94 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



Ingram's weary feet ever honored the soil of Cohasset, but 

 the story of him and of others must have been retailed here 

 in the Indian gossip. 



After the year 1600 the visits of mariners to the coast 

 of Maine were frequently described in the written docu- 

 ments of that period, and some of these adventurers no 

 doubt came in sight of the Cohasset rocks. Perhaps the 

 narrowest escape from a visit was when Martin Pring, in 

 the summer of 1603, was searching for a cargo of sassafras 

 in Massachusetts Bay, first on the north shore and then on 

 the south. But his vessel was too precious to be risked 

 among the rocks that stud our shore, and he sailed south- 

 ward till he came to the smooth harbor of Plymouth.* 

 There he loaded two vessels with sassafras ; and, after an 

 amusing adventure with the Indians, who were terrified by 

 Pring's two huge mastiff dogs, he sailed home to Bristol, 

 England. 



Two years after this, in the summer of 1605, again Co- 

 hasset narrowly escaped discovery. Samuel de Cham- 

 plain says in his " Voyages " : " On the eighteenth of June, 

 1605, Sieur de Monts set out from the island of St. Croix, 

 with some gentlemen, twenty sailors, and a savage named 

 Panounias, together with his wife whom he was unwilling 

 to leave behind," as guides to explore the coast of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay. They passed the islands of Boston Harbor, 

 July 15, which, says Cham plain, were covered with trees, 

 and they were met by great numbers of canoes with 

 Indians. 



On Sunday, the seventeenth of July, this little bark of 

 fifteen tons sailed past Point Allerton along in full sight 

 of the white granite rocks of Cohasset, outside of our 



* Palfrey and Bancroft, following the lead of Belknap, have taken Pring's visit to 

 terminate at Edgartown Harbor in Martha's Vineyard instead of Plymouth Har- 

 bor; but Dr. De Costa (N. E. Hist, and Gen, Reg., Jan., 1878) locates it at Plym- 

 outh, called by Pring " Whitson Bay." After a careful study of Pring's narrative 

 in Purchas' Pilgrims, Vol. IV, p. 1654, I am convinced thai Dr. De Costa is 

 right. 



