Massachusetts Bay

“ When they neared the coast a driving storm compelled them to change their course, so that instead of going up the Hudson River as they had intended, they were forced into Massachusetts Bay, as it is now called, and along the icy shores of Cape Cod.
All the coast was white with snow, and the future looked cheerless and dark. There were no light-houses to warn them of dangerous shoals, no life-saving men patrolling the beach to help shipwrecked mariners. No one stood on the barren sandy shore to welcome them; they felt that they were indeed strangers in a strange land. ”

“ Singularly enough, Massachusetts Bay, spite of its exclusive policy, possessed from the very outset a strong charm in the eyes of those who dissented from its formulas. Like the Petit Monsieur who found himself left out of the tapestry which exhibited the story of the Spanish invasion, they longed to work themselves in the hangings of colonial history. They soon swarmed in Boston and Salem; and notwithstanding the banishment of Roger Williams, the “heretics” continued to thrive. ”

“ Boston Harbor (originally known as Massachusetts Bay, a name which now has a much broader signification) is the finest roadstead on the coast. The extreme hook of the Cape Cod Peninsula forms Provincetown Harbor, which is an excellent and capacious port of refuge for vessels approaching Boston. Salem Harbor is the most considerable other haven on Massachusetts Bay; on Buzzard’s Bay New Bedford has a good harbour, and on the Atlantic coast are the excellent harbours of Gloucester and Marblehead, both frequented by summer residents. ”

“ On the summit of Town Hill you are almost astride the Cape, having the Atlantic on one side, and Massachusetts Bay in full view on the other. The port is not what it was when some storm-tossed bark, in accepting its shelter, was the town talk for months. Ships come and go by scores and hundreds, [Pg 312] folding their wings and settling down on the water like weary sea-gulls. ”

“ We have seen that while our bay is rich in certain species, it is wholly deficient or but scantily supplied with others, and that the character of the animals inhabiting its waters is more or less directly connected with general physical conditions. Such an area, limited though it be, gives us some insight into the laws which, in their wider application, control the distribution of marine life along the shores of the most extensive continents. The coast of Massachusetts, taken as a whole, is like that of New England generally, a rocky coast ”

“ Its northern shore is rocky, the southern marshy and sandy, and both are irregular and indented by numerous large and small bays, forming the harbors of Gloucester, Salem, Marblehead, Lynn, and Boston. The bay contains a number of islands along the shores, especially in the entrance to Boston Harbor. ”

“ Hence the advance and retreat of the waves is not only rapid, but leaves a broader margin uncovered than in Massachusetts Bay, where there is commonly not more than eight feet of rise and fall. In many places along the arc of the shore stretching between Bar Harbor and Great Head, the ascent to higher ground is, to say the least, difficult, and, in some instances, progress is forbidden by a beetling cliff or impassable chasm. ”

“ The intelligent natives volunteered a bit of history. By placing six pebbles at equal distances, they intimated that Massachusetts Bay was occupied by six tribes, and governed by as many chiefs. [45] He learned from them, likewise, that the inhabitants of this region subsisted by agriculture, as did those at the mouth of the Saco, and that they were very numerous.
Leaving Cape Anne on Saturday the 16th of July, De Monts entered Massachusetts Bay, sailed into Boston harbor, and anchored on the western side of Noddle's Island, now better known as East Boston. ”

“ The Province of Massachusetts Bay, which comprised Massachusetts, Maine, and Nova Scotia, was, before the Revolution, probably more largely engaged in commerce than any other, and the records of the Court of Admiralty held in it would be likely to contain more maritime decisions than would be found elsewhere. Under the first charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, admiralty jurisdiction was not reserved to the crown. ”

“ Thus the ship building industries of the south shore of Massachusetts Bay were established and continued active until the exigencies of commerce demanded larger vessels, and the construction of railroads and the transport [Pg 47] by water rendered it easy to supply with timber the yards of East Boston and Medford and Newburyport. I have no conclusive record to guide me, but I am inclined to think that up to the time of the civil war as many vessels were built in Plymouth and Kingston and Duxbury, and on the North River as in all the remainder of New England. ”

“ But we have lost nothing? Have we not? What about Grand Manan and Moose Island and the fisheries and our West Indian commerce?" So severely did Boston suffer that there were sixty vessels captured at the entrance to the harbor by one small fishing smack of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, cruising in Massachusetts Bay. ”

“ It is to be observed that some of the letters and figures are not found on the map. Among the rest, the letter A is wanting. It is impossible of course to tell with certainty to what it refers, particularly as the places referred to do not occur in consecutive order. The Abbé Laverdière thinks this letter points to the bay of Boston or what we commonly call Massachusetts Bay, or to the Bay of all Isles as laid down by Champlain on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia. ”

“ A fleet of 14 sail, with men, women and children, and provisions, intended to make a firm settlement in New England, arrived in Massachusetts bay. There were on board about 1,500 passengers of various occupations, principally from the vicinity of London; among whom was governor Winthrop and his lieutenant Dudley, with several other gentlemen of wealth and quality. ”

“ This island contains about eighty-six acres and was once covered with red cedars which were sold at Boston for gate-posts. I saw a few left, one, two feet in diameter at the ground, which was probably standing when the Pilgrims came. 354 Ed. Watson, who could remember them nearly fifty years, had observed but little change in them. Hutchinson calls this one of the best islands in Massachusetts Bay. The town kept it at first as a sacred place, but finally sold it in 1690 to Samuel Lucas, Elkanah Watson, and George Morton. ”

“ Though it was the singular fact, that every nation of the earth rejected the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace towards all men, the place of greatest uneasiness and peril, and therefore in their eyes the most eligible, was the province of Massachusetts Bay. ”

“ This rocky peninsula is truly a very wild and unworldlike little territory, jutting boldly out as it does into the mighty bay of Massachusetts, and commanding a view of its whole extent, from Cape Cod to Cape Anne, together with the many islands, towns, and villages scattered along the coast; whilst in front spreads out the Atlantic Ocean.
To sit within the upper gallery of this house upon the cliff, and watch the rising moon fling her golden bridge from the far horizon's edge, until it seems to rest upon the beach below, is a sight which would be worth something in a poet or a painter's eyes. ”

“ These early inhabitants combined tilling the soil and extracting the wealth of the sea, only, however, as shore fishermen, and an occasional off-shore whaling voyage in small boats. One event in early history shows that the people were possessed of something more than the traditional courage and bold seamanship for which southern Massachusetts was ever famed, and shows a spiritual courage as well as that deliberate manly determination to overcome all physical obstacles to existence with which the early settlers were permeated. ”

“ THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water’s edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. ”

“ This kind of community increases altogether by budding, the individual polyps remaining more or less united, the tissues of the individuals becoming thicker by the deposition of lime nodules, and thus forming a massive semi-cartilaginous pulp, uniting the whole community. In the neighborhood of Provincetown they are very plentiful, and are found all along the shores of our Bay in deep water. ”

“ In this sense our bay presents, on a miniature scale, a variety of physical and organic combinations, which may be compared to those more extensive divisions in the geographical distribution of animals and plants, called by naturalists zoölogical or botanical provinces or districts, the animal and vegetable populations of which are technically designated as their faunæ and floræ. Such organic realms, as we may call them, have long been recognized on land, and the most extensive among them are easily distinguished. ”

“ Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts: the shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; ”

“ It only shows the coast from Narragansett Bay to “Acomenticus,” on the Maine shore, with a corresponding inland delineation. Buzzard’s Bay is greatly misshapen; Cape Cod has something of the contemporary Dutch drawing; and, in a rude way, the watercourses lie like huge snakes in contortions upon the land. There are fac-similes of the map in Palfrey, i. 360; Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 389, and in other places noted in the Memorial History of Boston, i. ”

“ Lastly, we take a look at the fishing-tackle, with which the light-house keeper goes out to troll for salmon. Glorious sport! The great, delicious fellows, to be caught by a fly! But we, humans, need not sermonize about being taken by small bait!
Baker's Bay is not without its little history; albeit, it is nothing romantic. In 1850, a company conceived the plan of building up a city, under shelter of the cape, and expended a hundred thousand dollars, more or less, before they became aware of the fruitlessness of their undertaking. ”

“ The great preponderance in numbers and value of pleasure-vessels in the United States, and in the number of clubs and club-members, is due not only to our large population and long coast-line, but to the great extent of inland waters furnished by our rivers and interior lakes, and to the prevalence of bays or protected lagoons, such as Narragansett Bay, the Great South Bay of Long Island, New York harbor, Delaware and Chesapeake bays, and the long series of “sounds” that border the southern Atlantic coast from Barnegat to Biscayne. ”

“ The products of the fisheries are derived chiefly from the numerous off-shore fishing banks extending along the coast from Nantucket Shoals, Mass., to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Only about 20 per cent.—viz. that taken by boats and small vessels in the shore fisheries—is secured from Massachusetts waters. There were 6962 men engaged in 1898 in vessel fishing, 3365 in the inshore or boat fisheries, and 4032 shoremen. This is a less number of men than are employed in the fisheries of Maine, or in one or two of the Middle Atlantic coast States. ”

“ A sharp, scraping sound under my boat roused me from my revery, for I had leaned upon my oars while the tide had carried me slowly but surely upon the oyster-reefs, from which I escaped with some slight damage to my paper shell. Newspaper reading had impressed upon me a belief that the citizens of the city which played so important a part in the late civil war might not treat kindly a Massachusetts man. ”

“ I have walked down the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the sea side there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual, is remarkable as a land-mark for miles; while for music you hear only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the beach birds.
There were several canal boats at Cromwell's Falls, passing through the locks, for which we waited. ”

“ The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the shores of Massachusetts as the "Samaria," under her fullest head of steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port was an object of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island can make it. ”

“ Mary's Bay are most interesting, and that it is hardly worth while to continue down the coast unless one desires to take steamer from this port to Boston.
In our strolls about the village, we come to a point on the shore where a boy has a quantity of fine large lobsters which he has just taken from the trap; and when one of our party asks for what price he will sell some, the answer—"One cent each"—is so astounding that the query is repeated, so we may be convinced that we have heard aright. ”

“ Narragansett Bay is one of the finest harbors on the New England coast. It stretches thirty miles inland, the rivers emptying into it making the water-power for the numerous and extensive textile factories of Rhode Island, which embraces the shores surrounding and the islands within the bay. It opens broadly, having beautiful shores, lined with pleasant beaches which dissolve into low cliffs and water-worn crags; for the character of the coast gradually changes from the sandy borders of Long Island Sound to the rocks of New England. ”