tion, made with the sagacity and keen eye of a practical man and observing mariner, and to the final conclusion that the river in question could be none other than the St. George's, which somehow or other got its name with the islands at its mouth, from that of the discoverer or the patron saint of his country, and from that time down has uniformly retained it. This view of his was further illustrated in an article communicated by him to the sixth volume of the Maine Historical Society, and more fully, satisfactorily, and, we think, incontrovertibly, demonstrated, in a pamphlet containing Rosier's narrative in full, with remarks of his own, published in 1860; insomuch that the only wonder now is that two and a half centuries should have elapsed before any one arrived at the perception of so palpable a truth. This river so early discovered and named, though much frequented by the native Indians, was never, that we are aware of, the permanent, though it may have been a temporary, residence of any particular tribe. It was situated in the neutral or contested hunting ground of two hostile tribes,— the Wawenocks, whose principal chief kept his court at Damariscotta, and the Tarratines, who held possession of the Penobscot waters and claimed dominion westward as far as the power of their rivals would permit. The Camden mountains were at one time considered the boundary; but the desolating wars of 1615 and pestilence of 1617-18 so weakened the Wawenocks and their western allies, that their rivals extended claims in that direction to an indefinite extent, and by occupancy established their right to St. George's, which they ever afterwards maintained till relinquished to the whites. As the Indians designated localities by descriptions rather than proper names, and the languages of these two tribes differed, it is not strange that places in this contested ground should be known by different names. In Strachey's account the claims of the Penobscot, endeavors to make out Goose River to be its "codde;" but has since, in a letter dated, April 21, 1863, informed me with his usual candor, that, on reviewing the grounds, (for which he had well qualified himself by visiting the spot where the "Archangel' anchored) he has changed his opinion and fully coincides with Capt. Prince. This opinion being further advocated by Rev. D. Cushman before the Historical Society and favored by such learned antiquarians as Hon. Jos. Williamson, of Belfast, and, I believe, Hon. Wm. Willis, of Portland, the long mooted controversy may be considered as settled.unless the recent attempt in the Memorial Volume of the Popham Celebration to revive the Kennebec theory should receive more consideration than it seems to merit, seeing it is little more than a repetition of the arguments of the late J. McKeen, Esq., of Brunswick, to whom the public was much indebted for being the first to question the Penobscot theory so long acquiesced in. - of the Popham colony, which after coming to three islands with a ledge of rocks to the southward (Matinicus Rock), thence stopping at George's Islands, and on Sunday, Aug. 9th, 1607, going ashore where Weymouth had planted his cross, and hearing from Mr. Seymour their chaplain the first christian sermon ever preached in this region,* passed on to the Sagadahoc, mention is made of three mountains" in on the land, the land called Segohquet, near about the river of Penobscot," which land, if Mt. Pleasant be one of the mountains, must have been Thomaston, Warren, and vicinity. Capt. John Smith of heroic and romantic memory, who in 1614 made a voyage hitherward, and, after building seven boats at Monhegan for whaling and fishing, with eight of his men ranged the coast in his ship from Penobscot to Cape Cod, also speaks of the places along the shore, and, after describing Penobscot Bay and mountains, says "Segocket is the next; then Nuscongus, Pemaquid," &c.; and, in a map which he prepared, marked our river as the site of an Indian village, to which Prince Charles of England gave the name of Norwich at the same time that he changed the name of what had been known as North Virginia to New England. Later authorities and traditions, confining the name Segocket to the river rather than the country, as perhaps Smith intended, have made it Segochet; which name in either of its forms evidently belonged to the Wawenock dialect, as the present Penobscots, the remnant of the ancient Tarratines, do not use it nor understand its meaning. Of other Wawenock names, though understood, the Penobscots express the same sense in words of their own,-calling Matinicus, Menasquesicook or a collection of grassy islands, and Monhegan, Kt'nagook or grand island. For George's River they seem to have no other name than Joiges; and some have conjectured that this name was borrowed by the English and by a slight change of sound converted into George's or St. George's. Instead of this, however, I am inclined to suspect that the name George's may have been adopted by the Tarratines from the name left to the river and islands by Weymouth, and from their pronunciation, Joiges, associated with the word joy, suggesting the kindred definition which when questioned they attach to it, viz.:-joyful, delightsome. It is not always easy to ascertain to which language a word originally be *The earliest in any part of the State, except perhaps one at a religious service held in a chapel built on Neutral Island in the St. Croix or Schoodic River by French Huguenots in 1604. Will. Hist. of Maine, &c. longed; as we find abannock* is given as the Indian name for bread, and acowanabool as the Feejee of neat cattle,— each of which was probably bequeathed them by the European donors of the first specimens of those articles. The great resort of the tribe to the place in later times, after a patent was granted and a trading-house established here, might naturally cause the English name to come into use among them and supplant any other ancient one of their own, as well as the "Segochet" of their Indian foes. The river having thus got the name of Joiges, the land, at least that part of it between Mill River and Oyster River, of course received that of Joigeekeag, or Georgeekeag,- the termination keag being their usual term to signify land, or a point of land formed by the junction of two rivers. So that with them the name of the western portion of our territory, or the present town of Thomaston, was nearly equivalent to pleasant point; that of the southern portion, now South Thomaston, particularly at the junction of the two branches of its river, the Wessaweskeag, signified land of sights, visions,— wizard point;† and the eastern portion adjoining Owl's Head Bay, or the present Rockland Harbor, was called Catawamteak or Katawamteag, signifying great-landing-place, from which they took the trail across to Mill River. Of these Indian trails, three principal ones in the territory of Old Thomaston were much used and frequently spoken of in early times. That above named, was used in passing to St. George's River for the purpose of fishing at the falls or proceeding to the ocean on their way westward. Another was that from the head of Owl's Head Bay directly across to the bay in George's River, the high intervening land of which they early called Quisquamego, and, in later times, Quisquitcumegek, or highcarrying-place. A third was that from the same Head of the Bay to the head waters of the Wessa weskeag, by which they avoided the tedious and exposed passage around Owl's Head. These were well known to the early settlers and hunters, as the Upper, Middle, and Lower trails. The country having thus, by the discoveries of Weymouth, Pring, Smith, and others, become well known, was annually visited by private adventurers for fishing, hunting, and trading; some of whom erected temporary huts on shore, but none except the Sagadahoc colony had as yet intended to *Me. Hist. Coll. Vol. V.-bannock, we believe, is a Scottish word. + Mansfield, in his History and Description of New England, says the Indian name Wessaweskeag signifies river of many points; but does not state his authority. become permanent residents. Monhegan was the principal landmark, and was at times thronged with these adventurers. Smith found there in 1614 a ship belonging to "Sir Francis Popham which for many years had visited the waters of St. George's River only."* Conflicts between the natives and treacherous Europeans, as well as between the Europeans themselves, frequently took place at Monhegan; in one of which several of Smith's men were killed in the neighboring waters, and in others, cases of mutiny of ship crews, and cruel kidnapping of natives occurred. Abraham Jennins, a fish merchant of Plymouth, concerned in trade with Abner Jennins of London, employing a large tonnage in the cod-fisheries and trade on the coast, acquired the original ownership of this island. The French, Spaniards, and Dutch also came to this region for traffic and fishing, and may have attempted more permanent establishments on the islands or coast. Domestic utensils and the foundations of chimneys now many feet under ground have been discovered on Monhegan as well as on Carver's Island in George's River, where, it is matter of history, there were formerly found the remains of a stone house. No doubt these islands, that form the threshold of our river, were the scene of many a wild foray or romantic adventure. which for want of a contemporary historian must be allowed to slumber in the dim haze of the unrecorded past. * Ancient Dominions of Maine, by Rufus K. Sewall, p. 98, who quotes Prince's New England Chronology, p. 15. CHAPTER III. GRANT OF THE PATENT, AND ATTEMPTS TO SETTLE FRUS TRATED BY INDIAN WARS. 1630. THE Council of Plymouth in England, which had been established for settling and governing New England, being now in danger of dissolution by royal authority, made various and hasty grants to different adventurers of nearly the whole territory between the Piscataqua and Penobscot, in the expectation that its acts already past would be respected after the Council itself should cease to exist. One of these was the grant made of the lands on the river St. George's, March 13th, 1629, O. S. March 23d, 1630, new style, to Beauchamp and Leverett, called "the LINCOLNSHIRE, or MUSCONGUS PATENT," or grant. Its extent was from the seaboard, between the rivers Penobscot and Muscongus, to an unsurveyed line running east and west and so far north as would, without interfering with any other patent, embrace a territory equal to 30 miles square. This grant contained a reservation to the King and his successors of "one-fifth part of all such Oar of Gold and Silver as should be gotten and obtained in or upon the Premises." It was procured expressly for the purposes of an exclusive trade with the natives, and contained no powers of civil government. It seems to have owed its existence to the rapacity of certain merchant adventurers in England who had formed a copartnership with the puritan exiles when in Holland, and agreed to transport them to America; but who, dissatisfied with the slow returns caused by the conscientious adherence of these pilgrims after their arrival at New Plymouth, to the regulation prohibiting the sale of gunpowder and ardent spirits to the Indians, were perpetually undermining their trade by sending out other less scrupulous agents and companies to compete with them, their own partners, in that infant settlement. The most active of these merchants were James Shirley and Timothy Hatherly of Bristol, Eng. When in later years the greater part of this Muscongus grant passed into the hands of Gen. Samuel Waldo, it, or at least his portion of it, was called the WALDO PATENT, and is the origin of all or most of the land titles in this vicinity. The grant was made "to Thomas Leverett of Boston in the county of Lincoln (England,) gentleman, and John Beauchamp of London, gentleman,' or 'salter," styled in Bradford's History of the Plymouth settlement, as |