Note 441 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)

It is unnecessary to say that Morton was here writing at random. He confounds the Potomac with the Hudson, though, a few paragraphs further on (Infra, *99), he states the facts in regard to the latter river correctly; and the latitude he gives has no significance, being that of Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, and Cleveland, on Lake Erie. The Potomac nowhere flows so far north as 40°. The falls referred to are probably those of Niagara. They had not then been discovered (Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, p. 142), though vague reports concerning them had reached the French through the Indians, and they are plainly indicated on Champlain’s map of 1629. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. i. p. 271, note.) Some loose stories in regard to the rivers, falls, lakes and islands of the interior had been picked up by Morton, probably in his talks with seamen and others who had taken part in Kirk’s expedition. He certainly fell in with these in London, and it is more than likely that at the house of Gorges he saw Champlain’s map of 1629; though upon that the falls are placed at 43½ degrees of latitude, instead of at 41½. In 1634 there was no other map. On the strength of the information thus gathered, he made the statements contained in this chapter. The little he knew had been obtained in England, after his return there in 1631; for the Massachusetts Indians can hardly have known much of the remote interior, and in 1630 no attempts even at exploration away from the seashore had been made by the straggling occupants of the New England coast.