Note 297 — A {103} Chronological Table

See Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 204 and p. 277, where the “hole” is said to have been, not “two,” but “forty, yards square:” and we are farther told that “the like accident fell out at Casco, one and twenty miles from it to the eastward, much about the same time; and fish, in some ponds in the countrey, thrown up dead upon the banks,—supposed likewise to be kill’d with mineral vapours.” Hubbard (Hist. N.E., chap. 75) tells this, partly in the same words with the account in the Voyages, and adds, “All the whole town of Wells are witnesses of the truth of this relation; and many others have seen sundry of these clay pellets, which the inhabitants have shown to their neighbours of other towns.” And compare also the following, at p. 189 of the Voyages: “In 1669, the pond that lyeth between Watertown and Cambridge cast its fish dead upon the shore; forc’t by a mineral vapour, as was conjectured.”