England, had been carried out, one of their vessels would have remained with them for that service. In the third year after their arrival, their single boat was the chief resource of the little colony against starvation. "It helped them to improve the net, wherewith they took a multitude of bass, which was their livelihood all that summer." In the fifth year, they exported to 1625. England a ship-load of fish, cured with salt of 3 2 1639. their own making; and, in two years more, they were trading in that commodity with the Dutch on Hudson's River Along the seaboard of New England, as fast as it was occupied, this form of industry became a main reliance of the settlers. How profitable it was, may be inferred from the statement that a hogshead of mackerel would sell for three pounds twelve shillings, and that three men in a boat could catch ten hogsheads in a week.* Massachusetts instituted a Protective System for it, by enacting that all vessels and other property employed in taking, making, and transporting of fish,” should be exempt from duties and public taxes for seven years; and that all fishermen, during the season of their business, should be dispensed from military duty. In the second year before the confederation, the mariners of that Colony "followed the fishing so well, that there was above three hundred thousand dry fish sent to the market."6 66 5 1641. Fishing led to ship-building. The year after Winthrop's arrival, to help in obtaining supplies of corn from Ship-buildthe Indians, he built on Mystic River a bark of ing. thirty tons' burden, which he named the Blessing of the Bay! The next year a vessel of a hundred tons, and a year later another of twice that size, were 1 Hubbard, 80. 2 Bradford, 202. 3 See Vol. I. 226. 4 • Winthrop, I. 308. 5 Mass. Rec., I. 257, 258. • Winthrop, II. 42. • Ibid., I. 57, 60. 1631. 1636. launched on the same river, at the plantation of Mr. Cradock.1 The Desire, of a hundred and twenty tons' burden, was a great triumph of the mechanics of Marblehead. All former enterprises of the kind were outdone when Hugh Peter "procured 1640. some to join for building a ship at Salem of three hundred tons. The inhabitants of Boston, stirred up by his example, set upon the building another at Boston of a hundred and fifty tons." The people of Massachusetts now had "good store of barks, ketches, lighters, shallops, and other vessels."4 In one summer, "five ships more. were built, three at Boston, one at Dorchester, 1642. and one at Salem;"5 and in the same year the intelligence went from Boston: "Besides many boats, shallops, hoys, lighters, pinnaces, we are in a way of building ships of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred tons. Five of them are already at sea; many more in hand at this present; we being much encouraged herein by reason of the plenty and excellence of our timber for that purpose, and seeing all the materials will be had there in short time." Surveyors of shipping had now been appointed. The comparative poverty of Plymouth kept her behindhand in such operations. Her 6 first vessel, fit to navigate the ocean, measured 1641. forty or fifty tons. It was built at an expense of two hundred pounds, divided among thirteen owners.8 In the second year of Boston, a cargo of fish and furs, despatched thence to Virginia, opened a commerce with the southern Colony. Foreign trade followed in due time. In the sixth year, one of Mr. Cradock's vessels "came from Bermuda Commerce. 1636. 1 Wood, New England's Prospect, 34. 2 Winthrop, I. 193. 3 Ibid., II. 24. * Lechford, 47. • New England's First Fruits, 22. 7 Mass. Rec., I. 337. • Plym. Rec., II. 31. • Winthrop, II. 92, 101. 5 Winthrop, II. 65. 66 with thirty thousand weight of potatoes, and store of Then cotton was introduced from oranges and limes."1 the West Indies.2 Ships built in Massachusetts 1643. carried many passengers and great store of December. beaver" to London, being followed on their way by 66 many prayers of the churches." A step still in advance was taken when a Boston vessel brought wines, pitch, sugar, and ginger from Teneriffe, in exchange for corn; and another yet, when "the Trial, the first ship built in Boston, being about a hundred and sixty tons, Mr. Thomas Graves, an able and a godly man, master of her," carried a freight of fish to Bilboa, and came home from Malaga "laden with wine, fruit, oil, iron, and wool, which was of great advantage to the country, and gave encouragement to trade." 4 "3 1644. March. medium. Trade was embarrassed for a time by the insufficient supply of a circulating medium. Of the coin which the settlers brought over, a large part speedily dis- Circulating appeared, being sent back to England in payment for necessary supplies. The first traffic with the natives was in the way of barter, to which, more or less, the use of wampum succeeded. Indian corn and beaverskins were in primitive use as money; and the former, at the market price, was in Massachusetts made a legal tender, when there was not an express stipulation to pay coin or beaver. Corn and other produce, at fixed rates, were received in payment of the public taxes. When it was 6 ordered that bullets should take the place of farthings, as a legal tender of the same value, it 1635. was at a juncture considered to require the keeping of a good supply of bullets in the country.7 1 Winthrop, I. 182. * "Now [1640] our money was 2 Ibid., II. 31, 119; comp. Conn. gone." (Winthrop, II. 24; comp. Rec., I. 59. 3 Winthrop, 150, 151, 154; comp. Wonder-Working Providence, Book II. Chap. VI. Albro, Life of Shepard, 235.) 5 Mass. Rec., I. 92. • Ibid., 140. 7 Ibid., 137. Facilities The means of communication between the settlements grew up as fast as, under the circumstances, was to be expected; but that was not very fast. To make for travel. roads, the obstacles of forest, hill, hollow, and marsh were to be overcome upon the land, and those of channel and rapid upon the water; and such operations required time and money.1 Ferries were early established, and bridges must soon have been thrown over 1631. June. 1639. 3 narrow streams.2 When it was intended to make Newtown the capital of the Colony, a canal was cut to its upland from the marsh that borders the river. Mother Brook, which connects the Charles with the Neponset, is an artificial work executed by the town of Dedham. There was a scheme for December. insulating Cape Cod by cutting through the isthmus which connects it with the mainland; but it was abandoned. 1641. The primitive architecture of public buildings was altogether unambitious. The taste for comfortable dwellings 1 Endicott excused himself in 1631 from a visit to Winthrop, "my body," said he, “being in ill condition to wade or take cold.” (Hutchinson's Collections, &c., 50.) At the present time, the traveller easily goes from Salem to Boston in three quarters of an hour, without discomposing his dress. Winthrop, having lived two years in Boston, projected an expedition to the capital of the sister Colony of Plymouth, and prosperously reached that place after two days' travel, having been conveyed over the fords of streams on the shoulders of Indians. (See Vol. I. 335, 336.) In 1639, a continuous line of road was laid out along the coast of Massachusetts, from Newbury on the Merrimack to Hingham, the southeastern limit. (Mass. Rec., I. 280.) 2 Ibid., 81, 87, 88, 241, 275. A general law of Massachusetts passed in which the settlers brought with them - so intimately associated with the English feeling for home Architecture. they appear to have allowed themselves early to gratify in full proportion to their means. Coddington had built a brick house in Boston, before he went thence to found his colony.1 The New-Haven people were thought to have "laid out too much of their stocks and estates in building of fair and stately houses;"2 and Isaac Allerton, who went among them from Plymouth, "built a grand house on the creek, with four porches.” 3 The Reverend Mr. Whitefield's house at Guilford, part of the were a hundred and sixty families of worshippers, the town voted to "have the meeting-house lathed upon the inside, and so daubed and whited over, workmanlike." (Lamson, Sermon preached October 31, 1858, &c., 32.) A meeting-house, built according to the approved model of the second age of New England, when a more fastidious taste had been developed, had a roof of pyramidal form, crowned with a belfry. Accordingly the bell-rope hung down to the centre of the floor, and the sexton stood halfway between the principal door and the pulpit to do his office of summoning the people together. As far as I know, the only meeting-house on this model that survives is that of Hingham, built in 1681. Another, which stood long within my recollection, was that of the First Church in Boston, occupying the spot in Washington Street (then Cornhill) where now stands Joy's Building. 1 See Vol. I. 328, note 4. 2 Hubbard, 334. Whitefield's House, as seen from the south. The walls are of stone, from a ledge eighty rods distant to the east. It was probably brought on hand-barrows, 3 Stiles, History of Three of the across a swamp, over a rude causey, Judges, 65. * Whitefield's house was built in 1639. I suppose there is no doubt that it is the oldest house in the United States, now standing as originally built, unless there be older at St. Augustine in Florida. By the kindness of which is still to be traced. A small addition, not here represented, has in modern times been made to the back of the house, but there is no question that the main building remains in its original state, even to the oak of the beams, floors, doors, and window-sashes. The |