Mount Hope Bay is the broadening estuary of Taunton Great River, and the elongated peninsula of Bristol Neck divides it from Narragansett Bay to the westward, stretching up to Providence. Upon Taunton Great River is a magnificent water-power which has produced the success of Taunton, a busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, where they make locomotives and tacks, bricks, screws and britannia ware, its name coming from Taunton in Somersetshire, its founder having been Elizabeth Pool, a pious Puritan lady of that place. When the first settlers explored the river they made a wonderful antiquarian discovery. Upon the shore, below Taunton, and opposite what are now the gardens and pleasure-grounds of Dighton, was found the famous "Writing Rock," lying partly submerged by the waterside, and when the tide is out, presenting a smooth face slightly inclined towards the river. It is a large greenstone boulder, the color changed to dusky red by the elements, and it now has the faint impression of hieroglyphics on its surface that have been almost effaced by the action of the water. In the early colonial days these marks were very distinct, and even after the beginning of the nineteenth century they could be plainly distinguished from the deck of a passing vessel. These inscriptions on the Dighton rock excited much wonder, and were generally attributed to the Norsemen. Old Cotton Mather described it, saying that among the "curiosities of New England, one is that of a mighty rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high tide covers part of it, there are very deeply engraved, no man alive knows how or when, about half a score lines, near ten foot long and a foot and a half broad, filled with strange characters." Another learned man speaks of them as "Punic inscriptions which remain to this day," made by the Phoenicians. Below, and near Fall River, many years ago, there was exhumed a skeleton in sitting posture, wearing a brass breast-plate and a belt of brass armor. Much marvel resulted from this important discovery, which was thought to have produced a veritable dead Viking, and it is said to have inspired Longfellow's poem of "The Skeleton in Armor":