182 Mr. Kendal’s account of the Dighton rock. 
more conversant in Indian polity. Respecting a spring, called White 
spring, rising near the foot of a hill to the northeast of the rock, at the 
distance ofa quarter of a mile both from the rock and the river, anda 
diminutive brook, called White man’s brook, running from the neigh- 
bourhood of the spring in a southwest direction, and entering the riv- 
er a little above the rock, a long, connected story is in a few mouths, 
but seems to haye reached but few ears. It is pretended, that, ac-- 
cording to an Indian tradition, there arrived in ancient times some 
white men in a bird ; that the white men took some Indians into the 
bird, as hostages ; that they filled water at the spring; that the In- 
dians fell upon and slaughtered the white men at the spring, which 
thence derives its name ; and that the hostages escaped from the bird. 
The era of this event is however rendered modern by the additional 
particular, that during the affray thunder and lightning issued from the 
bird ; and upon inquiry of one of the family of Mr. Asa Shove, to whom 
the spring belongs, I could hear no repetition of this history of its 
name, My new informant had never heard the story ; but under 
stood, that the spring received its present appellation from the death’ 
of a white hunter, who, having been heated, drank freely of its water, | 
and expired. The tradition of the dird meanwhile may have some 
foundation in the adventures of an early exploring voyage ; with an- 
other relation, that a ship’s anchor, nearly eaten away by rust, was 
many years since discovered near this place; and with the still more 
obscure account of a ship’s ribs, which lay and rotted there. In this 
place I should mention, that some Mohawk Indians, having been 
shown, as it is said, a draught of the inscription, declared its meaning | 
to be, that a dangerous animal, represented by the animal on the rock, 
had been killed at the place immortalized ; that the human figures 
represent the persons, whom the animal killed; and that the others 
denote other parts of the affair, An objection to this interpretatiom 
