found kind entertainment and good respect, with a willingness to supply our wants which were done so far as able; and would not take any bills for the same, but did what they could freely." Thus did Maine contribute of her store to sustain the infant colony of Massachusetts; and by this act of munificence on the part of the residents of the Ancient Dominions of Maine, Morton in his Memorial of Plymouth, asserts that the Plymotheans in their" plantation had a good quantity of provisions."

These facts, in the historical remains of Sagadahoc, the ancient seat of colonial life of New England, warrant the position we have taken.

A summary will show that thirteen years before a Puritan foot trod the soil of New England, a fair town of fifty houses, protected by an entrenched twelve-gun fort, ornamented with a church having a stated minister of the gospel, enlivened with the hum and clatter of busy artizans in a ship-yard, had planted the colonization, the commerce and the christianity of Europe in North America on the shores of the "Ancient Dominions of Maine;"-that Maine, in the person of her wild son Samoset of Pemaquid, with out-stretched arms and generous greetings, stood on the sands of Cape Cod to welcome and introduce under favorable auspices, the embryo State of Massachusetts from the deck of the Mayflower, to her wild home on the shores of the New World; - that the Puritans, famishing on Plymouth Rock, were supplied by the charities of Maine, in the beginnings of colonial life. The "Ancient Dominions of Maine" have, therefore, been prolific of life, peace, and success to the infancy of New England.

In Sagadahoc was planted the root whose fatness has furnished New England with the strength, verdure, freshness and beauty in English life, civilization and Christian virtue.

It is a pertinent and pregnant question in the solution of the successful present of New England, what, to-day, would have 1 Morton's Memorial, pp. 40-41.

been the history of Plymouth rock and the Puritans,

the past of Massachusetts-had it not been for Maine and her kindly offices and sisterly attentions, at the CRADLING of her existence in the wilds of the West. When Dudley and his companions found the misanthropic Blackstone, the sole occupant of the woods of Shawmut Point, the site of Boston, and who, because he had left England in disgust, "not likeing the Lords Bishops," would not welcome the new comers, because he did not like the "Lords Brethren " any better, the crisis of colonial existence and success in New England had passed. I therefore leave it for statesmen to solve what would have been the present of New England, had it not been for Maine, and the attractions and resources of her Ancient Dominions.

The Virginia of Sagadahoc,

the first vessel built on the North American continent; the germ of that naval architecture which has made Maine the foremost community of the world in shipbuilding.

As the Committee have received no response to this sentiment, it has been deemed proper to connect with it the following statement:

"In the year one thousand six hundred and fourteen," says De Laet, "the ship of Skipper Adrian Block took fire by accident, and he built here1 a YACHT of thirty-eight feet keel, fortyfour feet and a half on deck, and eleven feet and a half beam, with which he sailed through the HELLEGAT into the Great Bay, and visited all the places thereabout, and went in it as far as Cape Cod."2 In Hazard's "Annals of Pennsylvania," the yacht is called the "Restless." It is also said, "In 1616, Capt. Hendricksen in the Restless departs for the Schuylkill," &c. With these statements is connected the assertion that this craft was "The first vessel built in this country by Europeans."

1 Near New York.

2 Benson's Memoir, p. 30.

This claim of priority, like some others, is clearly neutralized by the record of Strachey, that in the first year of the Popham Colony [1607-8], "the carpenters framed a pretty Pynnace of about some thirty tonne, which they called the Virginia; the chief shipwright being one Digby of London.”1 Thus, by several years, this "pretty Pynnace" stands at the head of the list of the countless vessels for commerce and war, which have come from the forests of our country. In the great enterprise of ship-building, Maine has long taken the foremost place; and the city of Bath, near the ancient Sagadahoc, has been chief in the State. The example of Digby and the Virginia has not been neglected.

It may be proper to add, as connected with the history of our shore-line, that Capt. Hendricksen in the "Restless" (Onrüst), sailed along on our coast previously to "the 18th of August, 1616," and made a "figurative" map thereof as far as Pentegouet (Penobscot River), of which a fac-simile is given in 1st Colonial Document, N. Y., p. 13.

The Colony of Massachusetts' Bay, — founded in 1629, by men of the same unconquerable will as those that brought royalty to the block, and discarded prescription as heresy. Their descendants have ever shown a faithful adherence to the doctrine of " Uniformity."

The following response to this sentiment was made by the Hon. Emory Washburn, of Cambridge, late Governor of the State of Massachusetts:

GOV. WASHBURN'S ADDRESS.

Mr. Washburn said, It was with something more than the ordinary awe with which one is impressed in addressing a vast assembly, that he rose to obey the call which the president had made upon him to speak of the relations between Maine and

1 Hist. Trav. into Va., ch. x., p. 179.

Massachusetts. He seemed to stand in the conscious presence of the history of more than two centuries since Plymouth and Kennebec were embraced in a common patent, as he recalled the part which the Sons of Massachusetts had taken in helping to plant upon the virgin soil of Maine, the institutions which have changed a wilderness into the homes of a busy, prosperous and happy community.

And yet, frankness compelled him to say that he feared that like other pet children ever since the days of Solomon, this favorite child of the old Bay State had at times been inclined to take airs, even before she became of age, and had set up house-keeping for herself. And when he saw by the papers, that she was proposing to commemorate an event in her history, away back in the remote ages of the past, he felt that it was a little presuming, inasmuch as it was touching Massachusetts, and especially the old colony of Plymouth, in a tender point. He was the more impressed with this, when he recalled an excursion he had taken, less than forty years ago, along the banks of this beautiful Kennebec, over the scenes to which the romantic story of Father Rále's heroism and death had lent a charm, where as he stood and looked out upon an unbroken forest, he innocently supposed it was then a new country, and little dreamed that there had been a heroic age upon the banks of that river, of whose events history then knew so little.

It was therefore, with no little surprise that he received a note from his excellent friend Dr. Wheeler, enclosing an invitation to attend a celebration of the 255th anniversary of the founding of the First English Colony on the shores of New England! With the notions of a Massachusetts' man, how could he help suspecting that here was an attempt to rob her of her laurels, when he saw that it was going back to a point of time thirteen years before the genuine Puritan hegira. It seemed to him to be a political heresy almost equal to that of secession itself. He thereupon began to inquire what they were proposing to

commemorate, and he took down from his shelves a black letter folio marked "Popham's Reports" to see if he could find something of the Fort Popham mentioned in his invitation. But failing in that, he hunted up his classical dictionary for the word "Sabino" and concluded that, after all, here must have been the spot where the early Romans are said to have got their wives, by a rather rude kind of courtship, and he looked around on his arrival at the spot, to see the veritable wolf which Romulus is said to have suckled. He came here determined, let what would happen, to protest against every thing that denied that Plymouth was the true hive of the "Universal Yankee Nation." He confessed, however, he had been utterly disarmed by the courtesies he had shared here today, and he would no longer protest against anything; and if anybody were to insist that Noah's ark landed on one of these hills, and would get up a celebration like this, to commemorate it, he would volunteer to come and take part in it, without doubting it was true.

He had listened with deep interest to-day, to the narrative of the sufferings and failure of the colony that was planted here. But, as a Massachusetts' Puritan, he would venture to suggest another cause of this failure, which he wished to do sub rosa, and in rather a confidential manner, lest some Episcopalian or Unitarian might over-hear him and take exception at his remark. And that was, that Sir George Popham, instead of bringing over with him, as we are told he did, a clergyman of the Established Church, ought to have called and settled a right-down Orthodox Congregational minister over the First Parish of Sagadahoc. And in the same spirit he would add, it might have been well if he had any Quakers or Baptists in his colony, to have made a salutary example of them, as Massachusetts afterwards did, with such signal success.

But, said Mr. W., I am wasting in remarks which may seem to be unfitted to the dignity of the occasion, the moments which ought to be devoted to more grave and serious topics.