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On the morning of September 4, 1612 Crout’s party continued on towards Trinity Bay. By about ten o’clock in the morning they where within three or four miles of the bay when, Crout says, they, “did happen [on] certaine paunds which prevented altogether our voyage”. According to Crout, this, combined with the fact that their supply of bread had been spoiled during the rain two days before, forced them to turn around and return to Cupers Cove which they reached on the night of September 6. Crout tells us that three days later, on the morning of September 9, “departed 8 of our people againe for Trinitie Bay to find it by land”. No account of this second trip has survived. Crout says he could not go because on the previous journey, “I took a mischance in one of my legs” but, as we have seen, John Guy tells us that the trail was extended all the way to Hopeall and a basic knowledge of the country to the east of Hopeall makes it fairly easy to reconstruct the last leg of the journey.
The valley through which the Grassy Gullies flows runs from northeast to southwest and all of its water eventually drains into Broad Cove Pond and from there into Trinity Bay at New Harbour. When Crout’s party moved west out of this valley, they were moving out of the New Harbour drainage system and into the Hopeall drainage system. The waters of Big Pond, Three Corner Pond, Loo Pond and all the ponds farther west flow into Hopeall Harbour. The number and size of these ponds increased as we moved northwest towards Hopeall on November 6, 1997. Roughly four miles from Hopeall, we encountered a cluster of ponds the largest of which were Denny’s Pond, Sutton’s Pond and Island Pond. It must have been these large bodies of water that the colonists encountered on the morning of September 4, 1612 and which finally convinced them to turn around.
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3. Crossing Sutton’s Pond Brook east of Island Pond.