218 
CAFF. COD. 
was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their en¬ 
terprise the enterprise of traders. Cabot spoke like an 
Englishman, as he was, if he said, as one reports, in 
reference to the discovery of the American Continent, 
when he found it running toward the north, that it was 
a great disappointment to him, being in his way to 
India ; but we would rather add to than detract from 
the fame of so great a discoverer. 
Samuel Penhallow, in his History (Boston, 1726), 
p. 51, speaking of “ Port Poyal and Nova Scotia,” says 
of the last, that its “ first seizure was by Sir Sebastian 
Cobbet for the crown of Great Britain, in the reign 
of King Henry YIL; but lay dormant till the year 
1621,” when Sir William Alexander got a patent of it, 
and possessed it some years ; and afterward Sir David 
Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, “ to the surprise 
of all thinking men, it was given up unto the French.” 
Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the first 
Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, who was not the 
most likely to be misinformed, who, moreover, has the 
fame^ at least, of having discovered Wachusett Moun¬ 
tain (discerned it forty miles inland), talking about the 
Great Lake ” and the hideous swamps about it,” near 
which the Connecticut and the “ Potomack ” took their 
rise; and among the memorable events of the year 
1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irishman’s expe¬ 
dition to the “ White hill,” from whose top he saw east¬ 
ward what he “judged to be the Gulf of Canada,” and 
westward what he “judged to be the great lake which 
Canada River comes out of,” and where he found much 
“Muscovy glass,” and “could rive out pieces of forty 
feet long and seven or eight broad.” While the very 
inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the 
