Tales Of Puritan Land - Charles M. Skinner
When the devil came to make a certain of his periodical payments he
poured guineas down the chimney for half an hour without seeming to fill
the boots. Bushel after bushel of gold he emptied into those spacious
money-bags without causing an overflow, and he finally descended to the
fireplace to see why. Moulton had cut the soles from the boots and the
floor was knee-deep in money. With a grin at the general's smartness the
devil disappeared, but in a few minutes a smell of sulphur pervaded the
premises and the house burst into flames. Moulton escaped in his shirt,
and tore his hair as he saw the fire crawl, serpent-like, over the beams,
and fantastic smoke-forms dance in the windows. Then a thought crossed
his mind and he grew calm: his gold, that was hidden in wainscot,
cupboard, floor, and chest, would only melt and could be quarried out by
the hundred weight, so that he could be well-to-do again. Before the
ruins were cool he was delving amid the rubbish, but not an ounce of gold
could he discover. Every bit of his wealth had disappeared. It was not
long after that the general died, and to quiet some rumors of disturbance
in the graveyard his coffin was dug up. It was empty.
THE SKELETON IN ARMOR
The skeleton of a man wearing a breastplate of brass, a belt made of
tubes of the same metal, and lying near some copper arrow-heads, was
exhumed at Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1834. The body had been
artificially embalmed or else preserved by salts in the soil. His arms
and armor suggest Phoenician origin, but the skeleton is thought to be
that of a Dane or Norwegian who spent the last winter of his life at
Newport. He may have helped to carve the rock at West Newbury, or the
better-known Dighton rock at Taunton River that is covered with
inscriptions which the tides and frosts are fast effacing, and which have
been construed into a record of Norse exploration and discovery, though
some will have it that the inevitable Captain Kidd cut the figures there
to tell of buried treasure. The Indians have a legend of the arrival of
white men in a "bird," undoubtedly a ship, from which issued thunder and
lightning. A battle ensued when the visitors landed, and the white men
wrote the story of it on the rock. Certain scholars of the eighteenth
century declared that the rock bore an account of the arrival of
Phoenician sailors, blown across the Atlantic and unable or unwilling to
return. A representation of the pillars of Hercules was thought to be
included among the sculptures, showing that the castaways were familiar
with the Mediterranean. Only this is known about Dighton Rock, however:
that it stood where it does, and as it does, when the English settled in
this neighborhood. The Indians said there were other rocks near it which
bore similar markings until effaced by tides and drifting ice.
Longfellow makes the wraith of the long-buried exile of the armor appear
and tell his story: He was a viking who loved the daughter of King
Hildebrand, and as royal consent to their union was withheld he made off
with the girl, hotly followed by the king and seventy horsemen. The
viking reached his vessel first, and hoisting sail continued his flight
over the sea, but the chase was soon upon him, and, having no alternative
but to fight or be taken, he swung around before the wind and rammed the
side of Hildebrand's galley, crushing in its timbers. The vessel tipped
and sank, and every soul on board went with her, while the viking's boat
kept on her course, and after a voyage of three weeks put in at
Narragansett Bay. The round tower at Newport this impetuous lover built
as a bower for his lady, and there he guarded her from the dangers that
beset those who are first in savage countries. When the princess died she
was buried in the tower, and the lonely viking, arraying himself in his
armor, fell on his spear, like Brutus, and expired.
MARTHA'S VINEYARD AND NANTUCKET
There is no such place as Martha's Vineyard, except in geography and
common speech. It is Martin Wyngaard's Island, and so was named by
Skipper Block, an Albany Dutchman. But they would English his name, even
in his own town, for it lingers there in Vineyard Point. Bartholomew
Gosnold was one of the first white visitors here, for he landed in 1602,
and lived on the island for a time, collecting a cargo of sassafras and
returning thence to England because he feared the savages.
This scarred and windy spot was the home of the Indian giant, Maushope,
who could wade across the sound to the mainland without wetting his
knees, though he once started to build a causeway from Gay Head to
Cuttyhunk and had laid the rocks where you may now see them, when a crab
bit his toe and he gave up the work in disgust. He lived on whales,
mostly, and broiled his dinners on fires made at Devil's Den from trees
that he tore up by the roots like weeds. In his tempers he raised mists
to perplex sea-wanderers, and for sport he would show lights on Gay Head,
though these may have been only the fires he made to cook his supper
with, and of which some beds of lignite are to be found as remains. He
clove No-Man's Land from Gay Head, turned his children into fish, and
when his wife objected he flung her to Seconnet Point, where she preyed
on all who passed before she hardened into a ledge.
It is reported that he found the island by following a bird that had been
stealing children from Cape Cod, as they rolled in the warm sand or
paddled on the edge of the sea. He waded after this winged robber until
he reached Martha's Vineyard, where he found the bones of all the
children that had been stolen. Tired with his hunt he sat down to fill
his pipe; but as there was no tobacco he plucked some tons of poke that
grew thickly and that Indians sometimes used as a substitute for the
fragrant weed. His pipe being filled and lighted, its fumes rolled over
the ocean like a mist--in fact, the Indians would say, when a fog was
rising, "Here comes old Maushope's smoke"--and when he finished he
emptied his pipe into the sea. Falling on a shallow, the ashes made the
island of Nantucket. The first Indians to reach the latter place were the
parents of a babe that had been stolen by an eagle. They followed the
bird in their canoe, but arrived too late, for the little bones had been
picked clean. The Norsemen rediscovered the island and called it
Naukiton. Is Nantucket a corruption of that word, or was that word the
result of a struggle to master the Indian name?
LOVE AND TREASON
The tribes that inhabited Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard before the
whites settled the country were constantly at war, and the people of the
western island once resolved to surprise those of Nantucket and slay as
many as possible before they could arm or organize for battle. The attack
was to be made before daybreak, at an hour when their intended victims
would be asleep in their wigwams, but on rowing softly to the hostile
shore, while the stars were still lingering in the west, the warriors
were surprised at finding the enemy alert and waiting their arrival with
bows and spears in hand. To proceed would have been suicidal, and they
returned to their villages, puzzled and disheartened. Not for some years
did they learn how the camp had been apprised, but at the end of that
time, the two tribes being at peace, one of their young men married a
girl of Nantucket, with whom he had long been in love, and confessed that
on the night preceding the attack he had stolen to the beach, crossed to
Nantucket on a neck of sand that then joined the islands, and was
uncovered only at low tide, sought his mistress, warned her of the
attack, that she, at least, might not be killed; then, at a mad run, with
waves of the rising tide lapping his feet, he returned to his people, who
had not missed him. He set off with a grave and innocent face in the
morning, and was as much surprised as any one when he found the enemy in
arms.
THE HEADLESS SKELETON OF SWAMPTOWN
The boggy portion of North Kingston, Rhode Island, known as Swamptown, is
of queer repute in its neighborhood, for Hell Hollow, Pork Hill, Indian
Corner, and Kettle Hole have their stories of Indian crimes and
witch-meetings. Here the headless figure of a negro boy was seen by a
belated traveller on a path that leads over the hills. It was a dark
night and the figure was revealed in a blaze of blue light. It swayed to
and fro for a time, then rose from the ground with a lurch and shot into
space, leaving a trail of illumination behind it. Here, too, is
Goose-Nest Spring, where the witches dance at night. It dries up every
winter and flows through the summer, gushing forth on the same day of
every year, except once, when a goose took possession of the empty bed
and hatched her brood there. That time the water did not flow until she
got away with her progeny.
But the most grewsome story of the place is that of the Indian whose
skull was found by a roadmender. This unsuspecting person took it home,
and, as the women would not allow him to carry it into the house, he hung
it on a pole outside. Just as the people were starting for bed, there
came a rattling at the door, and, looking out of the windows, they saw a
skeleton stalking around in quick and angry strides, like those of a
person looking for something. But how could that be when the skeleton had
neither eyes nor a place to carry them? It thrashed its bony arms
impatiently and its ribs rattled like a xylophone. The spectators were
transfixed with fear, all except the culprit, who said, through the
window, in a matter-of-fact way, "I left your head on the pole at the
back door." The skeleton started in that direction, seized the skull,
clapped it into the place where a head should have grown on its own
shoulders, and, after shaking its fists in a threatening way at the
house, disappeared in the darkness. It is said that he acts as a kind of
guard in the neighborhood, to see that none of the other Indians buried
there shall be disturbed, as he was. His principal lounging place is
Indian Corner, where there is a rock from which blood flows when the moon
shines--a memento, doubtless, of some tragedy that occurred there in
times before the white men knew the place. There is iron in the soil, and
visitors say that the red color is due to that, and that the spring would
flow just as freely on dark nights as on bright ones, if any were there
to see it, but the natives, who have given some thought to these matters,
know better.
THE CROW AND CAT OF HOPKINSHILL
In a wood near Hopkins Hill, Rhode Island, is a bowlder, four feet in
diameter, scored with a peculiar furrow. Witch Rock, as it is called,
gained its name two centuries ago, when an old woman abode in a deserted
cabin close by and made the forest dreaded. Figures were seen flitting
through its shadows; articles left out o' nights in neighboring
settlements were missing in the morning, though tramps were unknown;
cattle were afflicted with diseases; stones were flung in at windows by
unseen hands; crops were blighted by hail and frost; and in stormy
weather the old woman was seen to rise out of the woods and stir and push
the clouds before her with a broom. For a hundred yards around Witch Rock
the ground is still accursed, and any attempt to break it up is
unavailing. Nearly a century ago a scoffer named Reynolds declared that
he would run his plough through the enchanted boundary, and the neighbors
watched the attempt from a distance.
He started well, but on arriving at the magic circle the plough shied and
the wooden landside--or chip, as it was called--came off. It was replaced
and the team started again. In a moment the oxen stood unyoked, while the
chip jumped off and whirled away out of sight. On this, most of the
people edged away in the direction of home, and directly there came from
the north a crow that perched on a dead tree and cawed. John Hopkins,
owner of the land, cried to the bird, "Squawk, you damned old Pat
Jenkins!" and the crow took flight, dropping the chip at Reynolds's feet,
at the same moment turning into a beldam with a cocked hat, who descended
upon the rock. Before the men could reach her she changed into a black
cat and disappeared in the ground. Hunting and digging came to naught,
though the pursuers were so earnest and excited that one of them made the
furrow in the rock with a welt from his shovel. After that few people
cared to go near the place, and it became overgrown with weeds and trees
and bushes.
THE OLD STONE MILL
If the round tower at Newport was not Benedict Arnold's wind-mill, and
any one or two of several other things, it is probably a relic of the
occupancy of this country by Thorwald and his Norsemen. After coasting
Wonderstrands (Cape Cod), in the year 1007, they built a town that is
known to historians--if not in their histories--as Norumbega, the lost
city of New England. It is now fancied that the city stood on the Charles
River, near Waltham, Massachusetts, where a monument may be erected, but
it is also believed that they reached the neighborhood of Newport, Rhode
Island. After this tower--popularly called the old stone mill-was built,
a seer among the Narragansetts had a vision in which he foresaw that when
the last remnant of the structure had fallen, and not one stone had been
left on another, the Indian race would vanish from this continent. The
work of its extermination seems, indeed, to have begun with the
possession of the coast by white men, and the fate of the aborigines is
easily read.
ORIGIN OF A NAME
The origin of many curious geographical names has become an object of
mere surmise, and this is the more the pity because they suggest such
picturesque possibilities. We would like to know, for instance, how Burnt
Coat and Smutty Nose came by such titles. The conglomerate that strews
the fields south of Boston is locally known as Roxbury pudding-stone,
and, according to Dr. Holmes, the masses are fragments of a pudding, as
big as the State-house dome, that the family of a giant flung about, in a
fit of temper, and that petrified where it fell. But that would have been
called pudding-stone, anyway, from its appearance. The circumstance that
named the reef of Norman's Woe has passed out of record, though it is
known that goodman Norman and his son settled there in the seventeenth
century. It is Longfellow who has endowed the rock with this legend, for
he depicts a wreck there in the fury of a winter storm in 1680--the wreck
of the Hesperus, Richard Norman, master, from which went ashore next
morning the body of an unknown and beautiful girl, clad in ice and lashed
to a broken mast.
But one of the oddest preservations of an apposite in name is found in
the legend of Point Judith, Rhode Island, an innocent _double entendre_.
About two centuries ago a vessel was driving toward the coast in a gale,
with rain and mist. The skipper's eyes were old and dim, so he got his
daughter Judith to stand beside him at the helm, as he steered the vessel
over the foaming surges. Presently she cried, "Land, father! I see land!"
"Where away?" he asked. But he could not see what she described, and the
roar of the wind drowned her voice, so he shouted, "Point, Judith!
Point!" The girl pointed toward the quarter where she saw the breakers,
and the old mariner changed his course and saved his ship from wreck. On
reaching port he told the story of his daughter's readiness, and other
captains, when they passed the cape in later days, gave to it the name of
Point Judith.
MICAH ROOD APPLES
In Western Florida they will show roses to you that drop red dew, like
blood, and have been doing so these many years, for they sprang out of
the graves of women and children who had been cruelly killed by Indians.
But there is something queerer still about the Micah Rood--or
"Mike"--apples of Franklin, Connecticut, which are sweet, red of skin,
snowy of pulp, and have a red spot, like a blood-drop, near the core;
hence they are sometimes known as bloody-hearts. Micah Rood was a farmer
in Franklin in 1693. Though avaricious he was somewhat lazy, and was more
prone to dream of wealth than to work for it. But people whispered that
he did some hard and sharp work on the night after the peddler came to
town--the slender man with a pack filled with jewelry and
knickknacks--because on the morning after that visit the peddler was
found, beneath an apple-tree on Rood farm, with his pack rifled and his
skull split open.
Suspicion pointed at Rood, and, while nothing was proved against him, he
became gloomy, solitary, and morose, keeping his own counsels more
faithfully than ever--though he never was disposed to take counsel of
other people. If he had expected to profit by the crime he was obviously
disappointed, for he became poorer than ever, and his farm yielded less
and less. To be sure, he did little work on it. When the apples ripened
on the tree that had spread its branches above the peddler's body, the
neighbors wagged their heads and whispered the more, for in the centre of
each apple was a drop of the peddler's blood: a silent witness and
judgment, they said, and the result of a curse that the dying man had
invoked against his murderer. Micah Rood died soon after, without saying
anything that his fellow-villagers might be waiting to hear, but his tree
is still alive and its strange fruit has been grafted on hundreds of
orchards.
A DINNER AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
The Nipmucks were populous at Thompson, Connecticut, where they skilfully
tilled the fields, and where their earthworks, on Fort Hill, provided
them with a refuge in case of invasion. Their chief, Quinatisset, had his
lodge on the site of the Congregational church in Thompson. They believed
that Chargoggagmanchogagog Pond was paradise--the home of the Great
Spirit and departed souls--and that it would always yield fish to them,
as the hills did game. They were fond of fish, and would barter deer-meat
and corn for it, occasionally, with the Narragansetts.
Now, these last-named Indians were a waterloving people, and to this day
their "fishing fire"--a column of pale flame--rises out of Quinebaug Lake
once in seven years, as those say who have watched beside its waters
through the night. Knowing their fondness for blue-fish and clams, the
Narragansetts asked the Nipmucks to dine with them on one occasion, and
this courtesy was eagerly accepted, the up-country people distinguishing
themselves by valiant trencher deeds; but, alas, that it should be so!
they disgraced themselves when, soon after, they invited the
Narragansetts to a feast of venison at Killingly, and quarrelled with
their guests over the dressing of the food. This rumpus grew into a
battle in which all but two of the invites were slain. Their hosts buried
them decently, but grass would never grow above their graves.
This treachery the Great Spirit avenged soon after, when the Nipmucks had
assembled for a powwow, with accessory enjoyments, in the grassy vale
where Mashapaug Lake now reflects the charming landscape, and where,
until lately, the remains of a forest could be seen below the surface. In
the height of the revel the god struck away the foundations of the hills,
and as the earth sank, bearing the offending men and women, waters rushed
in and filled the chasm, so that every person was drowned, save one good
old woman beneath whose feet the ground held firm. Loon Island, where she
stood, remains in sight to-day.
THE NEW HAVEN STORM SHIP
In 1647 the New Haven colonists, who even at that early day exhibited the
enterprise that has been a distinguishing feature of the Yankee, sent a
ship to Ireland to try to develop a commerce, their trading posts on the
Delaware having been broken up by the Swedes. When their agent, Captain
Lamberton, sailed--in January--the harbor was so beset with ice that a
track had to be cut through the floes to open water, five miles distant.
She had, moreover, to be dragged out stern foremost--an ill omen, the
sailors thought--and as she swung before the wind a passing drift of fog
concealed her, for a moment, from the gaze of those on shore, who, from
this, foretold things of evil. Though large and new, the ship was so
"walty"--inclined to roll--that the captain set off with misgiving, and
as she moved away the crew heard this solemn and disheartening invocation
from a clergyman on the wharf:--"Lord, if it be thy pleasure to bury
these, our friends, in the bottom of the sea, take them; they are thine:
save them."
Winter passed; so did spring; still the ship came not; but one afternoon
in June, just as a rain had passed, some children cried, "There's a brave
ship!" for, flying up the harbor, with all sail set and flaunting colors,
was a vessel "the very mould of our ship," the clergyman said.
Strange to tell, she was going flat against the wind; no sailors were on
her deck; she did not toss with the fling of the waves; there was no
ripple at her bow. As she came close to land a single figure appeared on
the quarter, pointing seaward with a cutlass; then suddenly her main-top
fell, her masts toppled from their holdings, the dismantled hulk careened
and went down. A cloud dropped from heaven and brooded for a time above
the place where it had vanished, and when it lifted the surface of the
sea was empty and still. The good folk of New Haven believed that the
fate of the absent ship had been revealed, at last, for she never came
back and Captain Lamberton was never heard from.
THE WINDAM FROGS
On a cloudy night in July, 1758, the people of Windham, Connecticut, were
awakened by screams and shrill voices. Some sprang up and looked to the
priming of their muskets, for they were sure that the Indians were
coming; others vowed that the voices were those of witches or devils,
flying overhead; a few ran into the streets with knives and fire-arms,
while others fastened their windows and prayerfully shrank under the
bedclothes. A notorious reprobate was heard blubbering for a Bible, and a
lawyer offered half of all the money that he had made dishonestly to any
charity if his neighbors would guarantee to preserve his life until
morning.
All night the greatest alarm prevailed. At early dawn an armed party
climbed the hill to the eastward, and seeing no sign of Indians, or other
invaders, returned to give comfort to their friends. A contest for office
was waging at that period between two lawyers, Colonel Dyer and Mr.
Elderkin, and sundry of the people vowed that they had heard a
challenging yell of "Colonel Dyer! Colonel Dyer!" answered by a guttural
defiance of "Elderkin, too! Elderkin, too!" Next day the reason of it all
came out: A pond having been emptied by drought, the frogs that had lived
there emigrated by common consent to a ditch nearer the town, and on
arriving there had apparently fought for its possession, for many lay
dead on the bank. The night was still and the voices of the contestants
sounded clearly into the village, the piping of the smaller being
construed into "Colonel Dyer," and the grumble of the bull-frogs into
"Elderkin, too." The "frog scare" was a subject of pleasantry directed
against Windham for years afterward.
THE LAMB OF SACRIFICE
The Revolution was beginning, homes were empty, farms were deserted,
industries were checked, and the levies of a foreign army had consumed
the stores of the people. A messenger rode into the Connecticut Valley
with tidings of the distress that was in the coast towns, and begged the
farmer folk to spare some of their cattle and the millers some of their
flour for the relief of Boston. On reaching Windham he was received with
good will by Parson White, who summoned his flock by peal of bell, and
from the steps of his church urged the needs of his brethren with such
eloquence that by nightfall the messenger had in his charge a flock of
sheep, a herd of cattle, and a load of grain, with which he was to set
off in the morning. The parson's daughter, a shy maid of nine or ten,
went to her father, with her pet lamb, and said to him, "I must give
this, too, for there are little children who are crying for bread and
meat."
"No, no," answered the pastor, patting her head and smiling upon her.
"They do not ask help from babes. Run to bed and you shall play with your
lamb to-morrow."
But in the red of the morning, as he drove his herd through the village
street, the messenger turned at the hail of a childish voice, and looking
over a stone wall he saw the little one with her snow-white lamb beside
her.
"Wait," she cried, "for my lamb must go to the hungry children of Boston.
It is so small, please to carry it for some of the way, and let it have
fresh grass and water. It is all I have."
So saying, she kissed the innocent face of her pet, gave it into the arms
of the young man, and ran away, her cheeks shining with tears. Folding
the little creature to his breast, the messenger looked admiringly after
the girl: he felt a glow of pride and hope for the country whose very
children responded to the call of patriotism. "Now, God help me, I will
carry this lamb to the city as a sacrifice." So saying, he set his face
to the east and vigorously strode forward.