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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 DOCKS. WHAHVKS, i bOOM DAM OF THE ANCIKN T CITY OK NORUMUEGA, ON 'I'HE CHARLES RIVER AT VVATERTOWN, MASS. BOOM DAM ON COLD SPRING BROOK, OPPOSITE WATERTOWN. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. a Communtcatfon TO THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY AT THEIR SPECIAL SESSION IN WATERTOWN, November 21, 1889. BY EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. BOSTON AND NEW YORK : HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. Cite Bitotrsilic Prceti, (JDambrtUfft. 1890. ( i ^nifaraits Wrm: John Wilson and Son, Cambridgb. M PREFACE. The demand for the communication regarding the site of the ancient city of NoRUMDEGA, made on the 21st of November last to the American Geographical Society at its special session in Watertown, has led me to anticipate, in some degree, the publication long promised of the results which the study of the interesting problem of the lost city and country has yielded. That paper is in press, but must wait for a time. Mean- while I have thought to attach a few of its illustrations to the story recently presented, and place the publication where it may be found by persons interested; and further, to produce the paper, without the illus- trations, in a less expensive form. E. N. H. Cambridok, Jan. 1, 1890. iTw»i>»i^CH5;'";r!-scs THE DISCOYERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. JuDGK Dalt, President of the American Geographical Soeicti/ : It is now nearly five years since I discovered on the banks of Charles River the site of Fort Norumbega, occupied for a time by the Bretons some four hundred years ago, and as many years earlier still built and occu- pied as the seat of extensive fisheries and a settlement by the Northmen. It is nearly as long since that discovery was the subject of a communica- tion which I had the honor to address to you, in your official capacity, on the first of March, 1885, which coirnnunication was published in the October Bulletin of the American Geographical Society of the same year. I have to-day the honor of announcing to you the discovery of Vinland, including the Landfall of Leif Erikson and the Site of his Houses. I have also tc announce to you the discovery of the site of the ancient City of Norumbega. To perpetuate the date of these accessions to geography, a Tower has been set up at the site of Fort Norumbega, where I first found remains of the work of the Northmen. It had been proposed to accompany the unveiling of the Tablet on the Tower just completed with a summary account of the way by which ft G DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMUEGA. I had been conducted to my later discovery, tc^rctlicr with other exer- cises appropriate to tlie occasion, — inehiding a Poem rehearsing the story of the Vinhind Sagas, and music contributed by our Scandinavian friends and by a party of ladies from Norutnbega Hall of VVellesley College, so called in honor of the discovery which was counnunicated to the public at about the time the corner-stone of the Hall was laid. But the lateness of the season has made the outdoor gathering impracticable, and an invitation has been accepted to meet in this hall. As the Geographical Society has consented to give the occasion the honor of its ofhcial presence as at a special meeting convened to receive the announcement of the discoveries, I ask permission to lay before you copies of the maps, ancient and modern, charts, sketches, photographs, drawings, manuscripts, original plans and surveys, which I have gathered for the study of the problems of Vinland and Norumbega and for the purpose of illus- trating the detailed papers now in press, with iha request that they be regarded as an earnest of the later presentation of the results of my work, in print, to the Society. I have to ask your further permission to present here and now a sum- mary of the course of my more recent investigation, which has resulted in the discovery of the site of the City of Norumbega. JUDGE DALY'S REPLY. Professor Horsford, — Allow me to say, on behalf of myself and colleagues, that it affords us great pleasure to congratulate you on your discovery. When you made your communication five years ago to the American Geographical Society, I was inclined to think that the facts then presented created a strong probability that the locality indicated DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBKGA. by you was in the region where the Northmen settled in this country ; and tlio furtlicr and more extensive researches you have since made con- firm that concluHion. It is especially interesting at this period, when wo are preparing to celebrate the lour hundredth anniversary of the discovery of this continent by Columbus, that the facts you have ascer- tained should be brought to light in connection with this earlier discovery of America. We have hitherto but inadequately appreciated the North- men as a race, — their adventurous spirit, their capacity, and the degree of civilization to which they had attained in an age when Europe was but emerging from the darkness that had enveloped it for many centuries. Trof. A. II. Siiyce, the learned Assyrian scholar, in a recent paper has declared, and given his reasons for, his belief that the primitive home of the Aryans — the central point of the departure or migration of that great civilizing race that at a very early period spread over the whole of Persia and India, and to the westward over the whole of Europe and America — was not, as has hitherto been supposed, the country lying on the slopes of the mountains of the Hindoo Kush, between the head-waters of the rivers Saxartes and the Oxus, but was some place in the south- eastern part of Scandinavia; which would make the Northmen itte pro- genitors of the Greeks, the Romans, and, with the exception of one or two races, of all the nations of modern Europe; which, if further re- searches should establish to be the fact, would make tLem the greatest race in the history of mankind. Du Chaillu, in his recent work on the Viking Age and the Ancestors of the English-speaking People, — a people now so widely distributed over the surface of the glol)0, — refers to those countries in the north of Europe from which the Northmen came as the birthplace of a new epoch in the history of mankind. All this is very interesting in connection with what is now generally admitted, — that America was discovered by the Northmen ! i'JLk^i -;>i«!g&-; 8 DISCOVEUY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMHEOA. five centuries before the arrival of Columbiis, and that for a considerable period thereafter they maintuined a aettlenient upon our northeastern coast, and V nt up during that time an intercourse with the niotlier country. It remains only in conclusion, Sir, that I should express my high appreciation of your labors and of the result that has followed them, and of your liberality in the lofty, characteristic, and imposing Tower that you have caused to be erected, to mark one of the places where the Northmen dwelt, and to commemorate these discoveries. STORY OF TnE DISCOVERY OF NORUMBEGA. As we all know, there have been before the world for many Bcores of years, in some instances for as many centuries, certain grand geographical problems, challenging the spirit of research, the love of adventure, or the passion for discovery or conquest. They are such as these: Where was Atalautis? Where was the Ultima Thule ? What is there at the North Pole ? Was there a Northwest Passage ? Where were the Seven Cities ? Where were the El Dorado of Raleigh, and the Landfalls of Leif Erik- eon, of Columbus, of John Cabot, of Verrazano ? And where were Vinland and Norumbega ? The number of unsolved problems is steadily lessening. The last two mentioned are soon, with your consent, Mr. President, to be withdrawn from the colunm. I might, perhaps, say something concerning the other themes that have been named, which inight interest you, and properly claim recognition at the outset of a story of geographical discovery. But you will, I am sure, prefer to anything else I might say here and to-day, a plain statement of the reasons for the faith that moved mo to set up a Tower in Weston, at the junction of Stony Brook with the Charles. A wish that falls in so wholly with my sense of the requirements of the occasion leaves me no alternative. I will attempt to comply with it as best I may, asking yoiu' indulgence for the repetitions I cannot escape in telling the story of how I found the seat of the earliest European colony in the New World. Most who hear me will doubtless connect their first conception of Norumbega with the well-known poem of Whittier. You will not have li I i -ii«^__ *, '■j^f.'H, ;.•►-' 10 DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. forgotten how, as you read the poem, your sympathies went out to tlie Christian Knight, faint with his fruitless quest for a marvellous city of which he had heard, — a city of towers and spires and gilded domes, and a fine people, rich in furs and pearls and precious stones ; nor how, as the pomp and splendor of a dying October day fiidcd from his sight, and with it, in his rapt vision, the possible goal of his hopes, he exclaimed, almost in his latest breatli, — " I fain would look, before I die. On Norumbega's walls." ' I have recently received the following letter from Mr. Whittier : Amesbury, Oct. 30, 1889. Dear Friend, — That adventurous Scandinavians visited New England and attempted a settlement here hundreds of years before Columbus, is no longer a matter of doubt. I had supposed that the filmed city of Norura- bega was on the Penobscot, when I wrote my poem some years ago ; but I am glad to think of it as on the Charles, in our own Massachusetts. Thy discovery of traces of that early settlement at the mouth of Stony Brook and at "Watertown is a matter of great archjBological interest, and the memorial Tower and Tablet may well emphasize the importance of that discovery. Regretting that I am unable to witness the unveiling of the Tablet, I am Very truly thy friend, John G. Whittier. You may have heard of Roberval, a French admiral, as the Lord of Norumbega ; or you may remember Milton's reference in " Paradise Lost " to the "icy blasts from the north of Norumbega;" or you may have 1 Tlio poem as published was preceded by a paragraph which read as follows : " Norumbega is the name given by early French explorers to a fabulous countrj- south of Capo Rreton, first discovered by Verrazano in l'y2l. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobccot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570. In 1G04 Champlain sailed in search of the northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. lie snpixised thq river to be that of Norumbega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He s.iw no eridences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods." DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMHEGA. 11 read of Norumbega, the "Lost City of New England," by the Rev. Dr. De Costa; or you may recall that about four years ago there was some- thing in the local papers about the Landfall of John Cabot in 1497, and the site of Norumbega. Much of what I have recalled to you referred to the region not re- mote from our own. The old fort at the foot of the Tower concealed within its walls the entrance to the pathway that led to the desert's secret, which the Norman Knight sought for in vain. The secret was won only after protracted siege. It was a most fascinating bit of conquest ; it had the charm that gathers about the finding of long-lost treasure, something of the rapture that comes with the witnessed fulfilment of prophecy. The story of Norumbega was old, — very old for Massachusetts. Its antiquity may have furnished reason for believing the story to have had some foundation in truth. It had at least this : An Englishman had left a record of having seen a city bearing the name Norumbega, and the city was three quarters of a mile long. This man — David Ingram, a sailor — had been set on shore by Sir John Hawkins, in 1568, at Tampico, on the Gulf of Mexico, with some hundred and twenty others, in stress for lack of provisions. He had wandered all the way across the country, visiting many large Indian towns, and coming at length, in 1509, to the banks of Norumbega. He sailed in a French ship from the Harbor of St. Mary's (one of the earlier names of Boston Bay), a few hours distant from the Norumbega he visited, and ultimately got back to England, where he again met and was kindly received by Sir John Hawkins. He told a story that surpassed belief. He had seen monarchs borne on golden chairs, and houses with pillars of crystal and silver. He had visited the dwelling of an Indian chief, where he saw a quart of pcarh ; and when his listeners jnurmured, he capped the relation with the statement that in one cMef's house he had seen a peck of pcnrk. He was brought in audience before Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh. Thevet, who had been at Norumbega, on the banks of what he pronounced " one of the most beautiful rivers in all the world," and who had not I If fct^Lv'' •►"^■■'"■•'. .V* ii^^m^&ama^imimism^ 12 DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. improbably been at the mouth of Stony Brook, was present, and confirmed Ingram in part. Coronado's experiences in New Mexico, 1540, enable us to confirm him in more ; and the brilliant researches of Mr. Gushing of Zuui memory and achievement, and the collections of Professor Putnam of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, enable us to comprehend most of the remainder of his relation. There were pearls; they were found in fresh-water clams (Unios). They are gathered by the peck at the West to-day; the Peabody Museum has half a bushel of them taken from an Ohio mound by Professor Putnam. And there were furs. French mer- chants (I have it from the historian of New France) in one year burned two hundred thousand beaver skins to keep the price np. These furs came from the land of the Bretons, — from here. And there were precious stones, — turquoise and onyx and garnet : I have samples of them. And there were ornaments of copper and silver and gold : they are found in Ohio mounds to-day. The pillars of quartz crystal and columns of wood wrapped with thin sheets of silver and even of gold, I can credit, from what I have personally seen in some parts of Mexico. On festive occa- sions such sheets were displayed, so Mr. Gushing tells us, as flags are with us in honor of a day or of an event. Much of what Ingram related was what he had seen. Of some things related by him he had evidently only heard : the stories of the Incas of Peru and of the Montezumas of Mexico weie among them. Ilis hardships had brought confusion to his memory. Hakluyt wrote a book (carefully edited by the late Dr. Gharlcs Deane, and published by the Maine Historical Society) to induce England to under- take the colonization of the country of Norumbega. Its discovery entered into some of the plans for penetrating the Northwest Passage. Sir Hum- phrey Gilbert lost his life in an expedition undertaken in part to find Norumbega. I have many ancient maps on which Norumbega as a coun- try is as prominent as New Spain or New France or Virginia, as well as many others having devices indicating a city against the name of Norumbega, subordinate to the name of Norumbega as a province. All these belong to the class of old recorded stories ; mobt of them ! DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. 18 were in print before the landing of the Pilgrims. One could not help thinking that they must have some foundation in truth; the alternative involved too many conspirators, of different nationalities. Champlain at the opening of the seventeenth century came, under Admiral Dc Monts, to our coast, and spent a good portion of three years exploring the bays and headlands and islands from Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy, and studying the people and the products of the soil. The literature of geography was familiar to him. He tried to find Norumbega. He felt that somewhere there might be found the remains of a city. He went many leagues up the Penobscot from its mouth, but found nothing. He left the name on his map in the region where he sought for the city, about the mouth of the great river, but recorded his conviction that those who described it had not seen it. This learned and conscientious explorer justly commanded confidence wherever his publications were read. His readers felt his doubts. Lescarbot became merry over what he thought the delusion. Still, Cupt. John Smith hoped to find the city or country ; and for a long time, down nearly to the end of the seventeenth century, the name of Norumbega appeared on Dutch maps. It appeared even on occa- sional maps of the eighteenth century. But at length it was to be found only in ancient history or geography, and in the name of a noble Hall set up by the public-spirited citizens of Bangor. Let us look a little further at the foundation of the old story; we shall, after all, find it quite substantial. Verrazano, in 1524, came up to the angle of the Charles at Cambridge City Cemetery, near the remains of the then still standing Norman Villa, on Maiollo's map, which seems to have occupied the site of Leifs houses. He found and left us the name Norumbega in oranbeja, — the initial N accidentally obliterated from the map, and the m of the second syllable replaced by Ji, as given on his brother's map, — near the ancient St. John's Harbor, our modern Gloucester. Not far from Cape Ann, on the local map of Essex County of to-day, we have Norman's 0, uniformly called Norman's Woe, and also Norman's Cove, of palpable Norse derivation. V._-, -.. ^^/.^r'i^L ^J i 14 DISCOVEUY OP THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. Thus we have from an early date evidences that Northmen have been on our coast.^ A little later Parmentier, in 1539, found the name Norurabega applied to a land lying southvvest-a-quarterwest from Cape Breton. Allefousce under Kobervul, in 1543, determined the fact of there being two Cape Bretons (the source and the explanation of any number of mistakes in cartography), of which the more southern, referred to by Parmentier, was in the forty-third degree, and identical with Cape Ann. Within the limits of this forty-third degree was a river, at the moutli of which, according to AUefonsce, were many rocks and islands (Minofs Lodge, Cohasset rocks, the Lizard, the Roaring Bulls, the Graves, etc.), up which river, as AUefonsce estimated, Jlfteen leagues from the mouth, was a city ivhich is called Norum- Icgue. " Tliere was," he said, " a Jine people " at Ihe city; " and they had furs of many animals, and loore mantles of marten skins." AUefonsce, a pilot by profession, has never been doubted. On him, more than on any one else, rest the identity of one of the Cape Bretons witli Cape Ann, and the fact of there being a river, with a city on its banks, both bearing the name Norumboga, between Cape Ann and Cape Cod. I procured from the Bibllothfique Nationale a photographic coi)y of the original pen-made map, and of manuscripts of AUefonsce, that I might consult the original. There is no room whatever for question that a few leagues up a river having many rocks and islands at its mouth, in the forty- third degree, there was in 1543 a fine city called Norumbegue. In proof of this I might quote many authorities, if time permitted.^ Wytflict, in 1597, in an augment to Ptolemy, says: " Noromboga, a beautiful city, and a grand river are well known." He gives on his map a picaire of a settlement, or villa, at the junction of two streams, one of which is the Rio Grande. Here, as we shall see later, was a great fishery, and of course dwellings and appurtenances to domestic life for persons ' Weliavc other names of Norse deriv.ition in Massachusetts; as for example, Nanset, Naumkeacr Naumlx'.ik, Namskaket, and Amoskcag. » Among them are I'tolcmy, Uamusio, Mercator, Lok, Maginn, Plancio, and Solis. DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. 15 eno-ao-ed in the industry. I have framed into the Tower the stone mortar in use at the settlement. Wytfliet on his map had confounded the hum- bler settlement with the city. There had been some misapprehension. Thevet in his text places " Fort Norombegue " at the point where stands the Tower, and where Wytfliet placed the city,— at the junction of two streams ; and so the two together led me into temporary misapprehension. The fort was occupied in Thevet's time as a trading-post by the Breton French. To them was ascribed the construction of the fort. Thevet says further : " To the north of Virginia is Norumbega, which is well known as a beautiful city, and a great river ; still one cannot find whence its name is derived, for the natives call it Agguncia.^ At the entrance of the river there is an island very convenient for the fishery." lie describes the fort as surrounded by fresh water and at the junction of two streams. The City of Nonnnheija on his map was lower down the river.^ Tlie French who occupied the fort called it Fort Norombegue. It was surrounded both by a ditch and a stockade. The ditch remains. It was largely what Allcfonsce (1543) and Thevet (1556), who were on our coast as explorers, wrote, and what was pictured on Wytfiiet's map, that led to my finding the fort. When 1 had deduced from the literature of geography that the fort was at the mouth of Stony Brook, I drove directly there, and found it on my first visit. But I early found, besides the fort, the evidences, long unintelligible to me, of a great industry (to which I have alluded), involving, among other things, graded areas some four acres in extent, paved with field bowlders. It was a most extraordinary display, to which I may refer later. As already remarked, after Champlain, — known, as he was, as a most competent explorer and conscientious man, whose itinerary was most full and clear and painstaking, and whose maps were without precedent for palpable evidences of care, — after Champlain and the publication of his unsuccessful > Iroquois for " head," — which applies to a great rock in tlie margin of tlie pavement of the fisheries), and now at one end of the reservoir d.im. a The settlement at the junction o£ tliu two streams, and the site of tlie city lower down are given on the maps of both Thevet and Mercator : ^^m M"i ^^ ^ fc »^ <*'rf- iVte/4 n 16 DISCOVERY OF THE AXCIENT CITY OF NOUUMBECrA. exploration of the Penobscot, belief in the existence of the City of No- rumbeg'a came to be generally less confident, and finally, as Dr. Palfrey's " History " shows, to be practically abandoned. To one modern writer more than to any other we are indebted for keep- ing the story of Norumbega alive. Rev. Dr. De Costa, at that time editor of the " American Magazine of History," wrote and published a few years ago the most fascinating story of the " Lost City of New England." lie wrote and printed several papers, gathering together for preservation the scattered fragments of legends and history bearing on the subject. His conviction, however, like that of Champlain and all other personal explorers, except Allefonsce and Thevet, was that if the ruins of the city were ever to be anywhere found, they would be on the Penobscot, where our grand old Poet placed it. Yet every rood of the Penobscot to its extreme source has been scoured in the search, and no trace of the remains of a city has been found. There still exist on that noble river evidences of what the story grew fiom which was told to Champlain, — among them the name of Nolambeghe, preserved or known to the Indians of to-day (Votromille), and the name Baya del Loreme on many ancient maps, as well as other names of Norse derivation on local maps of Maine ; but time will not permit us to pursue them. As the lost city was not on the Penobscot, and as it was not thought pos- sible that it could exist elsewhere, the search was at last given up. So Norumbega was lost. In view of the great interests involved, one might almost wish — say you? — that it could have remained lost for a few years longer. In my judgment, however, if it were possible to-day to prove that the Phoenicians visited and long occupied parts of this country, or that this country was the Atalantis of Pliny and Solon, — either or both of them would dim, by the measure of the faintest Indian-summer haze only, the transcendent glory of the life-work of Columbus. But there was another country lost, — lost from a still earlier period. This was Vinland. Or it may perhaps more correctly be said that it is only ./ u / 1 ^ -4 RIVER FLOWING THROUGH A LAKE INTO THE SEA' VINLAND OP THE NORTHMEN (•^ijiiecl tlj^flftr Ii^sl.riicTliorji fey Geo. DaVis, Civil Er^^iijeer. » /■> n Scale of fviiies. * = Jiyt Of Lrif'6 floJsE^. CI 51 < -^ # ^-'^'^ )>■•: A ^ -^ #;> '^^ «1 /<) H 7 >l y ( I f / (.() HV >* « i: v rJ A\/ ,,ttlMil.lt,ii . .i'.«.'L8BO"'»' y I. I: / X \- T .1 \ M A L DEN ifitaMMMi Humyrt Pr'h tinoCo Boarw ■NMB ^n*> CI Y II Itl DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMUEOA. 17 recently tlmt it hnn been diHCOvcrod un.l dotnonstr.ite.l that there had ccr- tainly been a country hereabout to which the Northmen came, nine hundred ^'"doT'ou anticipate me by exdaiming that Vinland and Norumbcga are identical? „ , ,. . ^. „ But between such conclusion and the date of the earlier conviction of what miKht bo found by research lay four years of almost constant study nnd norsonal exploration, with the co-operation of the engineer and drau.ditsman anuii