Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/217

 with their conjurations, which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp."—N. E. Memorial.

How I appeared, and, by the embers' gleam, To the hard rock my lance's point applied, And scored my mandate. The inscriptions on the rocks by Taunton river have afforded a subject of much speculation to the antiquary. It would not be strange if the indians ascribed to them a supernatural origin. STANZA XLII. An odor, strange, though not offensive, spread  About him, as he near and nearer drew;  If my recollection serves me, Dr. Good, in his Book of Nature, supposes that the seeming power of fascination in serpents may arise from an odor emitted by them. The tale of the Hunter and the Rattlesnake, in the New England Legends, must furnish the author with a justification for the use which he has made of this serpent in the text; and it ought also to be added, that his description of the serpent, in the act of exercising his mysterious powers, is not essentially different from that in the tale to which he has referred. STANZA LXII. Here stretched Aquidnay tow'rd the ocean blue.

Aquidnay is the Indian name for Rhode Island. This name is variously written—sometimes Aquidneck, sometimes Aquetnet, and sometimes Aquidnet. Winthrop generally writes it Aquidnay, and the author has chosen so to write it, for no other reason, than that the sound is a little more agreeable. There is some reason to conclude that Aquetnet is nearer its true etymology. See the following note.

STANZA LXX.

''Another sachem sways The Isle of peace.''

Aquene signified, in the Narraganset dialect, peace. It is possible that Aquetnet, as the name of this island has been some