92 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE 



had sailed thither for forty-two successive years. We pass rap- 

 idly to De Monts, at Nova Scotia in 1604, wintering with the 

 colony at St. Croix. During that year he wrote from the banks 

 of the St. Lawrence, "The Indians tell us of a beautiful river 

 far to the south, which they call the Merrimack." The dream 

 of this river haunted him, and in 1605 he accompanied Cham- 

 plain on a voyage of discovery southward along the coast. In 

 that year we find him at the Isles of Shoals and Portsmouth har- 

 bor. Passing down the coast they discovered the Merrimack, 

 which Champlain named "La Riviere du Gas," (duGuast) in 

 honor of De Monts. In 161 1 the Jesuits came, to rescue the 

 perishing souls of the natives, and incidentally to become pro- 

 prietors of "the greater part of the future United States and 

 British Provinces." To quote the text of Parkman, "On the 

 banks of James River was a nest of woe-begone Englishmen, a 

 handful of Dutch fur-traders at the mouth of the Hudson, and 

 a few shivering Frenchmen among the snow-drifts of Arcadia; 

 while deep within the wild monotony of desolation, on the icy 

 verge of the great northern river, the hand of Champlain upheld 

 the fleur-de-lis on the rock of Quebec." 



In this brief recount of years we have almost unconsciously 

 drawn the lines of a historical triangulation, with New Hamp- 

 shire at the centre. The converging lines, in the years imme- 

 diately following, drew toward us from three cardinal points — 

 south, east, and north. Nearly a full quarter-century elapsed 

 between the earliest white settlements at Quebec and Montreal 

 and that of the Plymouth colony in 1620 ; this was separated by 

 thirteen years from the date of the Popham colony at the mouth 

 of the Kennebec, in 1607, while the Piscataqua settlement in 

 1623 closely followed that at Plymouth. The whole time em- 

 braced between 1600 and 1750 —a round century and a half — 

 constituted this great transition period from barbarity to civili- 

 zation. It is the task of the careful student of the past to illus- 

 trate the striking details, at once picturesque and shameless, of 

 this border-land of American history. 



