University of Virginia Library

Chapter 11.
The planting Bastable or Salem and Charlton,

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a description of the Massachusets.

IN all those plantations, yea, of those that have done least, yet the
most will say, we were the first; and so every next supply, still the
next beginner: But seeing history is the memory of time, the life of
the dead, and the happinesse of the living;

because I have more
plainly discovered, and described, and discoursed of those Countries
than any as yet I know, I am the bolder to continue the story, and
doe all men right so neere as I can in those new beginnings, which
hereafter perhaps may bee in better request than a forest of nine
dayes pamphlets.

In the yeare 1629. about March, six good ships are gone with
350. men, women, and children, people professing themselves of good
ranke, zeale, meanes and quality: also 150. head of cattell, as horse,
mares, and neat beasts; 41. goats, some conies, with all provision for
houshold and apparell; six peeces of great Ordnance for a Fort, with
Muskets, Pikes, Corslets, Drums and Colours, with all provisions
necessary for the good of man. They are seated about 42. degrees and
38. minutes, at a place called by the natives Naemkecke, by our
Royall King Charles, Bastable; but now by the planters, Salem;
where they arrived for most part exceeding well, their cattell and all
things else prospering exceedingly, farre beyond their expectation.

At this place they found some reasonable good provision and
houses built by some few of Dorchester, with whom they are joyned
in society with two hundred men, an hundred and fifty more they
have sent to the Massachusets, which they call Charlton, or Charles
Towne: I tooke the fairest reach in this Bay for a river, whereupon I
called it Charles river, after the name of our Royall King Charles;
but they find that faire Channell to divide it selfe into so many faire
branches as make forty or fifty pleasant Ilands within that excellent
Bay, ∥ where the land is of divers and sundry sorts, in some places
very blacke and fat, in others good clay, sand and gravell, the superficies
neither too flat in plaines, nor too high in hils. In the Iles you
may keepe your hogs, horse, cattell, conies or poultry, and secure for
little or nothing, and to command when you list, onely having a care
of provision for some extraordinary cold winter. In those Iles, as in
the maine, you may make your nurseries for fruits and plants where

you put no cattell; in the maine you may shape your Orchards, Vineyards,
Pastures, Gardens, Walkes, Parkes, and Corne fields out of the
whole peece as you please into such plots, one adjoyning to another,
leaving every of them invironed with two, three, foure, or six, or so
many rowes of well growne trees as you will, ready growne to your
hands, to defend them from ill weather, which in a champion you
could not in many ages; and this at first you may doe with as much
facility, as carelesly or ignorantly cut downe all before you, and then
after better consideration make ditches, pales, plant young trees with
an excessive charge and labour, seeing you may have so many great
and small growing trees for your maineposts, to fix hedges, palisados,
houses, rales, or what you will; which order in Virginia hathnot
beene so well observed as it might: where all the woods for many an
hundred mile for the most part grow streight, like unto the high grove
or tuft of trees, upon the high hill by the house of that worthy Knight
Sir Humphrey Mildmay, so remarkable in Essex in the Parish of
Danbery, where I writ this discourse, but much taller and greater,
neither grow they so thicke together by the halfe, and much good
ground betweene them without shrubs, and the best is ever knowne
by the greatnesse of the trees and the vesture it beareth. Now in New-England
the trees are commonly lower, but much thicker and firmer
wood, and more proper for shipping, of which I will speake a little,
being the chiefe engine wee are to use in this worke, and the rather
for that within a square of twenty leagues, you may have all, or most
of the chiefe materials belonging to them, were they wrought to their
perfection as in other places.

Of all fabricks a ship is the most excellent, requiring more art in
building, rigging, sayling, trimming, defending, and moaring, with
such a number of severall termes and names in continuall motion,
not understood of any landman, as none would thinke of, but some
few that know them; for whose better instruction I writ my Sea-Grammar,
a booke most necessary for those plantations, because
there is scarce any thing belonging to a ship, but the Sea-termes,
charge and duty of every officer is plainly expressed, and also any
indifferent capacity may conceive how to direct an unskilfull Carpenter
or Sailer to build Boats and Barkes sufficient to saile those
coasts and rivers, and put a good workman in minde of many things
in this businesse hee may easily mistake or forget. But to be excellent
in this faculty is the master-peece of all the most necessary workmen

in the world. The first rule or modell thereof being directed by God
himselfe to Noah for his Arke, which he never did to any other building
but his Temple, which is tossed and turned up and downe the
world with the like dangers, miseries, and extremities as a ship, sometimes
tasting the fury of the foure Elements, as well as shee, by unlimited
tyrants in their cruelty for tortures, that it is hard to conceive
whether those inhumanes exceed the beasts of the Forrest, the birds
of the Aire, the fishes of the Sea, either in numbers, greatnesse, swiftnesse,
fiercenesse or cruelty; whose actions and varieties, with such
memorable observations as I have collected, you shall finde with
admiration in my history of the Sea, if God be pleased I live to finish
it.