184 
CAPE^ COD. 
sels at the wharves of a large city. As they had been 
manoeuvring out there all day seemingly for our enter¬ 
tainment, while we were walking northwestward along 
the Atlantic, so now we found them flocking into Prov- 
incetown Harbor at night, just as we arrived, as if to 
meet us, and exhibit themselves close at hand. Stand¬ 
ing by Race Point and Long Point with various speed, 
they reminded me of fowls coming home to roost. 
These were genuine New England vessels. It is 
stated in the Journal of Moses Prince, a brother of the 
annalist, under date of 1721, at which time he visited 
Gloucester, that the first vessel of the class called 
schooner was built at Gloucester about eight years before, 
by Andrew Robinson; and late in the same century one 
Cotton Tufts gives us the tradition with some particulars, 
which he learned on a visit to the same place. Accord¬ 
ing to the latter, Robinson having constructed a vessel 
which he masted and rigged in a peculiar manner, on her 
going off the stocks a by-stander cried out, ‘‘ 0, how she 
scoons ! ” whereat Robinson replied, “ A schooner let 
her he ! ” From which time,” says Tufts, “ vessels 
thus masted and rigged have gone by the name of 
schooners ; before which, vessels of this description were 
not known in Europe.” (See Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. 
IX., 1st Series, and Vol. L, 4th Series.) Yet I can 
hardly believe this, for a schooner has always seemed to 
me — the typical vessel. 
According to C. E. Potter of Manchester, New 
Hampshire, the very word schooner is of New England 
origin; being from the Indian schoon or scoot^ meaning to 
rush, as Schoodic, from scoot and anJce^ a place where 
water rushes. N. B. Somebody of Gloucester was to 
read a paper on this matter before a genealogical society, 
