To gratify this natural desire, the Governor and his council had deemed it advisable to depart so far from the terms of the original treaty as to allot to each colonist an acre of land, as near the town as possible, in order that, if any danger threatened, they might be able to unite speedily for the general defense.  This arrangement gave much satisfaction to the settlers; but in the year 1627 they were placed in a still more comfortable and independent position.  They were, by their charter, lords of all the neighboring land for a circle of more than one hundred miles.  That portion of their territory, therefore, which was most contiguous to the town, was divided into portions of twenty acres, five long on the side next the coast, and four broad; and to each citizen one of these portions was assigned, with the liberty of purchasing another for his wife, and also one for every child who resided with him.  To every six of these pieces were allotted a cow, two goats, and a few pigs; so that each settler became possessed of a little farm of his own, and a small herd of cattle to stock it with:  and peace and plenty at length seemed to smile on the hardy and long-enduring settlers.

Meanwhile, the colony of Massachusetts, which had been founded in the year 1624, increased rapidly.  It was first planted at Nantasket, a deserted village of the Indians, at the entrance of the Bay of Massachusetts, where the Plymouth settlers had previously erected a few houses, for the convenience of carrying on their trade with the neighboring tribes.  Another settlement had been formed, two years later, at Naumkeak, a tongue of land of remarkable fertility, where also a deserted Indian village was found, which formed the commencement of the town afterwards called Salem; and which had become—­at the period we have now arrived at in our story—­a place of some importance.  It was founded by a man of much zeal end enthusiasm, of the name of Endicott; who was one of the original possessors of the patent granted to several gentlemen of Dorsetshire, for the land in Massachusetts Bay, extending from the Merrimak to the Charles River, from north to south; but stretching to an indefinite distance westward, even over the unexplored regions between the boisterous Atlantic, and the ’Silent Sea,’ as the Pacific has been very aptly and beautifully designated.

Endicott had been invested, by the society to which he belonged in England, with the government of the whole district of Massachusetts; and he soon found himself called on to exercise his authority for the suppression of the disturbances excited by the settlers of Quincy.  This place was inhabited by a set of low and immoral men, one of whom, named Thomas Morton, had come over in the wild and dissolute train sent out by Weston several years previously.  He was a man of some talent, but of very contemptible character:  and had attached himself to the retinue of Captain Wollaston and his companions, who first