[15] riuers for a conuenient place, who vppon their returne reported to haue found a good place vppon Mistick; but some other of vs seconding theis to approue or dislike of their judgement; wee found a place liked vs better1 three leagues vpp Charles riuer.2 And there vppon unshipped our goods into other vessels and with much cost and labour brought them in July to Charles Towne; but there receiving advertisements by some of the late arrived shipps from London and Amsterdam of some French preparations against vs (many of our people brought with vs beeing sick of feaver and the scurvy and wee thereby unable to carry vpp our ordnance and baggage soe farr) wee were forced to change our counsaile and for our present shelter to plant dispersedly, some at Charles Towne which standeth on the North Side of mouth of Charles Riuer; some on the South Side, which place wee named Boston (as wee intended to have done the place wee first resolved on) some of vs vppon Mistick, which place wee named Meadford; some of vs westwards on Charles Riuer, four miles from Charles Towne, which place wee named Watertoune, others of vs two miles from Boston in a place wee named Rocksbury, others vppon the riuer of Sawgus between Salem and Charlestowne. And the westerne men four miles South from Boston at a place wee named Dorchester. This dispersion troubled some of vs, but helpe it wee could not, wanting abillity to remoue to any place fit to build a Towne vppon, and the time was too short to deliberate any longer least the winter should surprise vs before wee had builded our houses. The best counsel wee could find out was to build a fort to retire to, in some convenient place, if any enemy pressed thereunto, after we should have fortifyed ourselves against the injuries of wett and cold. So ceasing to consult further for that time they which had health to labour fell to building, wherein many were interrupted with sickness and many dyed weekely, yea almost dayley.
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1 ‘The people that arrived at the Massachusetts in the fleet, Anno Domini 1630, were not much unlike the family of Noah, at their first issuing out of the ark; and had, as it were, a new world to people; being uncertain where to make their beginning.’—Hubbard's N. E., p. 134.
2 ‘This,’ says Palfrey, ‘would correspond to what is now Waltham or Weston, and I think it very likely to have been near the mouth of Stony Brook, which divides those two towns.’
Thomas Lewis, Landscape Photographs, 1879.
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