6 ORIGIN OF NAME, BEVERLY. 



l)een settled soon after Woodbury :ind Brackenbury planted 

 about Mackerel Cove and began to push their explorations 

 on this line towards the "great pond side." Be this as it 

 may, there was trade very early between Beverly and the 

 Sugar Islands of the Antilles, and one of these had been 

 discovered by the great Columbus in 1493 and by him 

 named Montserrat. The rocky, towering, jagged face it 

 shows to the voyager from the east prompted him to be- 

 stow upon it the name of a great, strongly-fortified, ser- 

 rated or saw-toothed crag near Barcelona, familiar enough 

 to every Mediterranean sailor, — the Mons Serratus of the 

 Koman voyager, the Monte Serrado of the Castilian friar, 

 — abruptly towering four thousand feet and more out of a 

 level plain, — wildly cleft at the hour of the crucifixion, so 

 runs the legend, into pinnacle and precipice and crag and 

 spire, a sort of natural cathedral of Milan, and crowned 

 on one of its loftiest isolated peaks with a mediasval Ben- 

 edictine Abbey where the imperial recluse, Charles V, 

 spent the evening of his life, — now visited by eighty thou- 

 sand pilgrims every year, — rich in magnificent altar plate 

 and candlesticks and jewels and priestly vestments, — a 

 great, monastic shrine of refuge dedicated to the Virgin 

 whose little ebon image, hidden there from the Moors in 

 the year 717, and miraculously saved, was in 1881 blessed 

 and honored with a silver crown by Pope Leo XIII. The 

 name Montserrat occurs also in Switzerland and perhaps 

 in other mountain regions of Europe but under circum- 

 stances which make it almost impossible that the charming 

 spot now under notice should have been indebted to either 

 of these places for its romantic designation. The island of 

 Montserrat had its earthquake in 1843, yet still produces 

 the best and largest crops of lime fruit in the world. 



But accept what solution we may of the riddle about 

 the name of Montserrat, the case of the word "Beverly". 



