inexplicably covetous and proud they receive your gifts but as an homage or tribute due to their transcendency. . . . The chiefest objects of discipline, true religion, and morality, they want; some are of a linsey-woolsey disposition, . . . all like Ethiopians, white in the teeth only; full of ludification, and injurious dealing, and cruelty.”¹

     There is no evidence that he engaged in any kind of business in America. He was probably a bachelor; and finding a comfortable home on his brother’s estate, he had leisure to indulge his love of reading and particularly his fondness for researches in natural history. He made it his ambition, as he informs us, “to discover the natural, physical, and chirurgical rarities of this new-found world.”² He appears to have wandered at his will in the forests and on the mountains of Maine, to have dropped his hook in many waters, and to have explored the islands along the coast, everywhere soliciting nature to deliver up to him her mysteries. Some of these mysteries, indeed, did not consent to be delivered up passively to the prying stranger, even for the advancement of science among mankind; as was made apparent, for example, in his somewhat too zealous investigation of that uneasy Americanism, a hornet’s nest: “In the afternoon I walked into the woods . . ., and happening into a fine broad walk, . . . I wandered till I chanced to spy a fruit, as I thought, like a pine-apple plated with scales. It was as big as the crown of a woman’s hat. I made bold to step unto it, with an intent to have gathered it. No sooner had I touched it, but hundreds of wasps were about me. At last I cleared myself from them, . . . but by the time I was come into the house, . . . they hardly knew me but by my garments.”³

This grim practical joke of the wasps at the expense of the learned naturalist, which must have long supplied food for bucolic mirth among the woodmen of New England, is deftly used by Longfellow in his “Tragedy of John Endicott,” when he makes the troubled inn-keeper of Boston, Samuel Cole, exclaim:

     It is as a naturalist, and as the writer of two books embodying the results of his observations in that capacity, that John Josselyn has a place in our literary annals. He appears indeed to have been a man of some general learning. He quotes Pliny, Lucan, Isidore, and Paracelsus; all his Biblical citations are from the Vulgate; he brings in a proverb in the Italian; and among the writers of his own country, he has references to Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir John Davies, Sylvester, George Sandys, Captain John Smith, and to Charles the First; to the last of whom, as the supposed author of “Eikon Basilike,” he alludes in the sympathetic cant of the Restoration, as “the royal martyr.” John Josselyn’s first book, entitled “New England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of that Country,” was published in London in 1672; his second book, considerably larger than the first, and entitled “An Account of Two Voyages to New England,” was published in the same place in 1674.

     Although his main purpose in these books was to give an account of American productions in natural history, he did not altogether leave out descriptions of the country in general. Thus he speaks of “a ridge of mountains . . . known by the name of the White Mountains, upon which lieth snow all the year, and is a landmark twenty miles off at sea.”² One of the highest of these mountains is

”called the Sugar Loaf, . . . a rude heap of massy stones piled one upon another. . . . From this rocky hill you may see the whole country round about: it is far above the lower clouds, and from hence we beheld a vapor, like a great pillar, drawn up by the sunbeams out of a great lake or pond into the air, where it was formed into a cloud. The country beyond these hills northward is daunting terrible, being full of rocky hills . . . and clothed with infinite thick Woods.”¹

     In dealing with objects in natural history, the most valuable part of his work is in botany. Of course that science was then in a crude condition, and it may be that even in that condition Josselyn had not perfectly mastered it. According to the decision of Professor Edward Tuckerman, Josselyn is “little more than a herbalist; but it is enough that he gets beyond that entirely unscientific character. He certainly botanized, and made botanical use of Gerard and his other authorities. The credit belongs to him of indicating several genera as new which were so, and peculiar to the American Flora. . . . There are important parts of his account of our plants, in which we know with certainty what he intended to tell us; and farther, that this was worth the telling.”²

     Beyond the realm of botany, his contributions to natural history are less esteemed. Indeed, even within that realm, he was capable of making the announcement that, in America, barley “commonly degenerates into oats,”³ and that “summer-wheat many times changeth into rye;”⁴ while in the domain of the other sciences, he indulges in many assertions that exhibit the uncritical habits of even scientific observers in the seventeenth century. He informs us, with all gravity, that in their assemblies the Indians commonly carry on their discussions “in perfect hexameter verse,” doing this “extempore.”⁵ He assures us

that there is in New England a species of frog, “which chirp in the spring like sparrows, and croak like toads in autumn;” some of which “when they sit upon their breech are a foot high;” while “up in the country” they are “as big as a child of a year old.”¹ He tells of swallows which, loving to dwell in chimneys, construct their nests so as to hang down “by a clew-like string a yard long.” These swallows, he adds, “commonly have four or five young ones, and when they go away, which is much about the time that swallows use to depart, they never fail to throw down one of their young birds into the room by way of gratitude. I have more than once observed that, against the ruin of the family, these birds will suddenly forsake the house and come no more.”² He gives a brilliant description of the Pilhannaw, “a monstrous great bird . . . four times as big as a goshawk, white-mailed, having two or three purple feathers in her ‘head as long as geese’s feathers; . . . her head is as big as a child’s of a year old; a very princely bird. When she soars abroad, all sort of feathered creatures hide themselves yet she never preys upon any of them, but upon fawns and jackals. She aeries in the woods upon the high hills of Ossapy.”³ These sentences upon the Pilhannaw are indeed delightful, the last one in particular being very sweet, with a certain far-off, appealing melody; and the artistic merit of the whole picture is perhaps enhanced by the consideration, that it seems to have been on his part an exploit of pure imagination, supplemented by some guess-work and hear-say,-this princely bird of Josselyn’s being probably nothing but “a confused conception made up from several accounts of large birds” seen in different parts of America.⁴

     It may not surprise us to ascertain that this author, whose scientific methods had in them so little severity, should have stopped occasionally to reproach his “skeptic

readers” for “muttering out of their scuttle-mouths” expressions of derisive unbelief in his statements. As a student of nature, his own capacity for receiving at the hands of other narrators prodigious gift-horses which he was too polite to look very sharply in the mouth, implied in him at least this compensating merit—a tolerant and catholic mood. And is it not possible, after all, that in our search for knowledge, swiftness to reject may be as great an impediment to progress as swiftness to accept? If extreme credulity swallows down a good deal of error, may it not be that extreme incredulity spurns away a good deal of truth? At any rate, our gentle author seems to have had some such notion; for in his life-time he walked quite freely about this earth, keeping his eyes and ears open for the discovery of such matters as he had not known before, and believing, as he tells us, “that there are many stranger things in the world than are to be seen between London and Stanes.”¹