proportions and the peculiar conformations of which have always been stimulating to the imagination of men, suggesting now some group of great men, like the Presidential range in New Hampshire, and now some familiar quality or object of daily life, like Saddleback, Greylock or Camel's Hump. But there are Katahdin, Chocorua, Monadnock and Wachusett to offset these.

To mention any lake of importance is to see how difficult it was to dissociate these wide, free bodies of water from the poetic names which they received from the aborigines, and so happily they mean to-day in our speech just what they did to the people who lived nearest to them and knew them best. Memphremagog, Winnepiseogee, Quinsigamond and the rest, how their very sound quickens the fancy and imparts an adventurous zest to even the belated explorer of today! Still more truly does our river nomenclature perpetuate for us the charm of a day when large bodies of water flowing to the sea suggested a poetic symbolism rather than mere commercial power. In Maine and New Hampshire none of the great rivers have been renamed, and it is still Penobscot, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Piscataqua, Merrimac, Connecticut, with a host of smaller tributaries keeping up the primitive tradition of an earlier time. The same is true of Rhode Island and Connecticut on a smaller scale, and relatively true of Vermont and Massachusetts. In the latter, the Westfield, Deerfield, Blackstone, Charles and Concord are familiar streams; but many smaller ones bear Indian names, like the Chicopee, the Assabet and the Shawsheen.

In regard to the charge of undue pietism in the naming of towns, it is hardly borne out by the facts in the case. Connecticut would perhaps be expected to show the greatest preference for Bible names; and she does in reality lead off with twelve. Maine comes next with eleven, New Hampshire and Vermont following with seven each, while Puritan Massachusetts has only four. Self-reliant Rhode Island has not called the Scriptures to her aid at all, although Providence and Prudence save her map from

having a too exclusively secular flavor. The smallness of her area and the need of few names may, however, account for this. Four of the six states have a Canaan. Four also have a Goshen; while Sharon appears on the map of New England as many times as there are states. With hardly an exception, the great natural features of the country, such as mountains, lakes and rivers, have been kept free from scriptural names.

The idiosyncrasy of the early settlers. appears better perhaps in some of the eccentric titles adopted by the three northern and more recently developed states. The hamlets of Maine, New Hampshire. and Vermont were the afterthought of men who had already acquired experience and self-confidence in the New World; and this feeling occasionally expresses itself in some sentiment which is made to do duty as the name of a town. Thus New Hampshire and Vermont have each a Victory; while the latter rejoices in a Success, a Freedom and a Unity. Some of the inhabitants of Maine may be found living in the town of Flagstaff; and others make their home in Industry, Amity and Harmony respectively. Hope, Liberty and Freedom are still further illustrations of this tendency on the part of the founders of the Pine Tree State to idealize the geography.

Another way in which this is shown is in the frequent biographical allusions embodied in the names of New England towns. Massachusetts has most of them, and Rhode Island has none, but all the other states have done something toward paying their debt to history in this way. Connecticut is the only one which has a Cromwell; but two have a Milton; two, a Walpole; two, a Chatham; and two, a Wellington and Hampden each. William Pitt, however, seems to have been the general favorite, as is indicated by a Pittsfield in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont. Five of the states have a Washington; three, a Clinton; two, a Hancock, a Webster, a Monroe, a Randolph, a Franklin and a Stark each. Trumbull and Putnam are commemorated in Connecticut; Otis, Blackstone, Adams, Pepperell, Williams, Brewster, Marion, Revere and Quincy in

Massachusetts; Jefferson, Jackson and Madison in New Hampshire, and Jay in Vermont.

It is interesting to note that there is a Plymouth in every state but Rhode Island, and also that the characteristic affixes most commonly used in the names of towns would indicate, if they were determined consciously, a preference for city rather than country life. Considering the rural habits and occupations of the colonists and their immediate descendants, one might have looked for a preponderance of names with such endings as field, ham, (hamlet), brook, ford or chester. In fact, however, those ending in ton or town largely outnumber the others in every state. A simple table will serve to show the preferences of the fathers in this respect.

One may easily exaggerate the significance of this showing by overlooking the fact that the duplication of English names in this country often indicates a mere survival of old home attachments. The idea of a town or city differed too in ancient use from the conception which we have of it in America. The question of population did not originally enter into the account, but the fact of its intrinsic importance as a cathedral town entitled a place to the distinction of being a city. Under the modern industrial system, where great aggregations of people assume a corporate existence under one government which is self-administered, the pride of numbers has come to have an entirely new influence. We have cities sometimes in which the only ideal suggestion resides in the name which has come down to them. We may hope that this strain of freshness and beauty which we have received from English and native sources alike will help in time to correct the over-practical tendencies of our life.

O

A

THOUGHTFUL

Gallic penman wrote that "there is nothing beautiful, sweet or grand in life but its mysteries; " and we may well agree with him that those

Yorkes

things which lie beyond the scope of sense and reveal themselves only to the eye of sentiment give life and meaning to everything about us. What are the crowding tenement and lofty mansions, the massive towers and cloud-kissing spires of a great city, if the mind contemplating them does not feel behind them the varied forces which have contributed to the city's construction, from the time when its last building was completed, back to the pioneers who fixed upon its site in the wilderness, or among the ruins of aboriginal camps?

Here on the shores of Casco Bay, by shelly beach and bowlder-strewn headland, or under the dark pines which shade its verdant slopes, we may picture to ourselves scenes which have taken place, now visible but to the eye of imagination, but as real as any which lie within the compass of bodily sight. Here the ice age reigned, holding the land with relentless grasp and crushing out every vestige of life which it sustained. Glaciers from the north, resistless save by the sea, which devoured them as they advanced, tore the mountain crags from their foundations and strewed them along their way; forces of hidden origin, amid terrors too appalling for human vision to behold, moulded the peninsula known by the red man as Machegonne, outlining valley, and cove, and waterway, lifting crag and hill to place, and making them things of beauty to delight forever the eyes of man.

Thus this beautiful peninsula, rising above the blue sea, adorned with sheltering groves and verdant glades kept fresh

by perennial springs, in due time became the Bonaien abode of men, of wild

ture.

men whose tastes were simple and wants such as sea and forest could amply supply. Generation after generation of these people came into existence and passed out of it as the seasons rolled by, cherishing with childish delight the mysteries of a past of which they knew little, until a time came when a greater wonder than any of which they had before dreamed appeared to their awe-stricken vision. In from the mysterious sea, whose boundless waters somewhere in space washed the shores of dreamland, came a ship a white-winged monster it seemed to their eyes-bearing visitants whose aspect and speech were to them alike strange: indeed superior beings. Along the shores which the red men had ever regarded as their own, these white-faced men erected their habitations; and Machegonne began to be the abode of civilization.

Who were these early comers? Some have supposed them adventurers from the sterile shores of Greenland, the kin of the Norse sea-kings, whose dragon prows were the terror of those who dwelt by the sea; but no remains exist on the shores of Maine to give support to this supposition. The Venetian Cabots may have looked into the harbor palisaded by wooded islands, or the Spanish Cortereals, or the weather-beaten toilers of the sea from the rocky shores of Brittany, or Verrazzano, or Pring, or Gosnold; but this is uncertain. Providence seems to have jealously preserved this jewel for the Anglo-Saxon; for even that noble man, the brave and pious Champlain, when in the spring of 1606, after a winter of suffering at Saint Croix, he searched the coast for a site upon which to plant his colony, was not permitted to look

upon it. Passing outside the islands at its mouth, he skirted the shores of Cape Elizabeth, not suspecting that he had passed the noblest haven to shelter the ships of his beloved France to be found on the coast. And what a Providence was this! for Champlain, noble as he was, represented a power which was a menace to human liberty and progress; and had Gallic government been set up here, the history of the continent might have been widely different from what it is. Two years after this, Ralegh Gilbert, exploring the coast from Sagadahoc, probably looked into the harbor of Machegonne, and perhaps drank of the spring at Clay Cove; and in 1614 the ship of Captain John Smith anchored. here, seeking fish and furs. Thomas Dermer, too, in 1619, the agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the father of American colonization, must have been here when exploring the coast, and have taken account of the advantages which the harbor afforded for a maritime settlement. Still we have no definite description of the locality from any of these.

In 1623 Christopher Levett, the son of an innkeeper of York, in the native county of Frobisher, inspired with a zeal for adventure, conceived the plan of founding a city in New England. In furtherance of this project he obtained, May 5, 1623, from the council established at Plymouth for governing New England, a grant of six thousand acres of land to be located by him upon any territory belonging to the council. Levett well understood the advantage of official patronage, and he at once undertook to enlist the interest of Lord Conway, then Secretary of State, Lord Scrope, and even royalty itself in his enterprise. To gain the support of his Yorkshire friends, as well as to gratify his patriotic pride, he proposed to name this projected city in the New World, York, in honor of the stately city of his nativity. His efforts in obtaining financial support for his enterprise do not appear to have been attended with much success; but his energy attracted the attention of Sir Ferdinando

Gorges, who was about to send his younger son Robert to the New World to represent the council of which Sir Fer

dinando was the moving spirit, as Governor and Lieutenant General of New England, and Levett received the appointment of councillor in the new government.

Thus equipped, Levett set out on his voyage, and in early autumn reached the mouth of the Piscataqua, where he met Gorges, and assisted him in setting up. the forms of government within the domain of the council. This duty accomplished, he set out on a voyage of exploration eastward, being joined on the way by men whom he had engaged to accompany him. The season was late for exploration, and Levett possessed only open boats with which to coast along the wild shores of Maine, bleak and dangerous in winter; but with a bold heart and cheerful spirit he pushed on, lightening hunger and hardships with a quaint tale or pleasant joke. At night Levett and his men encamped on the seashore, protecting themselves from the wintry storms which swept around them as best they could by such rude structures as they were able to hastily erect. After several days of severe toil and exposure, the islands at the mouth of Portland harbor were reached. Levett examined the harbor and passed up Fore River, which he was told by the Indians abounded in salmon in their season. Upon this pleasant stream he bestowed his own name; and wishing to continue his explorations farther east, he passed around Munjoy to the mouth of the Presumpscot. The shores of this charming river and the lofty island at its mouth, dividing its waters as they mingle with the sea, were the haunt of the red man. To an Indian town located near the first fall of the Presumpscot, which Levett declared to be "bigger than the fall at London Bridge," he proceeded, and was received in friendly fashion by the chief residing there, Skitterygusset by name, who gave him comfortable shelter in the royal wigThe town was a convenient rendezvous for the eastern Indians on their way west to barter their furs with the English traders, who were now becoming numerous on the coast; and while sojourning with the friendly chief of the Presumpscot, Levett became acquainted

wam.

with a number of the friends of his host, both from the east and west. With these rude people he was soon on friendly terms; and when he started to pursue his explorations eastward, Sadamoyt, the sagamore of the Penobscots, pressed upon him a beaver skin, then the savage's most coveted treasure, as a token of his esteem for the Yorkshire adventurer.

Though Levett had probably determined already to locate his grant from the council for New England about Portland harbor, he extended his explorations to the neighborhood of Sagadahoc, where his patron Gorges, always confident of retrieving his failure under Popham and Gilbert, cherished the idea of founding a "state county" and building a city which should have the honor of being christened by the king.

Levett, in his exploration of the Maine coast, found the natives hospitable; and although he saw sites suitable for settlement at many points along the coast, his heart was fixed on the region about Portland harbor, which experience told him afforded a site of unsurpassed advantages for a maritime city. After a brief exploration of the coast to the east, he returned there and selected the site for his proposed city of York. With conspicuous wisdom, instead of seizing upon the land by virtue of his English patent, as others had usually done in the New World, in disregard of the natives' rights, he proceeded to obtain from Cogawesco, the sagamore of Casco, and his wife, to whom the land belonged by inheritance, the right of occupation. He accomplished this in an amicable manner, and then, to afford shelter and protection for his men, erected a fortified dwelling upon one of the islands at the mouth of the harbor. Here he placed a garrison of ten men; and in the summer of 1624, greatly to the grief of the 'Indians, whose friendship he had won by his unselfish course, he set sail for England, in order to obtain men and means to enlarge his enterprise. The friendly savages, who stood on the shore regretting his departure, and saw the ship which bore him vanish from sight, looked upon him no more. He had promised them

that he would return after some moons, and they talked of his coming, and speculated upon the cause of his delay; yet he returned no more than the friends who had passed to those realms of mystery where dwelt their shadowy gods.

When Levett reached England he found affairs there unpropitious for advancing his colonial projects. The charter of the council for New England was on trial, and had been pronounced a monopoly dangerous to the public weal. There was also threatened trouble with Spain, and France was claiming the territory where he had located his prospective colony. Men who under favorable circumstances would have listened to his enthusiastic description of the new country over the sea were not disposed to risk their lives and money in a scheme likely to be overthrown by foreign power; and, baffled but not disheartened, he was obliged to wait for happier times.

What

Over two years passed away. had in this time become of his fortified dwelling in Portland harbor, and the men he had left there, we know not. The pretensions of the French king had just been put to rest, and interest in colonial enterprises began to revive. Levett seized the occasion to press his design upon the attention of the king, and with the aid of powerful friends succeeded in obtaining a proclamation directed to the ecclesiastical authorities, requiring the churches of York to take up a contribution in aid of the colonial enterprise in Casco Bay. The king's reasons for this extraordinary order were that, his colonial plans in New England having been interrupted by his difficulties with France and Spain, it had become necessary, in order to secure English interests in the new land, to render assistance to those who had entered upon such enterprises, and that, as his "wellbeloved subject, Christopher Levett," was willing to risk to the utmost both life and estate in order to establish a colony in New England, and was well acquainted with the Indians, he had thought best not only to make him Governor of New England, but to order churchmen to contribute means to aid him in his undertaking, the success of which would enable the