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CHAPTER V.
CASTINE —continued
"Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his château in the Pyrenees,
And sailed across the western seas."
Longfellow.
I confess I would rather stand in presence of the Pyramids, or walk in the streets of buried Pompeii, than assist at the unwrapping of many fleshless bodies. No other medium than the material eye can grasp a fact with the same distinctness. It becomes rooted, and you may hang your legends or traditions on its branches. It is true there is a class who journey from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren; but the average American, though far from unappreciative, too often makes a business of his recreation, and devours in an hour what might be viewed with advantage in a week or a month.
After this frank declaration, the reader will not expect me to hurry him through a place that contains so much of the crust of antiquity as Castine, and is linked in with the Old-world chronicles of a period of surpassing interest, both in history and romance.
Very little of the fort of the Baron Castin and his predecessors, yet enough to reward the research of the stranger, is to be seen on the margin of the shore of the harbor, less than half a mile from the central portion of the town. The grass-grown ramparts have sunk too low to be distinguished from the water in passing, but are evident to a person standing on the ground itself. Not many years will elapse before these indistinct traces are wholly obliterated.29
The bank here is not much elevated above high-water mark, while at the wharves it rises to a higher level, and is ascended by stairs. The old fort was placed near the narrowest part of the harbor, with a firm pebbly beach before it. Small boats may land directly under the walls of the work at high tide, or lie protected by the curvature of the shore from the heavy seas rolling in from the outer harbor. The high hills over which we were rambling in the preceding chapter ward off the northern winds.
A portion of the ground covered by old Fort Pentagoët is now occupied by buildings, a barn standing within the circumvallation, and the dwelling of Mr. Webb between the shore and the road. A little stream of sweet water trickles along the south-west face of the work, and then loses itself among the pebbles of the beach.
Fort Pentagoët, at its rendition by Sir Thomas Temple, in 1670, after the treaty of Breda, was a rectangular work with four bastions. The height of the curtains within was eight feet. On entering the fort a corps de garde, twelve paces long and six broad, stood at the left, with a logis, or quarter, on the opposite side of the entrance. On the left side were also two store-houses, each thirty-six paces long by twelve in breadth, covered with shingles. Underneath the store-houses was a cellar of about half their extent, in which a well had been sunk. Above the entrance was a turret, built of timber, plastered with clay, and furnished with a bell. At the right hand was a barrack of the same length and breadth as the store-houses, and built of stone. Sixty paces from the fort was a cabin of planks, in which the cattle were housed; and at some distance farther was a garden in good condition, having fruit-trees. There were mounted on the ramparts six six-pounder and two four-pounder iron cannon, with two culverins. Six other pieces were lying, useless and dismounted, on the parapet. Overlooking the sea and detached from the fort was a platform, with two iron eight-pounders in position.
The occupant of the nearest house told me an oven constructed of flat slate-stones was discovered in an angle of the work; also that shot had been picked up on the beach, and a tomahawk, and stone pipe taken from the well. The whole ground has been explored with the divining-rod, as well within as without the fort, for treasure-trove; though little or nothing rewarded the search, except the discovery of a subterranean passage opening at the shore.
These examinations were no doubt whetted by an extraordinary piece of good luck that befell farmer Stephen Grindle, while hauling wood from a rocky hill-side on the point at the second narrows of Bagaduce River, about six miles from Castine peninsula. In 1840 this worthy husbandman saw a shining object lying in the track of his oxen. He stooped and picked up a silver coin, as bright as if struck within a twelvemonth. On looking at the date, he found it to be two hundred years old. Farther search was rewarded by the discovery of several other pieces. A fall of snow interrupted the farmer's investigations until the next spring, when, in or near an old trail leading across the point, frequented by the Indians from immemorial time, some seven hundred coins of the nominal value of four hundred dollars were unearthed near the surface. All the pieces were of silver.
The honest farmer kept his own counsel, using his treasure from time to time to pay his store bills in the town, dollar for dollar, accounting one of Master Hull's pine-tree shillings at a shilling. The storekeepers readily accepted the exchange at the farmer's valuation; but the possession of such a priceless collection was soon betrayed by its circulation abroad.
Dr. Joseph L. Stevens, the esteemed antiquary of Castine, of whom I had these particulars, exhibited to me a number of the coins. They would have made a numismatist's mouth water. French écus, Portuguese and Spanish pieces-of-eight, Bremen dollars, piasters, and cob-money,30 clipped and battered, with illegible dates, but melodious ring, chinked in better fellowship than the sovereigns whose effigies they bore had lived in. A single gold coin, the only one found in the neighborhood of Castine, was picked up on the beach opposite the fort.31
The theory of the presence of so large a sum on the spot where it was found is that when Castin was driven from the fort by Colonel Church, in 1704, these coins were left by some of his party in their retreat, where they remained undiscovered for more than a century and a quarter. Or it may have been the hoard of one of the two countrymen of Castin, who, he says, were living two miles from him in 1687.
The detail of old Fort Pentagoët just given is believed to describe the place as it had existed since 1654, when captured by the colony forces of Massachusetts. General Sedgwick then spoke of it as "a small fort, yet very strong, and a very well composed peese, with eight peese of ordnance, one brass, three murtherers, about eighteen barrels of powder, and eighteen men in garrison."32
It would require a volume to set forth in extenso the annals of these mounds, scarce lifted above the surface of the surrounding plateau. But to arouse the reader's curiosity without an endeavor to gratify it were indeed churlish. I submit, therefore, with the brevity, and I hope also the simplicity, that should characterize the historic style, the essence of the matter as it has dropped from my alembic.
The reader is referred to what is already narrated of Norumbega for the earliest knowledge of the Penobscot by white men. The first vessel that ascended the river was probably the bark of Du Guast, Sieur de Monts, in the year 1604. De Poutrincourt was there in the year 1606.33
No establishment appears to have been begun on the Bagaduce peninsula until our colonists of New Plymouth fixed upon it for the site of a trading-post, about 1629.34 Here they erected a house, defended, probably, after the fashion of the time, with palisades, loop-holed for musketry. They were a long way from home, and had need to keep a wary eye abroad. Governor Bradford mentions that the house was robbed by some "Isle of Rhé gentlemen" in 1632.
The Plymouth people kept possession until 1635, when they were dispossessed by an expedition sent from La Have, in Acadia, commanded by the Chevalier Charles de Menou, or, as he is usually styled, D'Aulnay Charnisay. The chevalier's orders from Razilly, who had then the general command in Canada, were to expel all the English as far as Pemaquid.
Plymouth Colony endeavored to retake the place by force. A large ship for that day, the Hope, of Ipswich, England, Girling commander, was fitted out, and attacked the post in such a disorderly, unskillful manner that Girling expended his ammunition before having made the least impression. Standish, the redoubtable, was there in a small bark, fuming at the incompetency of the commander of the Hope, who had been hired to do the job for so much beaver if he succeeded, nothing if he failed. Standish, with the beaver, returned to Plymouth, after sending Girling a new supply of powder from Pemaquid; but no further effort is known to have been made to reduce the place.
The Pilgrims then turned to their natural allies, the Puritans of the Bay; but, as Rochefoucauld cunningly says, there is something in the misfortunes of our friends that does not displease us. They got smooth speeches in plenty, but no help. It is curious to observe that at this time the two colonies combined were too weak to raise and equip a hundred soldiers on a sudden call. So the French remained in possession until 1654.
An attempt was made by Plymouth Colony to liberate their men captured at Penobscot. Isaac Allerton was sent to demand them of La Tour who in haughty terms refused to deliver them up, saying all the country from Cape Sable to Cape Cod belonged to the king, his master, and if the English persisted in trading east of Pemaquid he would capture them.
"Will monseigneur deign to show me his commission?"
The chevalier laid his hand significantly on his sword-hilt. "This," said he, "is my commission."
I have mentioned three Frenchmen: Sir Isaac de Razilly, a soldier of the monastic order of Malta; La Tour, a heretic; and D'Aulnay, a zealous papist.
Razilly's commission is dated at St. Germain en Laye, May 10th, 1632. He was to take possession of Port Royal, so named by De Monts, from its glorious harbor, and ceded to France under the treaty of 1629. This was the year after the taking of La Rochelle; so that we are now in the times of the great cardinal and his puissant adversary, Buckingham. The knight of Malta was so well pleased with Acadia that he craved permission of the grand master to remain in the country. He was recalled, with a reminder of the subjection exacted by that semi-military, semi-ecclesiastical body of its members. Hutchinson says he died soon after 1635. There is evidence he was alive in 1636.
In 1638 Louis XIII. addressed the following letter to D'Aulnay: "You are my lieutenant-general in the country of the Etchemins, from the middle of the main-land of Frenchman's Bay to the district of Canceaux. Thus you may not change any regulation in the establishment on the River St. John made by the said Sieur De la Tour, etc."35 Three years afterward the king sent his commands to La Tour to return to France immediately; if he refused, D'Aulnay was ordered to seize his person.
Whether the death of Louis, and also of his Eminence, at this time diverted the danger with which La Tour was threatened, is a matter of conjecture. D'Aulnay, however, had possessed himself, in 1643, of La Tour's fort, and the latter was a suppliant to the English at Boston for aid to displace his adversary. He obtained it, and recovered his own again, but was unable to eject D'Aulnay from Penobscot. A second attempt, also unsuccessful, was made the following year. The treaty between Governor Endicott and La Tour in this year was afterward ratified by the United Colonies.
In 1645 D'Aulnay was in France, receiving the thanks of the king and queen-mother for his zeal in preserving Acadia from the treasonable designs of La Tour. The next year a treaty of peace was concluded at Boston between the English and D'Aulnay; and in 1647, the king granted him letters patent of lieutenant-general from the St. Lawrence to Acadia. He died May 24th, 1650, from freezing, while out in the bay with his valet in a canoe. La Tour finished by marrying the widow of D'Aulnay, thus composing, and forever, his feud with the husband.36
For some years quiet reigned in the peninsula, or until 1654, when an expedition was fitted out by Massachusetts against Stuyvesant and the Dutch at Manhattan. Peace having been concluded before it was in readiness, the Puritans, with true thrift, launched their armament against the unsuspecting Mounseers of Penobscot. Although peace also existed between Cromwell and Louis, the expenditure of much money without some gain was not to be thought of in the Bay. For a pretext, they had always the old grudge of prior right, going back to Elizabeth's patent of 1578 to Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Robert Sedgwick and John Leverett were two as marked men as could be found in New England. They sailed from Nantasket on the 4th of July, 1654, with three ships, a ketch, and two hundred soldiers of Old and New England. Port Royal, the fort on St. John's River, and Penobscot, were all captured. Afterward they served the Protector in England. Sedgwick was chosen by Cromwell to command his insubordinate and starving army at Jamaica, and died, it is said, of a broken heart, from the weight of responsibility imposed on him.
Although the King of France testified great displeasure because the forts in Acadia were not restored to him, Cromwell continued to hold them fast, nor were they given up until after the treaty of Breda, when Pentagoët, in 1669-'70, was delivered by Sir Thomas Temple to M. De Grand Fontaine, who, in 1673, turned over the command to M. De Chambly.
On the 10th of August, 1674, M. De Chambly was assaulted by a buccaneer that had touched at Boston, where an English pilot, as M. De Frontenac says, was taken on board. An Englishman, who had been four days in the place in disguise, gave the pirates every assistance.37 They landed one hundred and ten men, and fell with fury on the little garrison of thirty badly armed and disaffected Frenchmen. After sustaining the onset for an hour, M. De Chambly fell, shot through the body. His ensign was also struck down, when the fort surrendered at discretion. The sea-robbers pillaged the fort, carried off the cannon, and conducted the Sieur De Chambly to Boston, along with M. De Marson, whom they took in the River St. John. Chambly was put to ransom of a thousand beaver-skins. Colbert, then minister, expressed his surprise to Frontenac that the forts of Pentagoët and Gemisée had been taken and pillaged by a freebooter. No rupture then existed between the crowns of England and France.
Another subject of Louis le Grand now raps with his sword-hilt for admission to our gallant company of noble French gentlemen who have followed the lead of De Monts into the wilds of Acadia. Baron La Hontan, writing in 1683, says, "The Baron St. Castin, a gentleman of Oleron, in Bearne, having lived among the Abenaquis after the savage way for above twenty years, is so much respected by the savages that they look upon him as their tutelar god."
Vincent, Baron St. Castin, came to America with his regiment about 1665. He was ensign in the regiment Carignan, of which Henry de Chapelas was colonel. Chambly and Sorel, who were his comrades, have also left their names impressed on the map of New France. The regiment was disbanded, the governor-general allowing each officer three or four leagues' extent of good land, with as much depth as they pleased. The officers, in turn, gave their soldiers as much ground as they wished upon payment of a crown per arpent by way of fief.38 Chambly we have seen in command at Pentagoët in 1673. Castin appears to have plunged into the wilderness, making his abode with the fierce Abenaquis.
The young Bearnese soon acquired a wonderful ascendency among them. He mastered their language, and received, after the savage's romantic fashion, the hand of a princess of the nation, the daughter of Madocawando, the implacable foe of the English. They made him their great chief, or leader, and at his summons all the warriors of the Abenaquis gathered around him. Exercising a regal power in his forest dominions, he no doubt felt every inch a chieftain. The French governors courted him; the English feared and hated him. In 1696, with Iberville, he overran their stronghold at Pemaquid. He fought at Port Royal in 1706, and again in 1707, receiving a wound there. He was, says M. Denonville, of a daring and enterprising character, thirsting for distinction. In 1702 he proposed a descent on Boston, to be made in winter by a competent land and naval force. Magazines were to be formed at Piscataqua and Marblehead.
It is known that some earlier passages of Castin's life in Acadia were not free from reproach. Denonville,39 in recommending him to Louvois as the proper person to succeed M. Perrot at Port Royal ("si M. Perrot degoutait de son gouvernment"), admits he had been addicted in the past to riot and debauchery; "but," continues the viceroy, "I am assured that he is now quite reformed, and has very proper sentiments on the subject." Perrot, jealous of Castin, put him in arrest for six weeks for some foolish affair among the filles of Port Royal.
"For man is fire and woman is tow,
And the Somebody comes and begins to blow."
In 1686 Castin was at Pentagoët. The place must have fallen into sad neglect, for the Governor of Canada made its fortification and advantages the subject of a memoir to his Government. It became the rendezvous for projects against New England. Quebec was not difficult of access by river and land to Castin's fleet Abenaquis. Port Royal was within supporting distance. The Indians interposed a barrier between English aggression and the French settlements. They were the weapon freely used by all the French rulers until, from long service, it became blunted and unserviceable. They were then left to shift for themselves.
Here Castin continued with his dusky wife and brethren, although he had inherited an income of five million livres while in Acadia. By degrees he had likewise amassed a fortune of two or three hundred thousand crowns "in good dry gold;" but the only use he made of it was to buy presents for his fellow-savages, who, upon their return from the hunt, repaid him with usury in beaver-skins and peltries.40 In 1688 his trading-house was plundered by the English. It is said he died in America, but of this I have not the evidence.
Vincent de Castin never changed his wife, as the Indian customs permitted, wishing, it is supposed, by his example to impress upon them the sanctity of marriage as a part of the Christian religion. He had several daughters all of whom were well married to Frenchmen, and had good dowries; one was captured by Colonel Church in 1704. He had also a son.
In 1721, during what was known as Lovewell's war, in which Mather intimates, with many nods and winks set down in print, the English were the aggressors, Castin the younger was kidnaped, and carried to Boston a prisoner. His offense was in attending a council of the Abenaquis in his capacity of chief. He was brought before the council and interrogated. His mien was frank and fearless. In his uniform of a French officer, he stood with true Indian sang froid in the presence of men who he knew were able to deal heavy blows.
"I am," said he, "an Abenaquis by my mother. All my life has been passed among the nation that has made me chief and commander over it. I could not be absent from a council where the interests of my brethren were to be discussed. The Governor of Canada sent me no orders. The dress I now wear is not a uniform, but one becoming my rank and birth as an officer in the troops of the most Christian king, my master."
The young baron was placed in the custody of the sheriff of Middlesex. He was kept seven months a prisoner, and then released before his friends, the Abenaquis, could strike a blow for his deliverance. This once formidable tribe was such no longer. In 1689 it scarcely numbered a hundred warriors. English policy had set a price upon the head of every hostile Indian. Castin, soon after his release, returned to the old family château among the Pyrenees.
"The choir is singing the matin song;
The doors of the church are opened wide;
The people crowd, and press, and throng
To see the bridegroom and the bride.
They enter and pass along the nave;
They stand upon the farthest grave;
The bells are ringing soft and slow;
The living above and the dead below
Give their blessing on one and twain;
The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain,
The birds are building, the leaves are green,
The Baron Castine of St. Castine
Hath come at last to his own again."
According to the French historian, Charlevoix, the Capuchins had a hospice here in 1646, when visited by Père Dreuillettes. I may not neglect these worthy fathers, whose disputes about sleeves and cowls, Voltaire says, were more than any among the philosophers. The shrewdness of these old monks in the choice of a location has been justified by the cities and towns sprung from the sites of their primitive missions. Here, as elsewhere,
" – These black crows
Had pitched by instinct on the fattest fallows."
"I," said Napoleon, at St. Helena, "rendered all the burying-places independent of the priests. I hated friars" (frati), "and was the annihilator of them and of their receptacles of crime, the monasteries, where every vice was practiced with impunity. A set of miscreants" (scelerati) "who in general are a dishonor to the human race. Of priests I would have always allowed a sufficient number, but no frati." A Capuchin, says an old dictionary of 1676, is a friar of St. Francis's order, wearing a cowl, or capouch, but no shirt nor breeches.41
Opening our history at the epoch of the settlement of New France, and turning over page by page the period we have been reviewing, there is no more hideous chapter than the infernal cruelties of the Society of Jesus. Their agency in the terrible persecutions of the Huguenots is too well known to need repetition. St. Bartholomew, the broken pledge of the Edict of Nantes, the massacres of Vivarais, of Rouergue, and of Languedoc are among their monuments.
The rigor with which infractions of the discipline of the order were punished would be difficult to believe, if unsupported by trustworthy testimony. Francis Seldon, a young pupil of the Jesuit College at Paris, was imprisoned thirty-one years, seventeen of which were passed at St. Marguerite, and fourteen in the Bastile. His crime was a lampoon of two lines affixed to the college door. A lettre de cachet from Louis XIV. consigned this poor lad of only sixteen to the Bastile in 1674, from which he only emerged in 1705, by the assignment of a rich inheritance to the Society, impiously called, of Jesus.
The siege of La Rochelle, and slaughter of the Huguenots, is believed to have been nothing more than a duel between Richelieu and Buckingham, for the favor of Anne of Austria. It was, however, in the name of religion that the population of France was decimated. Colbert, in endeavoring to stem the tide of persecution, fell in disgrace. Louvois seconded with devilish zeal the projects of the Jesuits, which had no other end than the total destruction of the reformed faith. In 1675 Père Lachaise entered on his functions of father-confessor to the king. He was powerfully seconded by his society; but they, fearing his Majesty might regard it as a pendant of St. Bartholomew, hesitated to press a decisive coup d'état against the Protestants.
There was at the court of Louis the widow Scarron, become De Maintenon, declared mistress of the king, who modestly aspired to replace Marie Therese of Austria upon the throne of France. To her the Jesuits addressed themselves. It is believed the compact between the worthy contracting parties exacted no less of each than the advancement of their mutual projects through the seductions of the courtesan, and the fears for his salvation the Jesuits were to inspire in the mind of the king. Louis believed in the arguments of Madame De Maintenon, and signed the Edict of Nantes; he ceded to the threats or counsels of his confessor, and secretly espoused Madame De Maintenon. The 25th October, 1685, the royal seal was, it is not doubted by her inspiration, appended to the barbarous edict, drawn up by the Père Le Tellier, under the auspices of the Society of Jesus.42
France had already lost a hundred thousand of her bravest and most skillful children. She was now to lose many more. Among the fugitives driven from the fatherland were many who fled, as the Pilgrims had done into Holland. Some sought the New World, and their descendants were such men as John Jay, Elias Boudinot, James Bowdoin, and Peter Faneuil.
Before the famous edict of 1685, the Huguenots had been forbidden to establish themselves either in Canada or Acadia. They were permitted to visit the ports for trade, but not to exercise their religion. The Jesuits took care that the edict was enforced in the French possessions. I have thought the oft-cited intolerance of the Puritans might be effectively contrasted with the diabolical zeal with which Catholic Christendom pursued the annihilation of the reformed religion.
The Jesuits obtained at an early day a preponderating influence in Canada and in Acadia. It is believed the governor-generals had not such real power as the bishops of Quebec. At a later day, they were able well-nigh to paralyze Montcalm's defense of Quebec. The fathers of the order, with the crucifix held aloft, preached crusades against the English to the savages they were sent to convert. One of the fiercest Canabas chiefs related to an English divine that the friars told his people the blessed Virgin was a French lady, and that her son, Jesus Christ, had been killed by the English.43 One might say the gray hairs of old men and the blood-dabbled ringlets of innocent children were laid on the altars of their chapels.
We can afford to smile at the forecast of Louis, when he says to M. De la Barre in 1683, "I am persuaded, like you, that the discoveries of Sieur La Salle are altogether useless, and it is necessary, hereafter, to put a stop to such enterprises, which can have no other effect than to scatter the inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the supply of beaver." We still preserve in Louisiana the shadow of the sceptre of this monarch, whose needy successor at Versailles sold us, for fifteen millions, a territory that could pay the German subsidy with a year's harvest.
Doubtless the little bell in the hospice turret, tolling for matins or vespers, was often heard by the fisher in the bay, as he rested on his oars and repeated an ave, or chanted the parting hymn of the Provençal:
"O, vierge! O, Marie!
Pour moi priez Dieu;
Adieu, adieu, patrie,
Provençe, adieu."
There is a pleasant ramble over the hill by the cemetery, with the same accompaniments of green turf, limpid bay, and cool breezes everywhere. Intermitting puffs, ruffling the water here and there, fill the sails of coasting craft, while others lie becalmed within a few cable-lengths of them. Near the north-west corner of the ground I discovered vestiges of another small battery.
Castine having assumed the functions of a town within a period comparatively recent, her cemetery shows few interesting stones. The ancients of the little Acadian hamlet lie in forgotten graves; no moss-covered tablets for the antiquary to kneel beside, and trace the time-worn course of the chisel, are there. Numbers of graves are indicated only by the significant heaving of the turf. In one part of the field is a large and rudely fashioned slate-stone standing at the head of a tumulus. A tablet with these lines is affixed:
IN MEMORY OF
CHARLES STEWART,
The earliest occupant of this Mansion of the Dead,
A Native of Scotland,
And 1st Lieut. Comm. of his B. M. 74th Regt. of foot, or Argyle Highlanders
Who died in this Town, while it was in possession of the Enemy,
March, A.D. 1783,
And was interred beneath this stone,
Æt. about 40 yrs
This Tablet was inserted
A.D. 1849
The tablet has a tale to tell. It runs that Stewart quarreled with a brother officer at the mess-table, and challenged him. Hearing of the intended duel, the commanding officer reprimanded the hot-blooded Scotsman in such terms that, stung to the quick, he fell, Roman-like, on his own sword.
Elsewhere I read the name of Captain Isaiah Skinner, who, as master of a packet plying to the opposite shore, "thirty thousand times braved the perils of our bay."
While I was in Castine I paid a visit to the factory in which lobsters are canned for market. A literally "smashing" business was carrying on, but with an uncleanness that for many months impaired my predilection for this delicate crustacean. The lobsters are brought in small vessels from the lower bay. They are then tossed, while living, into vats containing salt water boiling hot, where they receive a thorough steaming. They are next transferred to long tables, and, after cooling, are opened. Only the flesh of the larger claws and tail is used, the remainder being cast aside. The reserved portions are put into tin cans that, after being tightly soldered, are subjected to a new steaming of five and a half hours to keep them fresh.44
In order to arrest the wholesale slaughter of the lobster, stringent laws have been made in Maine and Massachusetts. The fishery is prohibited during certain months, and a fine is imposed for every fish exposed for sale of less than a certain growth. Of a heap containing some eight hundred lobsters brought to the factory, not fifty were of this size; a large proportion were not eight inches long. Frequent boiling in the same water, with the slovenly appearance of the operatives, male and female, would suggest a doubt whether plain Penobscot lobster is as toothsome as is supposed. The whole process was in marked contrast with the scrupulous neatness with which similar operations are elsewhere conducted; nor was there particular scrutiny as to whether the lobsters were already dead when received from the vessels.
Wood, in the "New England Prospect," mentions that lobsters were so plenty and little esteemed they were seldom eaten. They were frequently, he says, of twenty pounds' weight. The Indians used lobsters to bait their hooks, and ate them when they could not get bass. I have seen an account of a lobster that weighed thirty-five pounds. Josselyn mentions that he saw one weighing twenty pounds, and that the Indians dried them for food as they did lampreys and oysters.
I think the name of "cob" was applied to money earlier than the date given by Mr. Dubois. Its derivation is uncertain, but was probably either "lump," or from the Welsh, for "thump," i. e., struck money.
