Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/51

Rh, on the sixth of May, in a southeasterly course, past the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, where he found the coast to trend toward the north, which he followed until he cast anchor off the shores of Maine, in the forty-third parallel. The natives here did not please the discoverers as did those of Narragansett Bay, whom he said, "we had found kind and gentle." "They, the Maine Indians, were so rude and barbarous that we were unable by any signs we could make, to hold any communication with them. No regard was paid to our courtesies. When we had nothing left to exchange with them, the men, at our departure, made the most brutal signs of disdain and contempt possible. Against their will, we penetrated two or three leagues into the interior with twenty-five men. When we came to the shore, they shot at us with their arrows, uttering the most horrible cries and afterwards fleeing to the woods."

Concluding his account of the new country and its people, Verrazzano remarks. "As to the religious faith of all these tribes, not understanding their language, we could not learn either by signs or gestures, anything certain. It seemed to us that they had no religion, nor laws, nor any knowledge of a first Cause or Mover,—that they worshipped neither the heavens, stars, sun, moon, nor the planets. We could not learn if they were given to any kind of idolatry, or offered any sacrifices or supplications, or if they have temples or houses of prayer in their villages; our conclusion was that they had no religion, but lived without any. This seems to be the result of ignorance, for they are very easily persuaded, and imitated us with earnestness and fervor, in all that they saw us do as Christians in our acts of devotion."