SHOALS.-Nantucket shoals line the coast for fifty miles, and are forty-five miles in breadth. They are very dangerous, being cut through by numerous channels of different depths, discoverable only by sounding.

ISLANDS.—Several islands of considerable size belong to this state, so situated, and so well provided with headlands for lighthouses, and with harbors for shelter in storms, as to be of important service to the extensive coasting and foreign trade-especially such as are in the vicinity of the shoals.

Nantucket Island is fifteen miles by eleven, and forms, with five smaller islands, a county of the same name. It contains nearly thirty thousand acres. Its inhabitants have long been proverbial for their skill in whalefishing, which was formerly carried on in boats in sight of the shore. They are equally distinguished by their skill and boldness as pilots, many of them spending a considerable part of their lives in sailing about the shoals to pilot ships. The island is thirty miles south of the mainland, sixty southeast of New Bedford, and one hundred south-southeast of Boston. Latitude 41° 15′ 22′′, longitude 70° 7′56′′. Martha's Vineyard is twenty miles long and from two to five miles broad and lies west of Nantucket. Duke's county is formed of this island and several small ones in its vicinity.

The first settlements were made at Plymouth by the passengers in the MayFlower, the first band of English dissenters, called puritans, who arrived in America. They reached Cape Cod on the 22d of December, 1620, and, after a few days, fixed on Plymouth for their residence, which received its name from the last port in England from which they had sailed. The important consequences which resulted from the arrival of this little band of exiles have invested it with peculiar interest; and the event and its concomitants have been commemorated in numerous writings.

The puritans received this title in derision. They had long been the chief advocates of principles which have since become extensively adopted in this country and elsewhere, particularly civil and

religious freedom, and the universal dif fusion of learning. Numbers of them had taken refuge in Holland from the persecution they were exposed to in their native land, from the laws which then forbade them to worship God in their chosen manner. But, although treated with kindness by the Dutch protestants, they at length determined to seek a country in which they might rear their children, without exposing them to evil influences or to the loss of their native language. A band of them at length proceeded to England, accompanied by their pastor, the Rev. Mr. Robinson, where, arrangements having been made, after some delay they sailed for America. The part of the coast on which they were landed was farther north than they had intended to reach ; but this was probably, in the end, more favorable for their success. The Indians had been almost all destroyed by a fatal disease, so that they found but little opposition among the natives for some years.

The Plymouth colony was followed by several others. Salem was planted in 1628, and Boston in 1630. Most of the settlers being of the same class, a uniform system of laws and habits was established, which was gradually extended, and most of the peculiarities of New England still retain the same char

acter.

These first colonies were the sources or the channels from which the settletlements on the Connecticut, and many of those in New Hampshire and Vermout, derived their impulse and their population, and there we find a general identity of sentiment and society.

The first period in the history of Massachusetts is that between the first settlement and the Pequod war, in 1636, when Rhode Island and Connecticut river had been occupied and exposed to powerful tribes of savages, against whom Massachusetts afforded them aid. Then commenced that active system of mutual support, which often secured the safety of the eastern colonies, and gradually extended to all the colonies from England, and resulted in forming the United States.

The second period extends to Philip's war, in 1675, when Massachusetts had several towns on Connecticut river, and had an extensive region to protect at home from a powerful savage combination. The third period may be limited by the close of the last French war, in 1759, when the capture of Canada by the British put an end to the long and disastrous hostilities of France upon the frontiers of the colonies. The fourth period extends to the close of the revolution, and the fifth to the present day. Early Missions among the Indians.Rev. John Eliot began to preach to the Indians near Boston in 1646. In 1650 the English "society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts," opened a correspondence with the commissioners of the United colonies, and appointed them their agents. Eliot (the apostle to the Indians, as he is often called) had, ere this, been so far successful in his exertions as to feel encouragement, and to inspire the benevolent with hope. He continued his labors several years without reward or expectation of payment; but afterward receiving contributions from gentlemen in England, he was enabled to extend his operations, and to educate his sons at college, the eldest of whom afterward preached to the natives. By his example several other clergymen in the country were encouraged to adopt similar measures. Mr. Bourne and Mr. Cotton acquired the Indian language to qualify them for the task, and preached at Martha's Vineyard, &c.; Mr. Mayhew and his son preached at that island and at Nantucket; while Messrs. Pierson and Fitch followed their example in Connecticut.

Eliot published his Indian translation of the New Testament in 1661, and the whole Bible soon after. The printing was done at the expense of the society for the propagation of the gospel. He prepared also translations of Baxter's Call, psalms, hymns, &c., and composed several works for use in the schools which he established in the Indian villages. Some of the youth were sent to learn Latin and Greek. Several Indian towns were constituted by Massachu

setts, and courts established in them, each with one English judge, while other officers were all chosen by the natives.

The first Indian church was formed in 1670, at Natick; the second at Pakemit, now Stoughton, whose first native teacher was named Ahawton. The other Christian or praying towns in the Indian country were the following: Okommakummessit, now Marlborough; Wamesit, now Tewksbury; Nashobah, now Littleton; Mungunkook, now Hopkinton; and there were others in Oxford, Dudley, Worcester, and Uxbridge, and three in Woodstock.

The gospel was thus early made known to the Indians; many of them received it, and it immediately began to produce its natural effects, by introducing civilization with many of its advantages. The people became fixed in their habits and residences, attended to agriculture, began to acquire learning, erected more substantial habitations, and pursued the arts.

In Plymouth colony the success of the early efforts of missionaries among the natives was still more remarkable. About five hundred Indians on Cape Cod, under the care of the Rev. Mr. Bourne, made rapid improvement. About two hundred soon learned to read, and more than seventy to write, and there was a church with twenty-seven communicants, with the Mayhews, at Martha's Vineyard.

PRINTING.-The Rev. Jesse Glover, an English dissenting clergymen, has been called the father of the American press. He embarked for New England in 1638, with his family, and a printingpress which he had purchased with money contributed by himself and his friends, accompanied by a printer, Stephen Daye, whom he had hired. Mr. Glover died on the passage; but the magistrates and elders of Massachusetts encouraged Daye to put the press in operation at Cambridge, where the new-comers took up their residences. In January, 1639, he printed the Freeman's Oath, an almanac, and the Psalms in metre. His first successor, Samuel Green, began to print in 1649, and died in 1702. He had nineteen children,