The western landfall of Pemaquid had early been occupied for trade in furs and fish. Three years after the Plymouth welcome, nine ships made Cape-ne-wagen (now Southport) their place of trade, where the "Indian Town" medicinal gardens have been long known to tradition. Here Captain Christopher Levett (1623-4) cast anchor. A man named Coke was a leading resident and trader. It was in one of the thoroughfares of Boothbay Harbor.

Here we next meet Samoset. Captain Levett was under the commission of Governor Thomas Gorges, and in search of an Eastern settlement and homestead. Four days were consumed at this point in his search, in and about the harbor, where he learned of the pre-occupancy of Pemaquid, and the ship Eagle, Witherage master, of Barnstable, England, then taking in freight under special license of the Plymouth Company. Thus Captain Levett looked no farther east. During his stay, a flotilla of Indian canoes, laden with beaver coats and women and children, came into the harbor, being bound to Pemaquid. Samoset was among them. Levett addressed himself to this chief, as a leading personage of paramount authority, and records of him honorable mention, "as one who had been found very faithful to the English, having saved many lives of the English Nation, some from starving, some from killing." Samoset's Plymouth mission and services, seem to have been well known in England.

The beaver coats and peltries of the Indians were too tempting to the Booth-bay traders, and a conspiracy was at once set on foot to secure the rich cargoes, and divert the trade from Pemaquid. Gorges seems to have been well known and highly esteemed by the natives of Maine. Samoset, with Cogawesco, Men-a-wor-met, and other chieftains spoke of him to Levett as "their cousin ;" and, at the instance of traders, Levett's relation to Gorges was used with the savage boatmen to influence their trade. This fact overcame the reluctance of the chiefs to trade this side of Pemaquid, Samoset's intervention having been secured in behalf of Captain Levett. He ended the controversy "by swearing that none of the furs should be carried out of the harbor, but his cousin Levett should have all." His word prevailed, and the entire stock of peltries were sold at Boothbay, except some "beaver coats" pledged at Pemaquid to discharge an old debt there, and these were stolen during the night, and the honest intent of the Indians defeated. During Levett's stay, a son was born to Samoset, which, the captain was asked to name, Samoset declaring there should be "mouch-i-ke lega-matche," i.e., great friendship, between Levett's son and his own, until "Tanto should take them up to his wigwam," i.e., to the heavenly home. The transactions at Booth-bay, the ancient

Cape Newagen, in 1623 show that the Plymouth Company was in title and possession at Pemaquid, where the Eagle was loading under the license of this corporation, which had projected and executed the colonial planting at Sabino, of Sagadahoc in 1607; and that at Pemaquid in 1623, as in 1614, the trade of the region was still absorbed as a settled and established perquisite of its port.

The next appearances of Samoset is at Pemaquid proper, two years later, before a civil magistrate there, in acknowledgment as grantor (with another savage) of the earliest record of land titles in New England, in a deed, according to the formularies of the English common law, and in consideration of fifty beaver skins, paid by "John Brown, a Mason," of New Harbor, parted with twelve thousand acres of his Pemaquid territory, which transaction opened the era of the acquisition of landed estate, to private individuals, in New England, which was in 1624 and 1625. This John Brown was brother-in-law of John Pierce, and related to the Pierce family of Muscongus, who settled there, it is believed, in 1621; while Brown was doubtless an old resident of the ancient Popham Port of 1614, the lands about which, at the date of the transfer described, had acquired a marketable value from the influx of English immigration.

No more is heard of Samoset till 1653, when he again put his sign manual to another grant of a thousand acres in favor of one William Parnell, Thomas Way, and William England. At this date his hand showed the tremor of age and the decay of life; and probably he died soon after and was buried with his kindred in the soil of his island homestead near "Round Pond," in the town of Bristol. A monument to his name should tell coming generations where lie the ashes of a noble savage, a foster father to English colonization and the Pilgrim refugees of Plymouth.

In 1673 his remembrance was fresh and honored by his race. Says Jocelyn, among the Eastern Indians he was remembered as a “famous Sachem," and to the English in New England he was well known under various names, "Somnarset," "Samaaset," "Somerset ;" and in Plymouth "Samosset." Sa-maas-et," of the Penobscot tongue, is without doubt

the true sound of his native name.

His last act seems to have been for the benefit of English immigrants, who had gathered and been fostered near his homestead; and it seems to have been in sympathy with his life and conduct, as a faithful friend to the English race to the end of his days. His relations to the English race were eminent, and with Gorges and the pioneers of English colonization in New England, intimate and enduring prior to as well as at the date of the Plymouth and Pilgrim immigration.

Contemporary with Gorges, of Maine, Carver, Bradford, Winslow, and Standish, of Plymouth; and Abraham Shurt and Thomas Dermer, of Monhegan and Pemaquid, Samaaset, of the Wa-wenocks, their peer in virtue, stands out in heroic eminence in the beginnings of New England.

Whatever of interest in history attaches to Samoset as a beneficent agent in the successful planting of New England with English law, religion, and civilization, and the organization of civil life and liberty, since unfolded in the intelligence and virtue of the land, Maine is entitled to credit for the cradling. It was a son of her forests and soil who befriended the embryo colony of Plymouth which grew to a giant manhood. It was Maine, in the person of her Samoset, that met the tempest-tossed, forlorn and despairing Pilgrims, as they stood shivering on Plymouth Rock, with outstretched arms and friendly greetings to new homes, and gave effete civilization, religion, and law a fresh departure in the new world.

RUFUS KING SEWALL

NOTE.- "Samoset (Sameset, Summuset, Sommerset, Summersaut) was a native of Pemaquid, and chief and original proprietor of what is now the town of Bristol, Me. He seems to have gone on board of Capt. Dermer's ship at Monhegan, when he was on his way to these shores, with Squanto, on his pacific mission, 1613, and to have been landed by Dermer on Cape Cod, when he redeemed there the shipwrecked Frenchmen from their savage captors. This was only six months before the Mayflower arrived; and the Pemaquid chief still lingered among his new friends-delayed by that overruling Providence which needed him for the use of interpreter, to which he was now put. He was at 'Capmanwogen' (Southport, Me.) when Levett was there two years later; 18 July, 1625, with Unonngoit, he executed the first deed ever made by an Indian to a white man, to John Brown, of New Harbor. July, 1653, he sold other land to William Parnall, Thomas Way, and William England, affixing (in a hand tremulous with age) his mark in the form of a bow and arrow. He was dead before Philip's War. [Thornton's 'Ancient Pemaquid,' Me. Hist. Coll., v., 186-193; Sewall's Ancient Dominions of Me., 102.]" Dexter's "Mourt's Relation," p. 83 ".

"The conveyance from Somerset, and acquisition by Brown, marks the distinct legal boundary between barbarism and civility. . Thus the life of the Pemaquid chief, Samoset or Somerset, must ever awaken the most tender and interesting reflections; and the generosity, the genuine nobility of soul, displayed by this son of the forest, must be allowed as a fairer index to the true character of the aborigines than their deeds of resentment or cruelty in after-days, when goaded to madness by the cunning, cupidity, and treachery of the European. Only the humanity of an Eliot, or the Christian zeal of a Mayhew, can be shown by us as a parallel to the generous and ingenuous Somerset."-Thornton's "Ancient Pemaquid," p. 193.

EVACUATION OF CHARLESTON, S. C., 1782

The closing event of the Revolution in the Southern field was the evacuation of Charleston, South Carolina, by the British on December 14, 1782. Its centenary follows apace and fittingly upon those of Fort Moultrie, King's Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Court House, and Yorktown. That event meant deliverance and peace for a sorely-stricken section of the country, and it was hailed with tears of joy.

The South in that struggle suffered materially far more than the North. With a more compact population and readier resources, the New England and Middle States were able in most instances to repel expeditions of the enemy intended to plunder towns and destroy stores, as in the affairs of Lexington and Bennington. Washington's army, ever on the alert, and a tolerably well-embodied militia compelled the British to hug the sea-coast; or, at best, when they moved into the interior it was in solid masses which never attempted extensive devastation. No free riders like Tarleton and Simcoe ventured to penetrate inland as they did in the Carolinas and Virginia. The South, with its open area, great distances and scattered settlements, invited invasion, and, despite much heroic resistance, felt the weight and distresses of the war far toward her western frontier. Hence the many tales of fields laid waste, houses burned, families robbed and made homeless, slaves and property seized, and whatever is common and cruel in partisan warfare. It was, indeed, a merciful dispensation to the Southern States when peace came.

Upon the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781, the British held three points at the South. Wilmington, North Carolina, was garrisoned by a part of the Eighty-second Regiment of Foot, under Major Craig-the same regiment to which Captain Moore, later to become the Sir John Moore of Peninsula fame, belonged. He was then with the other wing of the Eighty-second at Halifax, having, in 1779, taken part in the defence of Penobscot against the Boston expedition. At Charleston, South Carolina, the second point, General Leslie was firmly established, and below, General Clarke occupied Savannah. Washington had hoped to follow up the Yorktown blow by a combined expedition against Charleston, but the anxiety of DeGrasse, the French admiral, to return to the West Indies prevented. American interests in the Southern field remained in the hands of the skilful and vigilant Greene, and that he might be able to continue his successes there, Washington reinforced him with the Pennsylvania and

Maryland troops, under Generals St. Clair, Wayne, and Gist, from the Yorktown army. But there was little more fighting to be done in that direction, as the enemy shut themselves up within their fortified lines, and Greene contented himself with going into camp on the west bank of the Ashley River, some sixteen miles above Charleston. Wayne was dispatched to Georgia with a small force, where he had the satisfaction of occupying Savannah, which the enemy evacuated on July 11, 1782. This was the first step in the general move by which America was relinquished.

CHARLESTON DURING THE BRITISH SIEGE IN 1780. [OFFICIAL PLAN.]

Greene's little army upon the Ashley, composed of troops from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, found camp life in the summer of 1782 as fatal as the battle-field. Fevers proved sharper than the sword. "Our camp is very thin," writes Lieutenant Denny, a Pennsylvania officer; "not more than three relieves of officers and men for the ordinary duties. Hospitals crowded, and great many sick in camp; deaths so frequent the funeral ceremony dispensed with." The Ashley River was low and "full of alligators." Food and water were alike unfit.