HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 301 



Dighton Rock inscription, extending over nearly two centuries ; and 

 the more recent researches into the origin and history of the Newport 

 Tower : we might have good reason to assume that all inquiry after 

 liistoric footprints had been delayed until their last traces had been 

 obliterated by successive generations of colonists in the long-settled 

 New England States. Happily^ the history of the Dighton Rock re- 

 futes this assumption, and furnishes good reason for believing that no 

 important ante-Columbian monument has disappeared within the period 

 of Anglo-American occupation. The long unheeded Round Tower 

 adds its confirmation to the same belief. Probably no member of the 

 Rhode Island Historical Society now doubts that in the picturesque ruin 

 which has acquired an additional interest by the learned strife to which 

 it has given rise, we have the identical structure referred to in the will 

 of Benedict Arnold, first governor under the Charter granted by 

 Charles II. to the Colony of Rhode Island, and Providence planta- 

 tions, in 1663. He had removed from Providence to Newport ten 

 years previously ; and in his will, dated there, the 20th of December, 

 167f, he thus directs : " My body I desire and appoint to be buried 

 at ye North East corner of a parcel of ground containing three rod 

 square being of and lying in my land in or near ye line or path from 

 my dwelling-house leading to my stone built wind-mill in ye town of 

 Newport." In another clause he bequeathes the same "stone built 

 wind mill " to his wife Damaris Arnold, and after her decease to his 

 youngest daughter, Freelove Arnold, having provided for his elder 

 daughter, Godsgiffc, in other clauses. The names are character- 

 istic of the old Puritan, whose father was one of those who came 

 from Salem to Providence, and shared the latter with Roger Williama 

 in 1636. An entry in the Journal of Peter Easton, one of the first 

 settlers, records, under the date of Aug. 28th, 1675, a great storm, 

 which " blew down our wind mill and did much harm."* The brief 

 interval between this date and that of Governor Arnold's will, leaves 

 little room for doubt as to that of the stone-built one which he there 

 devises to his heirs. The date and its associations, though unaccept- 

 able to those who would fain decypher runic inscriptions of the tenth 

 or eleventh century on the Dighton Rock, identify the first Norse 

 discoverers, and trace out their settlements in the Vinland of the 

 Sagas : is nevertheless one sufficiently near that initial date of a.d. 



* The controversy touching the Old Stone Mill in the Town of Newport, Rhode 

 Island. Newport, 1861, p. 64. 



