UrfosiffifnglatrtJS Earitits. 37 



New-England is by fome affirmed to be an Ifland, 

 bounded on the North with the [5] River Canada, (fo 



edit. 1, vol. ii. pp. 67, 89). Darby Field, "an Irishman living about Pascata- 

 quack," has the honor of being the first European who set foot upon the summit 

 of Mount Washington. He appears at Exeter in 1639, and was at Dover in 1645, 

 and died there in 1649, leaving a widow, and, it is said, children (A. H. Quint, 

 Is. E. Geneal. Reg., vol. vi. p. 3S). It seems likely, from his account, that Field, 

 on reaching the Indian town in the Saco Valley, " at the foot of the hill " where 

 the "two branches of Saco river met," pursued his way up the valley either of 

 Rocky Branch or of Ellis River, till he gradually attained to the region of dwarf 

 firs, on what is known as Boott's Spur, which is between the " valley " called 

 Oakes's Gulf, in which the "Mount Washington" branch of the Saco has its 

 head, and the valley in which the Rocky Branch rises (see G. P. Bond's Map of 

 the White Mountains). There is no other way that shall fulfil the conditions 

 of the narrative except that over Boott's Spur; but of the three streams, that is, 

 " the two branches of Saco River," which come together at or near the probable 

 site of the Indian town, the Rocky Branch is the shortest, and its valley the most 

 ascending. Field repeated his visit, with some others, "about a month after;" 

 and later, in the same year, the mountains were visited by the worshipful Thomas 

 Gorges. Esq., Deputy-Governor, and Richard Vines, Esq., Councillor of the Pro- 

 vince of Maine, of which Winthrop takes notice at p. 89. Whether Josselyn 

 went up himself, or had his account from others, does not appear. But his call- 

 ing the mountains " inaccessible but by the gullies," leaves it at least supposable, 

 that he, or the party from which he got his information (perhaps Gorges's), 

 instead of gradually ascending the long ridges, or spurs, penetrated into one of 

 the gulfs (as they are there called), or ravines, of the eastern side; the walls of 

 which are exceedingly steep, and literally inaccessible in many parts, except by 

 the gullies. The " large level or plain of a day's journey over, whereon grows 

 nothing but moss," is noticed in Winthrop's account of Gorges's ascent, but not 

 in that of Field's; and this plain — which doubtless includes what has since been 

 called "Bigelow's Lawn " (lying immediately under the south-eastern side of the 

 summit of Mount Washington), but understood also, in Gorges's account, to ex- 

 tend northward as far as the " Lake of the Clouds " — furnishes another ground 

 for supposing that the last-mentioned explorer, or, at least, Josselyn, may have 

 penetrated the mountain by one of its eastern ravines; several of which head in 

 the great plain mentioned, while that is rather remote from what we have taken 

 for Field's " ridge." Our author is the only authority for the " pond of clear 

 water in the midst of" the top of Mount Washington ; though a somewhat capa- 

 cious spring, which was well known there before the putting-up of the house on 

 the summit, may have been larger once; or he may rather have mistaken, or 

 misremembered, the position of the Lake of the Clouds. 



