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Reproduced with permission from the author and from
Habitat, Journal of the Maine Audubon Society
September 1984, Volume One, Number Eight
On the fifteenth of August (1663) I arrived at Scarborow, the habitation of my beloved brother, being about a hundred leagues to the Eastward of Boston; here I resided eight years, and made it my business to discovere all along the Natural, Physical and Chyrugical Rarities of this New-Found World...
Thus came to America one of the greatest innocents Europe ever sent abroad, ''John Josselyn, Gent.'' To his own good fortune, Josselyn came to ''Mayne'': ''A daunting terrible country'' he marvelled, ''being full of Rocky Hills, as thick as Mole-Hills in a Meadow, and coated with infinite thick woods.''
Had Adam had a quill pen in Eden the ''New-Found World'' could have had no better a chronicler than this manor-born son of an English knight who chummed with the Indians, poked in the shallows, scrutinized the Heavens, and even in old age in the Old World cheerfully recalled Scarboro summer twilights where ''Glow-worms (fire flies) have wings ... and there are multitudes of them insomuch that in the dark evening when I first went into the Countrey, I thought the whole Heavens had been on fire, seeing so many sparkles flying in the air...''
Ever with stars in his eyes, John Josselyn was the ultimate tourist. He was also one of the very best, and the very first.
Josselyn landed first in New-England (being always, careful to spell it with the hyphen, and emphasize the New) on July 3, 1638, when Boston Harbor was ''rather a village than a town, there being not above 20 or 30 houses, and at Casco-Bay there being even less.''
With brother Henry, Josselyn lived at ''Scarborow, or Black-Point'' some fifteen months until October 1639. A quarter-century later, in July 1663, he returned to spend eight joyous years at the same place. The trip was purely for pleasure, and the result was two small, semi-scientific reminiscences: New-England's Rarities Discovered: In Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of That Country (London, 1672) and An Account of Two Voyages to New-England (London, 1674). Josselyn's books are slender, vigorous, quirky - and are about all we know about him.
The books offer few clues to our traveller's past, though clues about his character abound. John Josselyn was the youngest son of Sir Thomas Josselyn of Essex, and a life-long bachelor. He may well have been a physician, for he rejoices in the ''excellent medicines'' found here and carefully notes their values. (''Beaver-glands'' he happily relates, are capital for ''Wind in the Stomach and Belly'' and Sea-lion tusks ''beat to a powder and drunk with convenient liquors, is a gallant Urin-provoking medicine.'')
He was obviously well-educated, salting his works with quotes from Pliny and Lucretius and proverbs in the Italian, and he was decidedly as happy and as hopeless a romantic as ever set pen to paper. To a world that has long forgotten how awesome the fresh New World once seemed, his exuberance is refreshing.
John was a fortunate man. His ''Beloved Brother'' Henry was agent for the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason, the Proprietors of old Maine and New Hampshire, and rose to be deputy governor of the province. John spent his years not as a gentleman planter but as a gentleman tramper, whose joy it was to range far ashore and far afield - even to the White Mountains, ''Upon which lieth snow all the year.'' - Scrambling eagerly up gullies thick with brush (''Which being taken hold of'' he assures us, ''are a good help to the climbing Discoverer''). Josselyn may even have climbed Mt. Washington, where ''Far above the lower clouds, ... from hence we beheld a vapour (like a great Pillar) drawn up by the Sun Beams out of a great Lake or Pond into the Air, where it was formed into a Cloud...''
Wild America, nursery to clouds, did not seem irrational to this bright-eyed Englishman who believed with all his heart ''It is true that nothing in nature is superflous and we have the Scriptures to back it, that God created nothing in vain.'' Josselyn set out, in gentlemanly fashion, to find order in a land on which God had imposed wonder.
New-England Rarities is a hymn of praise for American wonders, spiced by Josselyn's delight in upsetting the applecart of the Old World with the unexpected New. A brisk travelogue and rich commentary, a third of the book lists ''Beasts, Birds, etc.'' scouted out and paraded by the erstwhile tramper. ''Pliny and Isadore write there are not above 144 kinds of Fishes, but to my knowledge there are nearer 300'' he proudly notes; ''I supposed that America was unknown to Pliny and Isadore.''
His greatest love was for New England's flora, which he declared ''For variety, number, beauty and virtues may stand in competition with the plants of any Country in Europe.'' The classical botanists, ''Had they been in New-England, they might have found a thousand, at least, never heard of nor seen by an Englishman before.''
Some modern experts dismiss Josselyn as merely an eager herbalist, but the lone zealot - armed only with his ancient botanies and boundless delight - sought out dozens of new species unknown to science since Linneaus, and fit all into his own four-point framework: plants ''common to England'', those ''Proper (native) to the Country'', those ''Proper but having no name'' and plants which ''have sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New-England.'' The latter two lists are of immense value today. Likely no man living knew more about New England plants nor loved them more. Wrote one Harvard scholar years later, ''no work of any size or significance (was done) on New England plants after Josselyn for the whole century that followed.''
But the great delight of Rarities lies not in its lists but in its author, something of the eternal waif in the wilderness. On one memorable afternoon stroll, ''I chanc't to spye a fruit'', he informs us, ''like a pine Apple, plated with scales. It was as big as the crown of a Woman's hat... (I) made bold to step unto it with an itent to have gathered it ... but no sooner had (I) touched it but hundreds of Wasps'' burst out. ''At last I cleared myself of them, being stung only on the lip; and glad I was that I 'scaped so well.'' But his lip ''swelled so extreamly'', he sighs, that by the time he stumbled home, ''They hardly knew me but by my Garments.''
Josselyn closes Rarities with a spicy poem to an Indian maiden to whose allures he is openly responsive. The old squaws were ''lean and uglie'' he snorts, but the young ones were ''plump as Partridges'' and ''seldom without a Comes-to-Me, or 'Cos Amoris,' in their Countenance.'' To one he addresses several stanzas of an openly sensual ode ... and suddenly blurts ''But enough of This'' and closes, leaving us - and 300 years of eager readers - hanging.
The Royal Society's favorable notice of Rarities (spicy poem included) sent Josselyn trotting back to his desk to produce An Aceount of Two Voyages to New-England (1674) which he pointedly - and fruitlessly - dedicated ''To the Learned President and Gentlemen of The Royal Society.'' The ''Learned Gentlemen'' solemnly ignored him.
Voyages is both an addendum and a new adventure (''The Porcupine I have treated of, only this I forgot to acquaint you with, that they lay Eggs, and are good meat.'') and its cool reception was likely due to its author's open - and often marvelous - ridiculing of the Puritans. A staunch Royalist out of step with the Theocracy in both New World and Old, Josselyn never resists a chance for some exquisite rallery at their expense. At one point, addressing the Fathers, he says of his tales (in an aside best appreciated in the Old English): ''I have taken some pains in recollecting of them to memory, and fetting of them down for their benefit from whence I may expect thanks; but I believe my reward will be according to Ben Johnson's proverbs, 'Whiftle to a Jade and he will pay you with a fart, Claw a Churl by the britch and he will fhit in your fift!'''
Small wonder that at Scarboro the Puritan grand Jury twice pressed Josselyn for skipping Divine Services. And small wonder that Josselyn found a strong admirer in another robust cruiser against the current, Henry David Thoreau.
''What a strong and healthy but reckless, hit or miss style had some of these early writers of New England like Josselyn'' marvelled Thoreau, who borrowed his books from the Harvard Library in 1851 and 1855, ''As if they spoke with a relish, smacking their lips like a coach-whip, caring more to speak heartily than scientifically true... They were not to be caught napping by the wonders of nature in a new country.''
Thoreau recognized a kindred spirit in ''Old Josselyn'', who hewed his words ''tough, like hardened things, the sinews of a deer, or the roots of the pine.'' Nature, declared Thoreau in A Week On the Concord and Merrimack, was served only by such lines written ''as if its author, had he held a plow instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.''
Thoreau returned again to praise the ''strong new soil'' that spoke through Josselyn's rich old prose in the Atlantic's ''Chesuncook'' (1858) and in The Maine Woods (1864). Both writers shared a style thick with feral metaphors, wrote Thoreau, shaping ''sentences that are verduous and blooming as evergreen and flowers, because they are rooted in fact and experience.''
But experience can be a bitter teacher, as Josselyn learned. ''A good proviso of a learned man,'' he confesses wearily, ''is never to report wonders, for in so doing, of the greatest he will be sure not to be believed, but laughted at.''
And in fact Josselyn's endless capacity for awe was probably matched only by his endless gullibility. And he swallowed some whoppers: the ''Mere-man'' seen by one ''Mr. Mitton'' out in Casco-Bay ... ''Who laying his hands on the side of the Canow had one of them chopt off with a hatchet, which was in all respects like the hand of a man, the Triton presently sunk, dying the water with his purple blood, and was not more seen.''
One can almost see him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, scribbling away before the winking fishermen. ''These with many other tales they told me'' he admits, ''The credit whereof I will neither impeach nor impune, but will satisfy myself with - 'There are many strange things in the world than are to be seen between London and Maidenstone'.''
Less strange, but equally marvelous, was Josselyn's ''Troculus'' - today's Chimney Swift - ''whose feathers are sharp, (and) which they stick into the sides of the Chymney (to rest themselves, their Legs being exceedingly short) ... they commonly have four or five young ones, and when they go away ... they never fail to throw down one of their young Birds into the room by way of Gratitude.''
For Josselyn, enchantment haunted the very water and very air at the gates of the New World. But like Marco Polo, Josselyn learned that he was doomed to write only half of what he had seen, and have none of it believed. The disbelievers were ''A sort of stagnant, stinking spirits,'' he sputtered, ''Who, like flyes, lye sucking all the botches of carnal pleasures, and never travelled so much Sea, as in between Heth-Ferry and Lyon-Key; yet notwithstanding (sitting in the chair of the Scornful over their whifts and draughts of Intoxication) will desperately censure the relations of the greatest of Travellers.''
What need to exaggerate the bounty of a land when calm fact could relate that ''In Anno Dom 1670 (herring) were driven unto Black-Point harbor by other great fish that prey upon them so near the shore, that they threw themselves (it being high water) upon dry land in such infinite numbers that we might have gone halfway up the leg amongst them for near a quarter of a mile.'' Or that Indians, in their solemn councils, spoke in: ''perfect Hexamitre Verse?''
And when age finally slowed his pace of wonder, it did not dull his wit. Old Josselyn bowed to the inevitable himself, bequeathing the investigation of a curious sprig, found by a neighbor ''wandering in the woods to find out his stray cattle,'' to ''those that are younger, and better able to undergo the pains and trouble of finding it out.''
And so at last in late 1671, with a last look back - and a final poke at the Puritans - ''The year being well spent, and the Gov't of the Province topsiturvy, being heartily weary and expecting the approach of winter...'' John Josselyn left the land he loved for the land of his birth. ''Travel where thou canst'' he sighed, ''But dye where thou oughtest, that is, in thine own Countrey.'' He died in 1675.
''Henceforth'' he wrote at the very end, ''You are to expect no more Revelations from me. I am now retired into my native Country ... disposed to a Holy quiet ... for the good of my soul.'' He was, he wrote, ''weaned from the world.''
It was the only untruth he ever deliberately told. For Josselyn, the enchantment of nature was endless, and every pond without a bottom. He opened his eyes to what other men passed over; through him we see the New World in all its freshness.
Herbert Adams is a writer, actor and historian from Portland.
Creation Date: September 17, 1995
Reproduced with permission of Herbert Adams and
Habitat, Journal of the Maine Audubon Society
Return to Scarborough Land Conservation Trust