of Representatives and of the Senate of the United States; judges of courts; governors of different States, and one, John Brown Russwurm, a colored man, the governor of a free State in Africa; one the President of our whole country; one, Cyrus Hamlin, long a missionary in Turkey, now founding a college in the Mohammedan city of Constantinople; and about one hundred and fifty ministers of the gospel, of different denominations; some of whom are eminent preachers of the truth in our great cities, and all of them teachers of the way of salvation to their fellow-men, and examples of the Christian virtues, as was the solitary preacher of New England, REV. RICHARD SEYMOUR, the chaplain at Sagadahoc in 1607 and 1608. This Mr. Seymour, of the English Episcopal Church, preached the first sermon ever preached on "the main" of New England, August 19, 1607 [O. S.], when the colony was planted, although he had preached on Sunday, the 9th, a sermon to a part of the company on the shore of St. George's Island, twenty miles to the east.

It appears to me certain, beyond a doubt, that the river, at the mouth of which was Popham's Colony, was called by the early voyagers and most eminent writers, the river Sagadahoc; and it seems to me equally certain, that the colony was planted on the west side of the river, and not on Clark's Island, on the east side. The proof is as follows:

1. The very important and decisive "Account of the Northern Colonie, seated upon the river of Sachadehoc, by William Strachey," who was Secretary of the Virginia Colony about 1610 it was first published in this country in the first volume, fourth series, of the Massachusetts Historical Collections, 1852, edited by Rev. William S. Bartlett, Episcopal minister of Chelsea. This writer says: "They went early in the morning from their ship into the river Sachadehoc, to view the river, and to search where they might find a fitt place for their plantation.' Again, he says: "They all went ashore, and there made choice

of a place for their plantation, at the mouth or entry of the river on the west side (for the river bendeth itself towards the northeast and by east), being almost an island of a good bigness, being in a province called by the Indians, Sabino, so called of a Sagamo or chief commander under the grand bassaba." This was August 18th [O. S.]. The next day, Aug, 19th, was the day of planting the colony. He says also, that September 23, "Captain Gilbert, accompanied with nineteen others, departed in his shallop to goe for the head of the river of Sachadehoc."

2. Captain John Smith, who was conversant with the coast of Maine immediately after this colony began, speaks of the "plantation of Sagadahoc by those noble captains, George Popham," &c. He mentions the rivers "Sagadahoc, Aumaghcawgen, and Kenabeca.”

3. Prince, in his Annals, says, "that Popham and his company settled at the mouth of the Sagadehock." Dr. Belknap says that the colonists landed "at the mouth of Sagadahoc, or Kennebec River, on a peninsula;" of course, it was on the west side and not on the east side, and on an island. It does not appear that Belknap had any authority for assigning to the river, at the site of the colony, the name of Kennebec.

William Hubbard, indeed, in his History of New England, written about 1680, speaks obscurely of "a spacious river called Kennebec," and of "a place somewhere about the mouth whereof was then, and is still called Sagadahoc," where the colony was landed. But his ignorance in this matter is obvious from his own words, and he can be of no authority. He could never have seen Strachey's decisive statement. Governor Sullivan, who wrote in the Massachusetts Historical Collection in 1792, a "Description of Georgetown," a paper referred to by Dr. Holmes in his Annals, places the colony on Parker's Island; but he gives no authority for his judgment.

If this matter, then, should be considered settled, I would

respectfully ask the commemorators assembled on the 29th of August, What has become of the great river Sagadahoc? How came it to vanish from our maps and our geographies? And will they not take into consideration the possibility of reestablishing the name of Sagadahoc as the name of the great river, at least as high up as twenty miles, to the junction at Merry-Meeting Bay, of the Kennebec from the north, and the Aumoughcawgen from the west?

Captain Smith, who made his map of New England in 1616, requested Prince Charles to change the Indian names of places and rivers on it at his pleasure. A few of the changes thus made are as follows: Smith had marked as places of note, Sagadahoc, at the mouth of the river on the west side; Aumoughcawgen, on the same side, twenty miles to the north; and Kennebec, further north about thirty miles, on the west side also. These were changed by Prince Charles, the first to Leth (or Leith), the second to Cambridge, as if by princely prediction, the beautiful site of Brunswick on the Androscoggin River would, in time, become to Maine, what Cambridge was to England, the chief seat of science. The third change is of Kennebec, near the present site of Augusta, to Edenborough; and these changes appear on the printed map. Sagadahoc River seems also to be changed to that of Forth, the name of a river in Scotland, where Prince Charles was born.

As you shall stand at the mouth of the Sagadahoc River, I trust it will not be forgotten that you stand at the very spot, where, on the day of the meeting, two hundred and fifty-five years ago, at the laying of the foundation stone of the colony, the first sermon ever preached in New England was preached by their chaplain, Mr. SEYMOUR, of the Episcopal Church; in giving which gospel to the people of Maine, God has given them the richest treasure on the earth. It was at a later period of thirteen years, that the gospel was first preached at Plymouth, and a few years still later, by Thomas Hooker, at old Cam

bridge. Most earnestly did Hooker call upon his hearers, as they would be saved, to bow their pride before the truth and authority of God; for in his view this was the great sin of man, "this pride of a man's spirit, of his mind, his reason, his will, and affections." If God's truth has come from heaven to earth, what greater guilt can there be than to deny it, and pervert it, and withhold it from dark-minded men, to whom it may be in our power to impart it?

When visited at the fort by two canoes of Indians, President Popham was careful to "carry them with him to the place of public prayer, where they were," on the first Sunday in October, “at both morning and evening, attending with great reverence and silence.”

But I must close. An old and dying man must bid you farewell. The mighty God, who created the sun, moon, and stars, and who formed also this round earth; who poured out from his hand the waters that fill the oceans and the channels of mighty rivers, making also the living treasures floating in them; who framed the islands and cast up the huge rocks, and spread out and planted the fields and the forests of " the main;" and who permits us, this day, instead of a feeble, disheartened colony, to see a large province, a wide-spread State, inhabited by a hardy race of well educated and virtuous men ; the God who has unfolded to us his scheme of mercy, through the death of his Son, this God, by his truth and spirit, prepare us all for the peace and joy and glory of an immortal associate abode in heaven. Yours, &c.,

WILLIAM ALLEN.

illustrated by the men of Bristol and the

Maritime Adventure and Discovery,

Severne; whose Cabots and Gilberts pointed the way to the northern shores of the New World. The name of Raleigh Gilbert shall ever be honored for his fidelity in conducting to these shores the colony of Popham.

The Memory of Sieur de Champlain,

- the fearless navigator and accomplished statesman; the first to explore and designate these shores; whose plans of em

pire, more vast and sagacious than any of his time, failed of success only through the short-sightedness of his sovereign, in allowing the Atlantic shores of New England to fall into the hands of his rivals, thereby changing the history of the New World.

The Hon. Thos. Darcy McGee, President of the Executive Council of Canada, addressed the assemblage, in response to this sentiment. He said:

ADDRESS OF THE HON. THOMAS DARCY MCGEE.

I beg to assure you, Mr. President, and the gentlemen of the Maine Historical Society, who have done me the honor to invite me here, that I feel it a very great privilege to be a spectator and a participant in the instructive, retributive ceremonial of this day. This peninsula of Sabino must become, if it is not already, classic ground; and this 29th of August, the true era of the establishment of our language and race on this continent, one of the most cherished fasti of the English-speaking people of North America. It is, on general grounds, an occasion hardly less interesting to the colonies still English, than to the citizens of Maine; and therefore, I beg to repeat in your presence, the gratification I feel in being allowed to join in the first, of what I trust will prove, but the first, of an interminable series of such celebrations. I would be very insensible, Sir, to the character in which I have been so cordially presented to this assembly, if I did not personally acknowledge it; and I should be, I conceive, unworthy of the position I happen to occupy as a member of the Canadian government, if I did not feel still more the honor you have paid to Canada, in the remembrance you have made of her first Governor and Captain General, the Sieur de Champlain. That celebrated person was, in truth, not only in point of time, but in the comprehension of his views, the audacity of his projects, and the celebrity of his individual career, the first statesman of Canada; and no one pretending