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COVER AND TITLE-PAGE OF JOHN HARVARD'S BOOK.
MASSACHUSETTS HALL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, BUILT

DURING THE PRESIDENCY OF JOHN LEVERETT

GOVERNOR JOSEPH DUDLEY

MAP OF BOSTON IN 1722

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

THE OLD FEATHER STORE

FRANKLIN'S BIRTHPLACE

SAMUEL SEWALL

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THE DEANE WINTHROP HOUSE, WINTHROP
GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM'S HOUSE, CHELSEA
GREEN DRAGON TAVERN.

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THE MATHER TOMB IN THE COPP'S HILL BURYING GROUND 310

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OLD BOSTON IN COLONIAL

DAYS:

OR, ST. BOTOLPH'S TOWN

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AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

To Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the intimate friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and a man of much more than common interest in the history of Elizabethan England, is due the credit of the first enduring settlement in the environs of Boston. John Smith had skirted the coast of New England and looked with some care into Boston Harbour before Gorges came; Miles Standish had pushed up from Plymouth to trade with the Indians of this section; and Thomas Weston, soldier of fortune, had established a temporary trading-post in what is now Weymouth. But it remained for Gorges and his son Robert to plant firmly upon our shores the standard of England and to reiterate that that was the country to which, by

virtue of the Cabots, those shores rightly belonged.

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The Cabots, to be sure, had come a century and a quarter before and, since their time, explorers of several other nations had ventured to the new world — one of them even going so far as to carve his name upon the continent. But an English king had fitted out the "carvels " of John and Sebastian Cabot; and English kings were not in the habit of forgetting incidents of that sort. The letter in which Sebastian Cabot relates the story of those Bristol vessels is very quaint and interesting. "When my father," he writes, departed from Venice many yeers since to dwell in England, to follow the trade of merchandizes, he took me with him to the city of London, while I was very yong, yet having, nevertheless, some knowledge of letters, of humanity and of the Sphere. And when my father died in that time when news was brought that Don Christofer Colonus Genuse [Columbus] had discovered the coasts of India whereof was great talke in all the court of King Henry the Seventh, who then raigned, inso much that all men with great admiration affirmed it to be a thing more divine than humane, to sail by the West into the East where spices growe, by

a way that was never known before; by this fame and report there increased in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing. And, understanding by reason of the Sphere, that if I should saile by way of the Northwest winde, I should by a shorter track come into India, I thereupon caused the king to be advertised of my devise, who immediately commanded two Carvels to bee furnished with all things appertaining to the voiage, which was, as farre as I remember, in the yeere 1496, in the beginning of Sommer.

"I began therefore to saile toward the Northwest, not thinking to find any other land than that of Cathay, and from thence to turn toward India, but after certaine dayes I found that the land ranne towards the North, which was to me a great displeasure. Nevertheless, sailing along the coast to see if I could find any gulfe that turned, I found the land still continuing to the 56 deg. under our pole. And seeing that there the coast turned toward the East, despairing to find the passage, I turned back again, and sailed down by the coast of that land towards the Equinoctiall (ever with intent to find the said passage to India) and came to that part of this firme land which is now called Florida, where my victuals failing, I

departed from thence and returned into England, where I found great tumults among the people, and preparation for warrs in Scotland: by reason whereof there was no more consideration had to this voyage.' But barren of immediate results as this voyage undoubtedly was it is of immense importance to us as the first link in the chain which, for so long, bound America to England.

The next link was, of course, forged by Captain John Smith to whom New England as well as Virginia owes more than it can ever repay. About one year before the settlement of Boston by the company which came with Winthrop Smith recapitulated the affairs of New England in the following lucid manner: "When I went first to the North part of Virginia, [in 1614] where the Westerly colony [of 1607] had been planted, which had dissolved itself within a yeare, there was not one Christian in all the land. The country was then reputed a most rockie barren, desolate desart; but the good return I brought from thence, with the maps and relations I made of the country, which I made so manifest, some of them did beleeve me, and they were well embraced, both by the Londoners and the Westerlings, for whom I

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