414 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



this matter. When this was written, at once, or long after 

 the voyage from memory, we know not. This "relation" 

 was not printed, and this name not known, for more than 

 twenty years, and then only by a single mention in only one 

 book, with a curious spelling, and not recognized after that 

 for nearly twenty years more, when the owner, who had re- 

 ceived it by grant without a name, conveyed it through an 

 agent, presumal)ly taking the one he gave from Purchas, 

 where it stands to this day, with no imaginable reason for its 

 bestowal. On the other hand, we have an unbroken tradi- 

 tion, running from any time after the discovery of the island 

 down to 1692 of individuals most directly interested in the 

 island, — of the grantee and owner, — of various of the in- 

 habitants, — of all the historians of the times, and of the 

 records of three colonial governments and of two courts of 

 judicature, — all agreeing on a name for the giving of which 

 there was good occasion, and which would have been quite 

 consistent with the discoverer's habit of giving names to un- 

 important localities. 



Tradition is often more conclusive, more thoroughly con- 

 vincing than a questionable writing, and especially so when 

 its sources are consentaneous and unvarying. Upon tradi- 

 tion depend many of the facts and deductions in that holy 

 book which is our guide in this life and our directory for that 

 which is to come. How much, too, of historic lore, inter- 

 esting, valuable and fully credited, has come down for years 

 before being embodied in print. 



Will it be deemed an impertinent inquiry by a curious but 

 unlearned investigator, with all these citations before him, 

 whether Capt. John Martin, as a brave explorer of this new 

 world, and as an associate and co-worker with Gosnold, had 

 not as reasonable chance to be immortalized in the nomina- 

 tion of this fair island by his fi'iend its discoverer, as any 

 unheard of, imaginary and improbable Martliaef 



JAMES S. GRINNELL. 



