The next morning five or six Indians timidly approached them in a canoe, and then retired and set up a dance on the shore, as a token of friendly greeting. Armed with crayon and drawing-paper, Champlain was despatched to seek from the natives some important geographical information. Dispensing knives and biscuit as a friendly invitation, the savages gathered about him, assured by their gifts, when he proceeded to impart to them their first lesson in topographical drawing. He pictured to them the bay on the north side of Cape Anne, which he had just traversed, and signifying to them that he desired to know the course of the shore on the south, they immediately gave him an example of their apt scholarship by drawing with the same crayon an accurate outline of Massachusetts Bay, and finished up Champlain's own sketch by introducing the Merrimac River, which, not having been seen, owing to the presence of Plum Island, which stretches like a curtain before its mouth, he had omitted to portray. The intelligent natives volunteered a bit of history. By placing six pebbles at equal distances, they intimated that Massachusetts Bay was occupied by six tribes, and governed by as many chiefs. [45] He learned from them, likewise, that the inhabitants of this region subsisted by agriculture, as did those at the mouth of the Saco, and that they were very numerous.
Leaving Cape Anne on Saturday the 16th of July, De Monts entered Massachusetts Bay, sailed into Boston harbor, and anchored on the western side of Noddle's Island, now better known as East Boston. In passing into the bay, they observed large patches of cleared land, and many fields of waving corn both upon the islands and the mainland. The water and the islands, the open fields and lofty forest-trees, presented fine contrasts, and rendered the scenery attractive and beautiful. Here for the first time Champlain observed the log canoe. It was a clumsy though serviceable boat in still waters, nevertheless unstable and dangerous in unskilful hands. They saw, issuing into the bay, a large river, coming from the west, which they named River du Guast, in honor of Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, the patentee of La Cadie, and the patron and director of this expedition. This was Charles River, seen, evidently just at its confluence with the Mystic. [46]