and generally to take charge of them, subject, of course, to the general rules of the Society.

3d. That the Society agree to publish in its Proceedings a Memoir of Mr. Somerby, giving some account of his literary life.

You are hereby authorized to make this proposition to the Society; and, when accepted by it, you may deliver to it all the papers in your custody, on a further agreement that they will send me copies of all items therein relating to the Somerby or Dole families.

The tender is to be made in the name of my wife as well as myself.

Yours very truly,

EDWARD M. STEBBINS.

The Chairman proceeded :

The Council recommend that the MSS. of Mr. Somerby be accepted by the Society on the terms named in Mr. Stebbins's letter, and that the following votes be adopted:

Voted, That the Society gratefully accept, on the conditions named, the papers of their late Corresponding Member, Mr. Horatio G. Somerby, generously offered to them by Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. Stebbins.

Voted, That Messrs. Whitmore, Appleton, and Whitney be a committee to take charge of the papers, according to the terms of the gift.

Voted, That Mr. Whitmore be requested to prepare a Memoir of Mr. Somerby for the Society's Proceedings.

Voted, That a copy of these votes be sent to Mr. Stebbins, with the thanks of the Society for this generous gift.

These votes were unanimously adopted.

Mr. ELLIS AMES communicated some interesting facts relating to the part taken by the Second Massachusetts Regiment, of the Continental Line, commanded by Colonel Bailey, of Hanover, in the battle at Harlem, September 16, 1776. His paper would be laid before the Society in a more extended form at a future meeting.

Mr. DEANE presented a copy of a work by our Corresponding Member, M. D'Avezac, entitled, "Année véritable de la naissance de Christophe Colomb, et revue chronologique des principales époques de sa vie. . . . Par M. D'Avezac. . . . Paris, 1873," and remarked that it was a thorough investigation of the question involved in the inquiry, showing that 1446 was undoubtedly the year of the birth of Columbus. The paper also dealt with other interesting questions relating to the early life of Columbus.

Mr. TUTTLE made the following communication: -

I desire to call the attention of the Society to a statement in the first volume of Dr. Belknap's "History of New Hampshire," and to the authority cited to support it. On page 158 Dr. Belknap says:

"In the spring [1678]. Major Shapleigh, of Kittery, Captain Champernoon, and Mr. Fryer, of Portsmouth, were appointed commissioners to settle a formal treaty of peace with Squando and the other chiefs, which was done at Casco, whither they brought the remainder of the captives. It was stipulated in the treaty that the inhabitants should return to their deserted settlements, on condition of paying one peck of corn annually for each family, by way of acknowledgment to the Indians for the possession of their lands, and one bushel for Major Pendleton, who was a great proprietor. Thus an end was put to a tedious and distressing war, which had subsisted three years. The terms of peace were disgraceful, but not unjust, considering the former irregular conduct of many of the eastern settlers, and the native propriety of the Indians in the soil."

The

Dr. Belknap cites a single authority to support this; namely, "MS. Journal, April 12, 1678." In a note on page 151, he says this "MS. Journal is found in Prince's Collection, and supposed to have been written by Captain Lawrence Hammond, of Charlestown." manuscript journal of Captain Hammond, in the Library of this Society, has been supposed to be the journal referred to by Dr. Belknap, it having been discovered among his papers; but, on examination, it is found to contain no reference to this treaty whatever, nor is there any matter in it to support the other citations by Dr. Belknap. Prince also, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., V. 13, cites Lawrence Hammond's journal, yet the Society's manuscript is equally silent on the matter quoted by him. The Prince Collection, in the Boston Public Library, has no such manuscript journal, nor any manuscript journal containing the matters cited by Belknap and Prince. What has become of this authority, so much relied on by these eminent historians?

As regards the Indian treaty referred to by Dr. Belknap, no previous writer mentions it; and he is the sole authority of all subsequent writers who do refer to it. It is unaccountable that a treaty of so much importance as this should be overlooked by Hubbard, Mather, Hutchinson, and other historical writers, and a whole century pass without any notice being taken of it; that no other authority for it is known but a private journal, now utterly lost; and that Dr. Belknap did not remark the omission of previous writers, and the slender authority he had for it. Being a public treaty, there ought to be some record of it in the Massachusetts archives; but I can find none there. Having occa-ion to determine Captain Champernowne's precise connection with this treaty, I have made extensive examinations of printed books and of manuscript records to find some confirmation of the authority cited by Dr. Belknap, but without success. The discovery of the MS. Journal referred to by Belknap and Prince is much needed. This alleged treaty may have been nothing but a proposed treaty, never carried into effect. Dr. Belknap must be allowed to have had what he considered good authority for his statement; but it is unfortunate that it is now lost.

Dr. O. W. HOLMES then said:

In looking through "Scaligerana," a collection of the sayings of Joseph Scaliger, reminding one not a little of the talk of Johnson as recorded by Boswell, I found some passages which shed a little glimmer of light on the condition of things at Leyden during the residence of the Pilgrims in that city.

This "great miracle of nature," as his biographer calls him, was of Italian origin, but born and bred in France. At the age of fifty-three years he went to Leyden as the successor of Lipsius in his professorship. His conversational remarks on men and things are singularly free and easy. Like Johnson, he is evidently an oracle to his listeners. In the frontispiece of my edition (Cologne, 1695), he is represented as sitting in a chair in the famous botanic garden of the University of Leyden, and discoursing with several grave and dignified persons who stand respectfully about him.

It will be remembered that among the reasons assigned by Bradford in his History, and by Winslow in his Brief Narrative, for the Pilgrims' wishing to leave Leyden, were "the great labor and hard fare, with other inconveniences," they had to submit to; their children's being drawn into evil courses; and their grief at the profanation of the Sabbath.

Three years before their arrival at Leyden, Scaliger is represented as saying, under the title "Leyde":

"Sunt tredecim anni quod hic sum, bene habeo, nisi quod dentes non habeo. Hic licet vicinum turbare impunè. Hie vicini mei clamant. nec possum impedire; potant à summo mane in die jejunii." — p. 237.

Under the title "Hollande," I find the following sharp remarks in the odd mixture of French and Latin which is common in this collection of random sayings:

"C'est un meschant pays que celui-cy, non aratur, quanquam incipiant Delphis. Ante 30 annos nesciebant quid esset arare. Omnia tamen huc afferuntur. Remotissimis locis advehitur frumentum, Livonia, Lithuania, Polonia; et linum ex Flandria et Lithuania. Hic valdé male purgant frumentum, omnia relinquunt, sordes, pulverem. Gens olim fidelissima, valde hodie incipit a fidelitate deficere in pane et cervisia."

-"Diebus Sabbathi plures naviculæ ingrediuntur Leydam, quam toto mense Aureliis Nannetum usque, vel Tolosa Burdigalam, qui est tamen frequentissimus transitus."

-"Quand quelqu'un verroit icy en Hollande, manger du pain sec ou boire de l'eau, on l'estimeroit autre homme et estre merveille en nature. Les Hollandois sont longs et tardifs, lavent le pavé, et sont sales et ords en leur manger et boire."

"En ce pays tout est permis comme à Venize, pourveu qu'on ne dise et ne fasse rien contre l'Estat."

"On endure toute sorte de gens icy, hormis les Antitrinitaires; fuerunt aliquandiu, sed ejecti sunt ab Ordinibus. Il y a de bonnes gens en ce pays: Mais il n'y a païs au Monde qui ait plus besoin des chatimens de Dieu Ils depensent en un jour tout ce qu'ils ont gagné pendant la semaine." pp. 195, 196, 197.

I will turn these passages into English for the sake of readers (not members of the Society) who may have forgotten their mastery of foreign tongues:

I have been here (in Leyden) these thirteen years, and am in good condition, except that I have no teeth. People can disturb their neighbors here without being called to account for it. My neighbors shout, and I cannot hinder them; they drink from early morning on fast days.

- It is a poor country, this; it is not tilled, though they are making a beginning at Delft. Thirty years ago they did not know what ploughing meant. But every thing is brought here. Grain is imported from the most remote places, Livonia, Lithuania, Poland; and flax from Flanders and Lithuania. They clean their grain very imperfectly, leaving all kinds of dirt and dust. The people used to be very fair in their dealings; but they cheat badly now-a-days in their bread and their beer.

On a Sabbath day, more boats come into Leyden than go in a whole month from Orleans to Nantes, or from Toulouse to Bordeaux, though the travel between these places is very great.

Here in Holland if they see a man eating plain bread and drinking water, they think him a peculiar person, a natural prodigy. The Hollanders are slow and dilatory; they wash their pavements, and are slovenly and filthy in the matter of food and drink.

--

In this country, as in Venice, every thing is allowed, provided that nothing is done or said against the government.

-They tolerate all sorts of people here except Antitrinitarians: these were suffered here for a certain time, but were expelled by the Orders. There are good people in Holland; but there is not a country in the world in greater need of Divine chastisements. They spend in a single day all that they have earned in the whole week.

This testimony, from a man of so great eminence as Scaliger, is not without interest, as showing that the complaints of the Pilgrims of their condition at Leyden were founded on a state of things which he found as bad as they did. Honored as he was during his life, and after his death, we may take it for granted that he lived in a good quarter of the town, and was well cared for. Yet he complains of his fare, as they did; of his irrepressibly noisy and not improbably riotous neighbors; of universal and excessive drinking habits; of the wasteful

prodigality which was prevalent, and of the singular activity in worldly affairs on the Sabbath day, to which the Puritans held with such Mosaic rigor. On the whole, after living among these people thirteen years in a conspicuous position, and in great honor, he considers it a mean country, and thinks the people deserve special punishment at the hands of the Almighty. The Pilgrim Fathers might well be anxious about their children, with such examples all around them.

Three years after the first record I have cited, Joseph Scaliger died, in the year 1609, just as the Pilgrims were removing to Leyden. It is not very likely that the fare or the habits of the people had much improved in that interval of three years, or during their residence. We can readily understand that, after a dozen years of life surrounded by Dutchmen such as Teniers and Adrian Brauwer have pictured, by early risers of the kind spoken of by Scaliger, by shouting neighbors, by habitual Sabbath-breakers, in a land where the people hardly knew enough to plough, where the food was bad and the habits were slovenly, they longed for a home of their own in the wilderness, where they could have peace and order, and the decencies of life, and bring up their children to fear God and keep all his commandments. Other reasons we know there were, but these must have had their weight; and the sentences I have quoted throw a side-light upon them which brings out some of their shadows.