for whose interests he had appeared even before the Privy Council. He died in 1628, leaving his wife and infant son to garrison the island, and to give generous hospitality to the colonists of Boston and Dorchester. "After the arrival of the Puritan fleet, the good Episcopalian lady abandoned her snug Atlantis, and sailed away to where she could hear once more the familiar Let your light so shine' in some distant prelatical realms." In 1634 Massachusetts granted the island to Dorchester, which leased it for twenty pounds a year, the revenue to be applied for a schoolmaster. It has been said that this was "the first public provision made for a free school in the world, by a direct tax or assessment on the inhabitants of a town." Fourteen years later came David's son, John Thompson, demanding his birthright, and bringing affidavits from Trevour, Standish, Blackstone, and Masconomo, to prove his claim. The General Court found his title good, and restored the island to him, giving to Dorchester, in lieu thereof, a thousand acres in the present town of Lunenburg. Six years later the Indian Winnequassam claimed the island, but was decided against by the courts. John Thompson returned to England, and sold the island to two Bristol merchants. The region was well known by these people; for since 1622 ships of Bristol had visited the southern part of Boston Harbor, at the annual fishing season, exchanging guns and ammunition for beaver, marten and musquash skins. For the next century and a

half the island was used for farming. In 1775, American foragers destroyed the houses. In 1834 the proprietors of the Boston Farm School purchased the estate for $6000; and it was annexed to Boston, but with the right reserved to the people of Dorchester of digging clams on its banks. This "Farm School" is not a reformatory institution, but a home-school for teaching practical farming and common educational branches to indigent American boys of good character. Some of the graduates of this school have occupied high and honorable positions in the outer world; and many of them visit the island in afterlife to renew their memories of the place once so dear to them. Hawthorne once visited the Farm School, and thus reported his experience:

A stroll around the island, examining the products, as wheat in sheaves on the stubblefield; oats somewhat blighted and spoiled; great pumpkins elsewhere; pastures; mowing ground all cultivated by the boys. Their residence, a great brick building, painted green, and standing on the summit of a rising ground, exposed to the winds of the bay. Vessels flitting past; great ships with intricacy of rigging and various sails; schooners, sloops, with their one or two broad sheets of canvas; going on different tacks, so that the spectator might think that there was a different wind for each vessel, or that they scudded across the sea, spontaneously whither their own wills led them. The farm boys remain insulated looking at the

passing show, within sight of the city, yet having nothing to do with it, beholding their fellow-creatures skimming by them in winged machines, and steamboats snorting and puffing through the waves. Methinks an island would be the most desirable of all landed property, for it seems like a little world by itself; and the water may answer for the atmosphere that surrounds planets. The boys swinging, two together, standing up, and almost causing the ropes and their bodies to stretch out horizontally. On our departure they ranged themselves on the rails of the fence, and, being dressed in blue, looked not unlike a flock of pigeons.

In 1840 Hon. Theodore Lyman planted the grove of trees on West Head. He also bequeathed $10,000 to the Farm School.

Squantum is about half a mile from Thompson's Island. It is a double-headed peninsula projecting into the harbor at the mouth of the Neponset. The origin of the name of this locality is uncertain. There is an old tradition that an Indian squaw once threw herself from the cliff into the sea, and the people named the locality "Squaw Tumble.” Better reasons there are for believing it to have been named in honor of Tisquanto, the Indian chief who first befriended the Pilgrims. It was Tisquanto who went with Myles Standish in the fall of 1621, when the Plymouth Pilgrims became curious about the Massachusees, and ordered Myles Standish "to goe amongst them: partly to see the countrey, partly to make peace with them, and partly to procure their trucke." So the "captain" took nine men and Tisquanto, the interpreter, and sailed away at midnight. They landed at daylight, and Standish and his men found Obbatinewat, the Massachusee sachem, and persuaded him to acknowledge the English authority, and then marched inland. Morton said: "Chalke stones their are near squanto's Chapell, shewed me by a Salvage."

John Lothrop Motley in his romance of " Merry-Mount " wrote:

Over at Squanto's chapel yonder is a fountain of a most remarkable power; for its waters cause a deep sleep of forty-eight hours to those who drink forty-eight ounces at a draught, and so on proportionably."

As a reason for this property, he suggests that

the Puritans of Plymouth have buried their oldest and most soporific sermons within the grave of their honored and red-legged friend Squantum who lies buried there. But, whatever be the cause, the fact is unquestionable. The great Powahs were accustomed to go thither to drink of the fountain, and when filled with its inspiration they would astonish their disciples with the multitude and magnificence of their visions.

The first white proprietor of Squantum was the Scotchman, David Thompson, who dwelt on Thompson's Island. It was afterwards owned by Deputy Governor Roger Ludlow, brother-in-law to Gover

nor John Endicott, who is spoken of as "a pious gentleman of good family." He was ambitious, and being disappointed at not receiving the chief magistracy, went off to Connecticut and then to Virginia, where he died. The next owner was Mr. Newbury, the ancestor of the celebrated geologist; and then John Glover, who established a tannery here, and had large herds of cattle grazing on the hills. The rocky pile of Musquantum Chapel (whose projecting ledges form a remarkable profile of the human face), was a favorite landmark as early as 1632. In 1716 Squantum was set apart for a hospital to receive the sick from vessels entering the Bay. But Dorchester, Milton, and Braintree protested against it, and the scheme was abandoned. At one time Squantum bade fair to become a popular summer resort; but the recent construction of the great Boston sewer across its front has brought armies of laborers here, and makes its present condition the reverse of æsthetic.

The Pilgrim feasts of Squantum were in ancient times celebrated with great enthusiasm late in August of each year and attracted many notables and great crowds of the yeomanry. In 1812 the feast was attended by Governor Strong, Lieutenant Governor Phillips, Commodore Bainbridge and many other eminent men, besides a number of Southern gentlemen, and the cutter Washington anchored off the Point and fired salutes from her artillery. These annual rejoicings were in honor of the Pilgrim Fathers, who, doubtless, would have been scandalized at their hearty merry-makings. The easy access from the town rendered the feasts very attractive to the solid old merchants of Boston, who could drive thither in seven miles, over the pleasant Dorchester roads, or sail across from Long wharf, three miles.

The following extract from "A Pictorial Geography of the World" by Samuel G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), published in Boston, 1840, is of interest:

The Feast of Squantum is held annually on the shore of the east of Neponset Bridge, at a rocky point projecting into Boston Bay, about five miles from the city. The observance of this festival is on the wane. Squantum was the name of the last Indian female [sic] who resided there, and when the feast is held with the ancient ceremonies a person comes forth dressed as Squantum herself [sic] and harangues the people in the metaphorical manner of the Indians."

During the late war, when political parties were violent, the Feast of Squantum was attended by crowds, and, in fact, both parties had a distinct celebration. Some of the ceremonies consisted of brightening the chain of peace, and in burying the tomahawk in a place indicated by the representative of Squantum. A Sachem, too, dressed in blanket and moccasins, would sometimes assume the direction of the feast. The Indian phraseology is affected, and the notification of the feast sets forth that the 'wigwam will contain all the good things of the sea and sand," and it is

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commonly dated at the new moon of the month of string beans. It is a "feast of shells," and the refreshments are lobsters, clams, oysters, quahags [sic] and every fish that is covered with a shell, together with the fish soup called chowder. It is common to eat these only with clam shells, instead of spoons, and it is not held to be proper to drink from any thing but wood. This is the only observance that reminds the present proprietors of the simple race from whom they wrested or received the possession.

Edward Everett wrote:

In my youth I often heard of the last Massachusetts Indian, who lived in a lonely wigwam on Stoughton Pond, and used to come down once or twice a year to the seaside; hovering a day or two about Squantum; catching a few fish at the Lower Mills; then strolling off into the woods, and with plaintive wailings cut away the bushes from an ancient mound, which, as he thought, covered the ashes of his fathers; and then go back, a silent, broken, melancholy man the last of a perished race.1

E. T. H.

1 This paragraph is quoted, in substance only, from his "Dorchester in 1630, 1776, and 1855," page 39. The preceding quotations, on pages 536-540, from Prince, Hawthorne, Motley, and Goodrich, follow the originals, also in substance.

LIST OF DONORS TO THE LIBRARY.

United States. - Commissioner of Edu- | Bostonian Society.

Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

Connecticut Historical Society.

Connecticut State Library.

Cornell University

Dartmouth College.

Daughters of Cincinnati, New York.

American Academy of Arts and Sci- Diocese of Massachusetts.

Diocese of Vermont.

Dorchester Historical Society.

American Board of Commissioners for Essex Institute.