CHAPTER II. THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH. JUST when and where the first white man stepped upon the shores of Agawam we may not hope to discover. As early as 1608, as Captain John Smith mentions in his History of Virginia, Captain Harlow, Master of the ship Ordnance, touched here, while on a voyage in the interest of an English company, which included John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, to the grant it had obtained about the Kennebec. But one item of that visit has been preserved,-"the people at Agawam used them kindly." Smith, himself, landed here in 1614, and says of Augoan, as he calls it, "this place might content a right. curious judgement; but there are many sands at the entrance of the Harbour, and the worst is, it is imbayed too farre from the deepe sea. Here are many rising hills, and on their tops and descents are many corne fields, and delightfull groves. On the East is an Isle of two or three leagues in length; the one half plaine marish ground, fit for pasture, or salt ponds, with many faire high groves of mulberry trees and gardens. There is also Okes, Pines, Walnuts and other wood to make this place an excellent habitation, being a good and safe harbor." Thomas Morton in his "New English Canaan," and William Wood in "New England's Prospect" record the habit of the Indians of burning over the country in November. By this means, the dense undergrowth was destroyed, large tracts were made passable for the hunter, and easily capable of tillage, and the heavy woods grew like groves in a great park. The Pilgrim explorers found "a high ground, where there is a great deal of land cleared and hath been planted with corn," and good Pastor Higginson, of Salem, wrote to his friends in the old country, that he had been told, that a man might stand on a little hilly place about three miles from Salem and "see divers thousands of acres of ground as good as need to be, and not a tree in the same." When the lands were apportioned among the settlers. the broad summits of Heartbreak, Sagamore and Town Hills were assigned as planting lots, and the mystery attending the choice of the hill tops for tillage instead of the rich and level lowlands may be solved by these records. The Indians had cleared these slopes with patient industry and planted them with corn, and the new owners of the land enjoyed the fruits of their toil. News of the pleasantness of the Indian village, its good land and rich fisheries spread abroad. The Pilgrims, shivering in their rude huts at Plymouth, debated whether they should not migrate at once to this Land of Promise. Mourt, in his Relation under date of December, 1620, says that some of them, "urged greatly the going to Anguum or Angoum, a place twenty leagues off to the Northward, which they heard to be an excellent harbor for ships, better ground and better fishing." But they chose to remove to some less distant spot should removal become necessary. From time to time, settlers came and built their cabins, to fish for sturgeon, cod and salmon, and gather beaver skins and other peltry from the natives by barter, individual adventurers or employees of some English trading company, and they were not molested by the Indian warriors. The first Englishman, whose name has been preserved, was William Jeffreys. Jeffreys was never a resident, so far as is known. In 1623, he came over in Robert Gorges' company and settled at Wessagussett, now Weymouth, and in 1630 was reckoned one of the principal men of that little hamlet. Prior to 1633, however, he must have been in this neighborhood, for Great Neck was called Jeffrey's Neck from the beginning. As late as 1666 he claimed ownership, and the General Court voted him 500 acre elsewhere, "to be a final issue of all claims by virtue of any grant, heretofore made by any Indians, whatsoever." The formal occupation and settlement of Agawam were now at hand. By a grant of King James, on Nov. 3, 1620, the whole country from the 40th to the 48th degree of latitude, reaching from Philadelphia to the Bay of Chaleur had been granted to the "council at Plymouth" so called, headed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. This company made no serious attempt |