Champlain called it Cap aux Isles, from the three adjacent
islands, and in a subsequent voyage he gave the name of Beauport to the
neighboring harbor of Gloucester. Thence steering southward and
westward, they entered Massachusetts Bay, gave the name of Riviere du
Guast to a river flowing into it, probably the Charles; passed the
islands of Boston Harbor, which Champlain describes as covered with
trees, and were met on the way by great numbers of canoes filled with
astonished Indians. On Sunday, the seventeenth, they passed Point
Allerton and Nantasket Beach, coasted the shores of Cohasset, Scituate,
and Marshfield, and anchored for the night near Brant Point. On the
morning of the eighteenth, a head wind forced them to take shelter in
Port St. Louis, for so they called the harbor of Plymouth, where the
Pilgrims made their memorable landing fifteen years later. Indian
wigwams and garden patches lined the shore. A troop of the inhabitants
came down to the beach and danced; while others, who had been fishing,
approached in their canoes, came on board the vessel, and showed
Champlain their fish-hooks, consisting of a barbed bone lashed at an
acute angle to a slip of wood.
From Plymouth the party circled round the bay, doubled Cape Cod, called
by Champlain Cap Blanc, from its glistening white sands, and steered
southward to Nausett Harbor, which, by reason of its shoals and
sand-bars, they named Port Mallebarre.
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