HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 303 



1648 . 8. IVN.F. 

 LEO PARIS . IN . 

 CAPVC . MISS. 

 POSVI HOC FV- 

 NDT M IN HNR- 

 EM NRiE DM^ 

 SANCTtE SPEI 



The inscription, it will be seen, commemorates the erection in what 

 was then a part of La Nouvelle France, of, as may be presumed, a 

 Mission Chapel of the Capuchins, dedicated to our Lady of Holy 

 Hope. Charlevoix, in his Histoire General de la Nouvelle France, 

 refers to a visit of the Jesuit Father, Dreuillettes, to a Hospice of the 

 Capuchin Fathers on the Kennebec river, in 1 &'kQ ; and states that at 

 that date, — only two years before the event commemorated in the in- 

 scription, — they had another mission house at Pentagoet. The Capu- 

 chin Fathers were a fraternity belonging to the Franciscan Order of 

 Mendicant Friars, whose mission here, and in the Kennebec region, 

 appears to have been, not to the Indians, but to the French colonists 

 of Acadia and the neighbouring mainland. The inscribed plate re- 

 cords the laying of the foundation stone in which it was deposited, by 

 brother Leo of Paris, at the date named ; and may be read in extenso 

 thus : — 1648, ^ junii, f rater Leo Parisiensis, in Capucinorum missione 

 posui hoc fundamentum in honor em Nostrce Domince Sanctce Spei. 



The date, though so modern, according to the estimate of European 

 antiquaries, carries the mind back to a very primitive period in the 

 history of Maine ; and the interest of the inscription is enhanced by 

 the associations connected with the site of the building it commemor- 

 ates. ''Few spots on the coast of New England can boast so much 

 natural beauty, and none has had the vicissitudes of its history so in- 

 terwoven with the history of different nations, as the peninsula of Pen- 

 tagoet, Penobscot, Castine." The date also has its own peculiar sig- 

 nificance in the past history of the New England States. This might 

 be illustrated by various contemporary events. Perhaps the most 

 memorable, as it is the most characteristic, is that in that very year — 

 when Europe was arranging the peace of Westphalia, — witchcraft 

 came to a head in the New World, and the first of the New England 

 witches was hanged in Massachusetts Bay. 



