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A LETTER TO JUDGE DALY, frte IJi'Miticnt of Hje American ~f0flrapl)ical Sonets, ON THE OPmiOS' OF JUSTIN WIN.SOR, THAT " Trough Scandinavians ma* have reachid the Sho»es op Labrador, the soil or THE United States has J»ot one vestige op their pressncb." ad 105 . >■ '- f'iJ. .;> ■ " >^ ftV EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. •\ c. 1 i SECOND BOmOH. BOSTON AND NEW YORK : HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. i8^. l l ll lljll l lllL,,. - II IWMWIip In t recently Geograp papers n circulaLi , June i The it neces Cambr PREFACE. In the interest of the reader I have thought to add to the recently published letter to the President of the American Geographical Society, a few heliotypes borrowed from two papers now in press, and include them in an edition for private circulation. , June i, 1889. The public demand for the letter to Judge Daly has made it necessary to place it oi' sale. E. N. H. Cambridge, March 15, 1890. ] .mgmmmmmmB'mm >i . .'J w.tsjfPj^u^g&g ' JAKi'^j;. ' THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. Judge Dalv, President of the American Geographical Society. Dear Sir,- -As relating to my letter addressed to you March i, 1885, on "The Landfall of John Cabot in 1497 and the site of Norumbega," and published in the October Bulletin of the same year, I desire to make to you the following communication. My eye has fallen on two brief paragraphs on page 98, Vol. I., the last issued of the seven volumes of the "Narrative and Critical History o£ America." They may be found in the chapter on " Precclumbian Explora- tions, by Justin Winsor," under the general division of the Discovery; of America by Northmen, and are as follows: — *' Nothing cmild be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of Ian- guages; and we can see in Horsfords ' Discovery of America by Northmen ' to what a fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry it. " The most incautiotis linguistic inferences, and tJie most uncritical cartographical perversic7is, are presented by Eben Norton Horsford in his * Discovery of America by Northmen^ These paragraphs are preceded by a fragment of history, as follows: " The question," — to wit, the Landfall of the Northmen, and the trust- worthiness of the Vinland Sagas in regard to their experiences and the detailed events oi their stay on any part of the coast of New England. — gSi^f'.i!g!;';a3 ^ THE PROBLEM CF TKE NORTHMEN. says Mr. V/insor. " was brought to a practical issue in Ma ichusetts by a proposition raised, at first in Wisconsin by the well-kno>vn musician Ole bull, .0 erect in Boston a slatue to Lei^ Ericson. The project, though ultimately carried out. was long delayed, and was discouraged by members - of the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the ground that no sati.fac- hry evidence existed to show that any spot in i,'«/ England had been reached by .he Northmen. The sense of the Society was fully [.-'l cxpres- d iK the report of their committee [.^, Henr^' W. Haynes and Abner C Goodell, Jr., in language which seems to be the result of the best historical criticism ; for it is not a question of the fact of discovery, but to decide how far we can place reliance on the details of >.he Sagas. There is likely to remain a difference on this point. The committee say : — "• There is the same sor f reason for bellying in Leif Ericson that there is for believing in the cxisleme of Agamemnon. - thsy are both tradi- tions accepted by the later writers; but there is no more reason f^" regarding as true the details related <<.ootd his disco^jeries, than there is for accepting as historical truth the narratives contained in the Homeric pocx It is ante- cedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century: and this discovery is confirned oy the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests.' " The folJox^ing on pag^ 93. quoting from Bancrofts Vol. III., 1840, "to the intent that though ' Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador, the soil of the United States has not one vestige of their presence: is ^rue now," says Mr. Winsor. " as when first written." This leaves no doubt of the assurance of Mr. Winsors conviction that Mr. Bancroft was a geographer as well as an historian. Happy Rafn and Kohl, Humboldt and Adam von Bremen, that they were not called upon to listen to such judgment 1 As to the fitness .' Labrador, a region of rocky desolation, ice-bound for more than half the year, to be the Vinland of the Northmen, where I I THE PRODLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 7 according to the Sagas cattle did not need to be housed in winter, where grapes abounded and corn grew spontaneously, — a land of forests and meadows, — there is among students of geography no difference of opinion. Among historians the case seems otherwise. Let us hear an Icelandic authority on Vinland, referred to and cited in " The History of the United States." " Now it is to be told what lies opposite Greenland. . . . There are such hard frosts there that it i: not habitable, so far as is known. . . . South of Greenland is Helluland ; next is Markland, from thence it is not far to Vinland the Good." As to what impress may have been left by Northmen on the soil of the United States, that is not a matter of authority, bat of what may be found by examination. Should it turn out, after all, that the Landfall of the Northmen has been found, and also the site and remains of the houses Leif and Thorfinn built and ocr".pied in Vinland, what then ? ' It is quite true that members of the Massachusetts Historical Society discouraged the efforts of the immediate friends of Ole Bull here, and the two millions of Scandinavians of the West and the East who sympathized with him, in his patriotic wish to recognize in a monument, to be set up in » Against the fly-leaf I have placed two photographs of the region of tha houses of Leif and Thorfinn. The .pper one presents a bayou, through which the stream draining the eastern slope from Mt Auburn flows to the Charles, — just outside ihe limit of the picture. The extension of the bayou to the roa.'.-.-ay of the "Bank I.ane" is given ir the lower picture. Just above the road .s one of th • {ish-pits. at the margin of high tide and upland described in the Sagas, into which the fish found their way at the time of young corn-plants, on their way to spawning-ground on the slopes of Mt. Auburn, the tower of which is given at the upper right At tne lower left in the foreground arc the remains in the uneven surface, before the grass has started, of a corner of the large house of Thorfinn's party. In the distance, in the middle of the upper picture, is X\.^- Promontory at the 5<;«/A«/«/," as described in the Sagas, from behind which the Skraelings 'ssued. In the wood at the right is the locality of the battle with Thorfinn's men, which led him to abandon Vinland. The landing-place of Thorfinn on his coming from the search for Thorhah, as described m the Sagas, is near two stumps at the upper right of the large white space It .s the only spo where solfd land reaches the bayou, in width admitting the b.am of cne sh,p. LeiPs landmg-place and house were near the lower left ot the upper picture. In the extreme distance ,s Co-'ey ^ H-"- At the end of the b>ochure will be found a survey of the s.te of the remains of the Northmen s houses. 8 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. Boston, the services of Leif Ericson in the discovery of America. It is also true that they virtually caused the rejection by the city government of Boston of the offer by the late Mr. Thomas Appleton of $40,000 for the erection of a memorial in Scollay Square to the Discovery of America by Northmen. It is also true that in the paragraphs cited there is, in carefully chosen terms, and in a tone of conscious infallibility better suited to an earlier day and another meridian, an intimation of the proper limit of geographical research, and of who may pursue it, in New England ; and there is also an undertone of recognized authority, — all of which will find adequate appreciation. One may a?k, Is Massachusetts a preserve? But underneath these confessions and assumptions, the first and most obvious expression of the paragraphs, taken together, is the uncon- scious admission that the problem of the Northmen has been again es- sayed, and the assailants have been vanquished. They have mistaken a question of geography for one of bibliography — and song. We are given an estimate of the vciue of comparative philology in finding out the meanings or spellings of anc'ent and obscure geographical names. To those competent to appreciate the wealth of revelation in geography there may be in so small a matter as the identity of Norvega and Norumbega} this view of the instrument which ChampoUion and ' Norvega and Norumbega. I introduce three fragments of maps. Two are from Winsor's " Narrative and Critical History of America," the outlines from Ortelius, 1570, and from Botero, 1603. The third is a map for v/hich 1 am indebted to the late classic geographer, J. Carson Brevoort, who as a "oung man served is attach^ '. j the Legation of Washington Irving at the Court of Madrid, where he may have procured the map. It will be seen that they are all copies at first or second hand of a common original. They are all maps of Nova Francia. On Solis's map the " river flowing through a lake to the sea" flows also through Norvega, a province of Norway, — its equivalent, — as shown on the maps of the period. One does not need to be told that the Norvega in smaller type against the character that stands for a settlement is in the country which Leif called Vinland, and which centuries later was known as Norumbega. As I have for four yea.s been engaged on the History of Norumbega, i do not propose to go into it here. This fragment is introduced merely to illus- f..te that ihis bit of comparative philology alone, to one capable of appreciating it, contams the solution of the problem of the Northmen. , ,• , t " The French diplomatists always remembered that Boston wr-b built within the onginal limits 01 New France ' (Bancroft's History, 2d edition, p. 34). ORTEUUS, 1570. SOI./S. /S Qt a ■^ "0 rnsU/vt. ol.btJU. "^^rve^H^ 80TER0, 1O03. "They sailed lona until they came to a river, which flowed from the land through a lake and pBBseJ Into the turn,.' Thorflnn's Sftga. '•The French diplomatists always remembered that Boston was built within Grii in c cite typ' inci per An me "^ wo in§ up me ha. ge an it cu ta; re. as in of \v: xY al m THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 9 Grimm and Max Muller and our own Whitney and Trumbull have placed in our hands will give occasion for mingled pain and merriment. There is another judgment which is somewhat more personal. It is cited above, and as it is not impossible that it may be the last of its type, it is entitled to particular consideration. It reads: "The most incautious linguistic inferences, and the most uncriticxl, cartographical perversions, are presented in Eben Norton HorsforcCs ^Discovery of America by Northmen' " I understand this to be an opinion concerning the trustworthiness of my methods of studying geographical problems. They r^re disapproved. The author of this paragraph has just completed the editing of the "Narrative and Critical History of America," — one of the monumental works of the time. The papers of a large number of specialists, includ- ing the editor himself, have been gathered, and the authorities bearing upon the subjects discussed have been sought out, referred to, and com- menced on, and the whole illustrated on a generous scale. This work had been nreceded by a " Memorial History of Boston," on the same general plan. Naturally enough, weight attaches to the editor's opinions; and if it were to be estimated by the volume of work he has pf^rformed, it would deservedly be very considerable, and there might be some diffi- culty in fairly measuring it. But he has taken the trouble to make the task a light one. He has adopted and practised a method of geographical research somewhat in vogue, but which, possibly, will be hereafter regarded as peculiarly his own; and its value in science can be estimated by look- ing at its fruit. The weight which should be accredited to his judgment of my method will be seen by a comparison of the fruit of my method with the fruit of the method the critic approves and practises. This comparison may be easily made. I cannot avoid it; and under the circumstances it will not be unseemly in me to allude to some fruits, already published (and others in press, or in preparation for it), of the methods I have pursued. They include — IC THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 1. Geographical names, of Norse derivation, on numerous maps, ancient and modern, in Icelandic, Algonquin. Portuguese, Spanish, French. Dutch. Italian, or English garb, strewn from Vineyard Sound, in latitude 41". throughout the territory reaching to and including the St. Lawrence. 2. The finding of the Land of the Bretons (French) of the 15th and 16th centuries, in the 43d degree. 3. The Landfall of John Cabot. 1497. i" 42° 38'.-the great event of the 15th century. -on which, with all the glory that belongs to it. rests the earliest claim of the sovereignty of England to the American Continent. 4. The Landfall of Cortereal in 1500. 5. The Landfall of Verrazano on Cape Cod in 1524, and the identi^ of Cape Cod with the Florida of Verrazano and Th vet. 6. The Canal of St. Julian (St. Johan), the b:- of the Bretons, the Archipelago, and the Land — of Gomez, explored in 1525. 7. The Landfall of John Rut in 1527. and the identity of the St. John's of John Rut with Gloucester Harbor, from which he addressed his letter to Henry VIH. 8. The identity of the Cape Breton of Allefonsce, in the 43d degree, with the Cape Ann of Prince Charles. 9. The identity of the Kj.V-nes (Kjalarnes is the genitive) of the Northmen in 1003, with the Coaranes of Merriam, the Carenas of Lok. the C de Arenas of Mercator, the Cap des Sablons of the Dauphm map of 1543, the Cap Blanc of Champlain in 1605, the Insel Baccalaurus of Ruysch, 1507, and its equivalent, the Cape Cod of Gosnold, 1602. 10. The meaning of the Indian names of Boston, the identity of Cabel- yauwith Baccalieu,-Bacca-loo, Algonquin for Bay food, Cod,- and the identity of the Juuide of Thevet with the modern Point Judy of Rhode Island. . r 41. 11. That the Isthmus of Verrazano separating the Atlantic from the western ocean -the Mare Indicum, the Mare Verrazana, the Pacific - was simply the neck of the Peninsula of Cape Cod near Barnstable. I and coasi Thai was discc guisi map coas on sixt) line latit the Cos foui of> teni but nei tinr fon tut . bis THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. II ,a. That Sebastian Cabot, in his map of 1544. "mistook the Penobscot and the group of islands (the discovery and cartography ot others) off tne coast of Maine for the St. Lawrence and Newfoundland at its mouth. That the part of the map of i544 including New England and New France was an attempt to produce a work that should have the air of ongmal discoveries made prior to Verrazano and Jacques Cartier. clumsily d.s- euising some of the names Cartier gave, replacing those on the Dauphin Lp with others in duplicate to "upy the space, stretching out the coit from Plymouth (the Bay of St. Christopher) at the Panther's tail, on his map. to Cape Ann (the prima tierra vista), at the best not sixty miles to the immediate north, in latitude 42° 38'. until the coast line comprised thirty degrees of longitude, and ended at Cape North m latitude 47°. - t^e "'°"*^ '^^ *^^ ^'- Lawrence. _ ,3 That the original New-found-land of John Cabot. 1497. '"cludrng the (supposed) two islands passed on his return voyage and shown on Cosa's map. faced Massachusetts Bay. ,4 That Terra Corterealis and the Land of Gomez overlaid the New- found-land and Islands of Cabot The original New France, - Francesca of Verrazano of .524.- embracing the same region, was subsequently ex- tended by Jacques Cartier in 1534-35 over the shores of the St. Lawrence. ,5. The Fort of Nr-umbega of Wytfliet (Ptolemy. 1597). occupied by. but not the work of. the Bretons, as Thevet supposed. 16 The explanation of why the coast between Cape Cod and the neiehborhood of St. Augustine so long ren.aineJ practically undiscovered. ,7 That the north end of Cape Cod was an island down to some tin.e in the 17th century, as shown on the maps of Ruysch. Cosa. Alle. fons-e. and others, and as observed by Leif and Gosnold t That it was on this island that Leif made his Landfall before he turned away to Boston Harbor and the shores of Charles River to set up his dwellings. I will ask attention to only one more. II THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. In my letter of March ., .885, already referred to, I recorded that the .!► - of Fort Norumbega wa, first found in the liUrclur. of th, '«*/«'• ="-=1 that when 1 had e'nmina.ed every doubt of the iocaWy that 1 could find, 1 drove with a fricn,- through a region 1 had never before y.s.ted, of h. topography of which i k.«w nothing, nine ,^iles away, d.rectly to the remains of the Fort. These remains, and the re^'on .mmed.n.ely about, were at once surveyed and mapped for me by the City Engineer. In a certain sense there was, in this discovery, the 'f ""'■" °' » prophecy. On the basis of the literature of the subject 1 had pM •hejinding 0/ Fori Noyumiega at a particular spot. I wen, ,0 ,lu spot aJ found it No test of the genuineness of scientific deduC.on ., «• garded as superior to thi. Professo .-nry used .0 say. » Scence can predict.' I had not guessed, - though any ne may guess o -"-'•£"' if one does, .0 test the guess or the hypothesis by the touchstones of phy . cal fact, sequence, mutual relation, harmony of all parts w.th each, and the utter absence of an element of opposing evidence, » what the scent.fic method requires. Koroover, the scientific man docs not hes.tate for an instant to aband™ '.us hypothesis if it fails in a single part.euar to sus- tain ri/n extract : — •' Mr. Winsor made a communication in reference to a ditch and em- bankment found in Weston, at the confluence of Stony Brook with the aarles, which indicate, as has been lately said, that a trading-post and fort were erected there by the French in the early part of the i6th cen- tury. He gave reasons for the opinion that these relics may mark the site of an tarfy attempt to found the town of Boston there, since, soon after the L /^^rggrt^^^^^l^'^^ i8 THE PROIILEM OF THE NORTHMEN. arrival of Winthrop at Salem, he set out for Charlestown, whence, with a party, he explored the neighboring rivers for a convenient spot to found their town, and discovered such a place ' three leagues up Charles River' " To this, as published, I replied on the day of its appearance, and my reply appeared in the " Transcript " of January 9. I did not dwell on the circumstance that my paper, and its demonstration that the earth-and- stone works at the mouth of Stony Brook had been described and occupied by the Bretons (French) nearly three hundred and fifty years before, had been treated as a mere guess. I tried to place the mistake of the discov- ery of the early Boston at Stony Brook in what seemed to me clear light, calling attention to the magnitude of the work required to be done by a few feeble men in a very short time, — a graded ditch, some of '.', oiijfi- nally ten to twelve feet deep, and much of it paved on the bottom and sides (and therefore, as any one might see, impossible to be regarded as awaiting posts for a permanent stockade). I alluded to the adverse testi- mony of Winthrop's own map of 1634 ; his diary of his first visit to Stony Brook, a year and a half afterh^ had determined that the present Boston should be the seat of government, and an almost equal time since the first session of the Assistants had been held at his house in Boston ; tht ab- sence of any supporting contemporaneous or subsequent history ; the impossibility of getting ordnance, baggage, and stores up the shallow Charles, falling in a distance of five miles, as it did, in alternating rapids and pools, thirty-five feet from Stony Brook to tide-water at Watertown ; the jealous Dudley's conclusive letter to the Countess of Lincoln ; and much more. At length Mr. Winsor's full paper appeared. To my surprise, the whole of what I had said of the earth-and-stone work as being the remains of an ancient fort, the story of which was embedded in the literature of geogra- phy, was practically ignored. Tq an elaborate defence of his guess, includ- ing abundant citations from early recoras, he gave the following additional reasons for his first conviction : — "11 north ai protecti ment o not bei Id mini here in He overtas was pri setts h second 24, 18J in whi views, It' ations record; His m seeme( its suf the w( Hi a mori he ma drawn makir ade"l thebi scale w u THE PROm.EV. OF THE NORTHMEN. I9 " The fact that the embankment is continued three hundred feet both north and south from the enclosed portion [the fort] in a way to afford no protection against attack, seems to indicate that the whole is but a seg- nent of a line of ci.cumvallation which was left unfinished, the stockade not being planted in the portions already excavated.' It will be borne n mind that just such an extensive circumvallation as may have been here intended was, some months later, established at Cambridge." He did not omit to leave a hint of his consciousness that he might have overtasked the credulity of his readers as well as of himself. The paper was printed for permanent preservation in the Records of the Massachu- setts Historical Society. It was also published, as seemed to me due, in a second letter from myself, in the "Boston Evening Transcript" of Feb. 24 1886, 'n which I dismissed the discussion, so far as I was concerned, in\vhat'wa.s intended as the briefest record of Mr. Winsor's preferred views, in his own words. It was only then that I fully appreciated the situation. The consider- ations that I had presented, the charts, the measurements, the historic records, had failed to remove the conviction that the guess had founded. His method required that the guess shouU' be defended, in the face of what seemed to me the plainest common-sense. He still presented records in its support, and still faued to see that there had been a demonstration that the worV^ at Stony Brook were described some centuries ago. His method permitted all this, and it did not. in his judgment, require a more careful examinat on of the spot, - a second visit to the locality. Hnd he made it. he would have found, a little later, the water of the pond above drawn down, displaying a fresh section of the ditch paved throughout, making all together, with the circuit of the fort, a length for the "stock- ade"(l) of 2,350 feet; he would have found paved ditches :n both stdes of the brook ; and had he I. llowed the brook toward its source, he would have . The length of ditch alread - explored as indicated on Mr. Davis's chart of Norumbega. by the .cale Jhich le'gives, is on one . •> of the fort 600 feet, and on the other 500 feet. ''\ 20 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. found ditches, at "ntervals, far away, — at least to a point beyond the cross- ing of the Massachusetts Central Railroad some three miles above. Much of the lower part of the valley is now submerged by the new reservoir for the Cambridge Water-works. But had his method required it, he could have consulted the records of the Engineer's office. Had he done so he would have found that his unfinished palisade, designed to surround the future Boston, was scattered along the valley on both sides of Stony B.ook on a tolerably straight line for three miles or more.' But the argument by which he supported his discovery would have had its substance but slightly impaired. With a brief reference to the criticisms of some others, I left the episode to be forgotten. It had not occurred to me that the memory of the excur- sion to Stony Brook was to take unhappy form and be so lasting, until I was stung with the charge of " petversionsr in a work to be sent as authori- tative over the world ; and so I have been compelled to defend and justify myself. I may, at the same time, try in a few words to relieve the reputa- tion of Winthrop for common-sense from the shadow that has unwittingly been put upon it. 1 I borrow from a paper in press two photographs "^ =^ '^'''=''^7•'''/ ''^""^ "'=^V"ofThich the thousand feet in length, along the valley of Stony Brook and three m.les from its mouth, of wh ch the preliminary excavalons at Fort Norumbega for a palisade for the future Boston, accordmg to Mr. "^'T;:^L""N::fon^^-TS^^^^^^^^^ several phrases that now seem almost familiar. For example : 'peaking of »*» '?°f ^' °"' "/^ ^ hav ng been disposed of, the critic says, "The other in its wealth of cartographual -^^"^^^^^^ sumpt'uoasness oi page will carry the name of Eten Norton Horsford as I^YS" t ac tanc " rovery of A».erica by Northmen" wherever these adventitious aids can find for it acceptance etc la). "The American Scholar has nothing to do with this manifestation in h^ b-, -alf (*). Mt s those who make no hesitation at perversion and ignore everything hat does not serv.. their purpose," etc. (c). "If historical (?) problems are to be settled chus, there is "» need of '^L'Jm ;W,.«i" (rf). "The resVlting books are more significant at presen in the study of vcholoev than in the elucidation of the problem to which they are addressed" (0- photographs of rare and ancient maps, if numerous and on suitable paper, even though to prevent repeated foldings the gift should Vave the quarto form. (*) Is there danger of invasion to be apprehended? (J) Perversion is rather a s 'rong word. (rf) Training for research might not be harmful. («) Vanquished again ! But why proclaim it ? Stone wall and canal near the Noree dam and Sibley's Station, Fitchburg R. R. - ''^^"■'fsm'i^itmaSiMsm^TStt^lLmjf ^. THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 21 Of course, a new exhibition of this turning to ashes of the fruit which Mr. Winsor's' method bears, cannot prevent the publication that took place three years ago. , , Still another distinct demonstration may be duo to those who have a right to know the weight of the critic's judgment on kindred geographical questions. / ^ How much did Winihrop do about k^ Hent on the Charles ? Winthrop arrived at Salem in the "Arbella" on the 12th of June. On the 1 7th, with others of the principal men, he made an excursion to Charles- town and a few miles up the Mystic, seeking a more desirable place for settlement than Salem, returning by way of Nantasket on the 19th. He saw and appreciated the beautiful Ten Hills Farm, and caught a glimpse of the natural advantages of Boston for the seat of government. On the 30th of May, almost three weeks before Winthrop made his first hurried visit to Charlestown, the "Mary and John," another ship of Win- throp's fleet, had arrived at Nantasket. Immediately after landmg, Roger Gap and some eight or ten more of the passenf^ers. of their own accord, seeking a place to settle, went with their baggage, am-,, and supplies m a boat up the Charles till they reached a point three leagues from its mouth where ^he river was narrow and shallow. (It had not been re- n^arked as either before. The Charles is a tidal river for nine miles. Shallow does not apply to water the level of which regularly fluctuates from six to ten feet.) The place they reached was the head of ttde-water, not far from and below the Watertown of to-day,^ five miles below the mouth of Stony Brook. They found in the neighborhood an encampment of three hundred Indians, some of whom.were taking fish in the shallow water above the hePd of tide-water. It was called by Josslyn, a few years later (1638), a 1 T»„ m^n Of the " river flowing through a lake into the sea" sufficiently explains itself so far 1 The map of t^^e "^"JT J J ^lap and his family landed is against the shallows, - as this paper >s '^"""^"f-.J^^^^'P^'J'^^XtweL the Arsenal and W bridge, above which "^r^ ,:r ?x;i ^;it?.-a" ^^"?«' >-' -< -"^'- "■ -"■ !v-'A^i- ■ a- »^.Mtf 'i *).j'.i |g;m THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. Charles River, a little below the fall of which JV ^^ the Myst,c R.ver, t -o ■=-'']^"^\ ' ^^^^^^^ j^e party that any o,k.r river in the --^"^^l^^-^^^l^, .,eir town, inasmuch as ::.,, an. nearly three .ee.s before he c- - ^ a^est°wn The Arst order that Clap and h>s party, the westerne me , .roJwiirop, or any representative of the government so ar^ > have been able to find, was to abandon Watertown and go to Dorchester. ^" * « kn« '"'' Clap's par,y did not ,o ^o.e WaUrio^nJ The re ord is that they went " three leagues up Charks ^ver to where ,he riv r was "«..»^ and skaimr The n^tk of the r.ver was between Cop P-S HUl and Noddle's Island (East Boston,, Watertown >s mne ^^Us u T a the Charles At this point they unloaded the.r baggage and "'"";■ and shetoed themselves I best they could till tkeir embarkation ;r^:;::t:". >•» ^i^ »/ "- «- -^ /-» ^-- "^ -"'- ^^Xirn:fHrgt';"tl^;-erif they had desired to, b. cauJeart^t oLrved, tlir boat with the baggage and supphes eoul, Z ^uend tkesHall^ rapids and fall at the Head of ,.de...Ur. But why cotild they not hav^ gone by land? , ■ , ,i „( „i,„m whom they maintained a guard at night. . The Watertown of SahonsUU was in the region -^^l'^^^'^;ZTtJo^n^^^^ onh^ against the Brighton Abattoir. " uiin'ijiaMt'^iWWfe'ttt' In search, visit of the rei early I work < fourtee By that a town, establ Ai were ago, hand; abanc challi inves need dicat "Bu stud Cam: THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 23 I„ conclusion. Mr. Winsor, pursuing his mcAod of geograpMcal re- 1 Including the examination of the historical records, and a single "Toi an ho 'o the locality to which . personally introduced hin,, finds r remains of what he prefers to regard the foundations of a forfi^ed *,; Boston, the future capital of the Colony of M-achusetts Bay . work of Winthrop's men, a. the mouth of Stony Brook on the Charles, fourteen miles from its mouth. J Rv mv method, with the same materials, 1 fai( nnd any ev that aCof Winthrop's company were nearer to S.0„/3rook than Wa er ;„:„ sLe five miles away, till long after the sea. of government had been -'tit:: *::r Ldthat riks . the mo^h o, Sto„y Brc^k , \..A had been described some three hundred and fifty years ""^ '7: had pi * p""'^'' ™py °' -y '""°^'"'""' ': t Zds of Mr W nsor long before his communication on the site of the hands ot Mr. wi & ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^,3 abandoned Boston was g.en «^^P bhc,^^ ^^^^^ ^, ^. ^^^^^ „, challenge pointed -' \°y";,.„„^ „,„, ^, y.,i before him everything investigating a geographical question w ^ ^^^^ ^.^ rrd r:::r ;:: ;=- :;"et.er of four years ago in the ••^rr;tCX::ee"r^r:r;tachuset. is stil, open to Students of its geography and early history. I am very respectfully yours, EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. Cambridge, June i, 1889.