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Aquidneck, the old Indian name of this island, meant “the Isle of Peace.”

The Indian inhabitants of the island, generally, are here alluded to under the name of Narragansetts, as the Aquidneckians were probably a part of that tribe; and moreover, only a few years before the white settlement, they had been defeated in a war with the main body of the tribe on the main land, and the island had become subject to Canonicus and Miantinomo, the sachems of the north and sovereigns of the bay.

It may be more than a poetic license to suppose that Aquidneckian warriors fought and fell under Philip, sachem of the Wampanoags: that they and the Narragansetts were at times in alliance against the Pequods of Connecticut, is a historical fact. Interesting and somewhat copious reminiscences of things generally alluded to in the text may be found in the notes to the poem of “Yamoyden.”

There was a vague recollection in this line of some writer's expression about the human mind—“changed in all, and yet in all the same.”

Although this chief resided at Providence, it is poetically possible that he may have, at some pleasant times in summer, held a palaver on Rhode Island with his friend Wonnametaunamet, whose name is also mentioned in the next line but one (contracted for the sake of the measure), and after whom is named Tonomy or Tomony (now known as Tammany) Hill, near Newport.

It ought to be stated, that not the British only, but the islanders themselves, cut down the woods on the island for fuel, when wood was twenty dollars, or almost any thing, a cord.

The old distich called the staple of Rhode Island,

Bryant, in his “Meditation on Rhode Island Coal,” thus describes his first sight of the island:

The name of Rhode Island was undoubtedly derived from its resemblance, in situation and other respects, to the Isle of Rhodes. The roses of Rhodes, which gave that island its Greek name, diffuse, it is said, their fragrance for miles round.

“At the general court held at Newport on ye fifteenth of ye first month;

“It is ordered by this court, that the island commonly called Aquethneck” (the name was variously spelt) “shall be from henceforth called the Isle of Rhodes, or Rhode Island.”

These lovely islands are somewhat noted, historically also, for consultations held there by Brutus and Scipio, and others of the old conquerors of the world.

Pinckney. The couplet following the quotation was suggested by a parlour criticism made on Pinckney's lines in playful mockery:—“The winds are awed, nor dare, &c.?”—“I pity them;”—“The air .... never borne a cloud?”—“So much the worse for it.”

Epomeo is a mountain on Ischia.

Truth requires us to tame a little, in the notes, the heroic tone of the text, by stating that the natives sold out and went off for forty fathom of white beads, ten coats and twenty hoes (more or less). See appendix to Elton's edition of “Callender's Centennial Discourse.”

Faith-full (not faithful) means, here, full of credulity.

See Dr. Stiles's hypothesis, that the American Indians are Canaanites, “who fled from the face of Joshua, the robber, the son of Nun,” according to the alleged Phenician inscription,—and also Longfellow's poem on the armed skeleton dug up at Fall River.

Seldom has the Quixotism of antiquaries or their adversaries encountered such a formidable windmill as the old stone one in Newport. It presents a puzzle as hard as the materials of which it is composed and cemented. While it has confessedly been appropriated, in modern times, successively to the purposes of a windmill, a hay loft, and a powder house, the question whether it was originally designed for a fort, a watchtower, a baptistery, or a mere windmill, has proved more difficult than any other—except the question when and by whom it was erected. Gov. Benedict Arnold, in his will, under date of 1677, repeatedly calls it “my stone-built windmill.” He directs that his body be buried “near the line or path from my dwelling house to my stone-built windmill.” Some infer, perhaps too confidently, from this language, that he built the mill; and those who recollect the pulling down of the chimneys of his house, say that it was built with precisely the same kind of stone and cement. The structure was on the upper corner of Arnold's estate, which extended from Mill street to Greene, and from the harbour to East Touro-street; the dwelling house being just behind the site of the present Rhode Island Union Bank. Peter Easton writes in 1663, “This year we built the first windmill.” May not this have been Arnold's stone mill? But Edward Pelham, who became possessed by marriage of the mill lot, calls the structure, in his will of 1741, simply “an old stone windmill,” standing in the lot “known as the mill field or upper field.” Why should he not have called it Arnold's mill, if he had built it? A hundred unanswerable questions may be asked on any supposition, and the author leaves his readers as wise as they were before.

The reference here is, of course, to the rude treatment the Redwood books received from the enemy during the occupation of the town.

I find in the records of the doings of our general assembly, an act, dated February 27, 1729, “laying a duty of three pounds per head on all slaves imported in this colony;” and another, dated the third Monday of June, 1729, ordaining “that henceforward all moneys that shall be raised in this colony by the aforesaid act shall be employed, the one moiety thereof for the use of the town of Newport, towards paving and mending the streets thereof—”

The rest of this paragraph is almost a versification of that oft-quoted passage in Dr. Channing's Dedication Discourse at Newport, where he describes how much he owed to our coast scenery. He says:—“Yonder beach, the roar of which has so often mingled with the worship of this place, my daily resort, dear to me in the sunshine, still more attractive in the storm. Seldom do I visit it now, without thinking of the work, which there, in the sight of that beauty, in the sound of those waves, was carried on in my soul. No spot on earth has helped to form me so much as that beach. There I lifted up my voice in praise amid the tempest. There, softened by beauty, I poured out my thanksgiving and contrite confessions. There, in reverential sympathy with the mighty power around me, I became conscious of power within.”

A reference, of course, to the last of Berkeley's well-known verses written while at Newport;

Dr. Channing says, in the discourse already quoted, “I had two noble places of study. One was yonder beautiful edifice, now so frequented and so useful as a public library; then so deserted, that I spent day after day, and sometimes week after week, amidst its dusty volumes, without interruption from a single visitor.”

General Note. In the fourth volume of the Rhode Island Historical Society's Collections, containing Callender's celebrated Century Lecture, the reader will find that Professor Elton has furnished many very interesting facts respecting the early history of this island; a subject which, we trust, will ere long find some one amongst us with the time, taste, and talent to take it up, and unfold its wealth of various and curious interest.