Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/58

 of great darkness, it becomes necessary to the course of our narrative that we should turn back and learn what the pages of history and the voices of tradition have preserved of the commencement of the strange and terrible delusion which, under the name of the "Salem Witchcraft," has made itself known and recognized over more than half the world.

Salem village, subsequently known as Danvers, where the first outbreak of this fearful scourge had its rise, was not in those early days a distinct and independent town: it was then the suburbs, the outgrowth, and the more rural portion of the town of Salem.

It had been the sagacious policy of the infant colony, as soon as possible, to issue grants of large tracts of land to influential men, of independent means, enterprising spirit, and liberal views—such men as Winthrop, Dudley, Browne, Endicott, Bishop, Ingersoll, and others; men who had the power, as well as the will, to lay out roads, subdue the forest, clear the ground, and by introducing the desirable arts of husbandry, call out the productive power of the soil.