CONDITION OF NARRAGANSETT 1 25 truth." He complains that there are "Quakers, Anabaptists of four sorts, Independents," and that "here liberty of conscience is carried to an irreligious extreme." The Huguenot refugees had left their impress upon the country also. Gabriel Bernon, the most famous of those who came to Rhode Island after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, himself lived here for years. But the chief stimulus to the intellectual life of the time was the visit of Berkeley. The two years of his stay in Newport mark a golden era in the spiritual life of Rhode Island. Newport was the natural metropolis of Narragansett, and the good dean himself came to Narragansett, to the "Continent," as he calls it. The rough pioneer days were passed, and a time of pastoral plenty begun. The slave trade furnished the laborers for the great farms; ships sailed from Newport to the Guinea coast, and in a few instances brought their wretched captives to the Narragansett shore. The face of the natural world has changed 1 Updike, Appendix, America Dissected, p. 511. 2 Ibid., p. 514. Foster, Some Rhode Island Contributions to the Intellectual Life of the Last Century. but little; the Pettaquamscut still takes its shining way to the sea, and though the Saugatucket turns mill wheels, it still bounds the lands as described in the old deeds of purchase. And among the men who lived here in their absolute independence, freed even from the control of the minister, the growth of strong character and sterling virtues was fostered. The individualism may have been excessive, as in all small self-governing communities. Each man was truly a law to himself, but in listening to "their own teacher in themselves," which George Fox tried to make audible to each soul, there were men who in this liberal atmosphere rose to heights of heroic action. CHAPTER II. Life in Narragansett. Robert Hazard's Provision for his Wife. Thomas Hazard goes to New Haven College. His Marriage to Elizabeth Robinson. His Homestead. THE writers of the early history of the Narragansett Country all unite in declaring it a favored land, if not literally flowing with milk and honey, at least with abundance of milk, and rich in corn and all the products of a kindly soil. The grass was said to be the richest ever known, the fields the most fertile; one of the enthusiastic sons of the country calls it the fabled Atlantis, the fit home of the gods. And indeed the land is a fair land, diversified by hill and dale, the smiling landscape lit by shining lakes, and every extended prospect taking in the wide blue horizon of the bluest of oceans. Boston Neck lying between the Pettaquamscut and the sea was the most fertile soil, and the earliest settled by the Pettaquamscut purchasers. The corn of the Indians was excellent, even with the rude husbandry of the squaws, and English planters soon |