On the 15th day of July, 1605, the French navigators sailed smoothly on from Cape Porpoise twelve leagues toward the south; they coasted
Likeness of Samuel de Champlain from “The Isles of Shoals. An historical sketch,” (1901), by John Scribner Jenness, Boston, NY, Houghton, Mifflin and Company; page 16
along the beaches of Maine and New Hampshire, passing the Piscataqua River without notice, and by nightfall, had reached Great Boar’s Head in Hampton. Finding no harbor there, they again put to sea, a couple of leagues, and looked about them in twilight. What they saw shall be better given in the language of Champlain, for his words are the first written description, howeve brief, of the Isles of Shoals.
“Nous apperceusmes un cap a la grande terre au su quart du suest de nous, ou il pourioit avoir quelque six lieues; a l’est deux lieus, apperceusmes trois ou quatre isles asses hautes, et a l’ouest, un grand cul de sac.”
“We saw a cape, bearing south, a quarter southeast from us, distant some eighteen miles; on the east, two leagues distant, we saw three or four rather prominent islands, and on the west Ipswitch Bay.”
The three or four “isles asses hautes,” spoken of by Champlain, were our present Isles of Shoals.” [Hist. de la Nouv. France, Vol. II, p. 562]
