Andrew Weston had returned to England in the _Charity_, leaving Wessagussett in September, 1622 (_supra_, 7). He would seem to have brought over the Indian boy in question with him. From the entry in the records of the Council for New England, just quoted, it would appear that Leonard Peddock was in New England during the summer of 1622. The reference to him in the text is additional evidence that Morton was there at the same time, and in company with Weston.
[232] This is undoubtedly a misprint for Auckies, which was a sailor’s corruption for Auks. The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_) is probably referred to. This bird, now supposed to be extinct, was formerly common on the New England coast. Audubon, writing in 1838, says: “An old gunner, residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” (_Am. Ornithological Biog._, vol. iv. p. 316.) Professor Orton, alluding to this passage, in the _American Naturalist_ (1869, p. 540), expresses the opinion that the Razor-billed Auk was the bird referred to; but Professor F. W. Putnam adds, in a foot-note, that “the ‘old hunter’ was undoubtedly correct in his statement, as we have bones of the species taken from the shell-heaps of Marblehead, Eagle Hill in Ipswich, and Plum Island.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman found them in the shell-heaps at Cotuit. See _Mem. Hist. of Boston_, vol. i. p. 12.
There is an elaborate paper on the Great Auk, under the title of “The Garefowl and its Historians,” by Professor Alfred Newton, in the _Natural History Review_ for 1865, p. 467.
[233] Morton would seem to be mistaken in this statement. Between 1614 and 1619 two French vessels were lost on the Massachusetts coast. One was wrecked on Cape Cod, and the crew, who succeeded in getting on shore, were most of them killed by the savages, and the remainder enslaved in the way described in the text. Two of these captives were subsequently redeemed by Captain Dermer (Bradford, p. 98). The other vessel was captured by the savages in Boston Bay, and burned. This is the vessel referred to by Morton as riding at anchor off Peddock’s Island. The circumstances of the capture are described in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. iv. pp. 479, 489). All the crew, he says, were killed, and the ship, after grounding, was burned. Pratt’s statement is distinct, and agrees with Bradford’s, that the captives among the Indians were the survivors from the vessel wrecked on Cape Cod, not from that captured in Boston Bay.
