"For ye yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other men's wives and children, without any recompence. . . . And for men's wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloathes, &c. they deemed it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. . . . Let none object this is men's corruption and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this course in them, God in his wisdom saw another course fiter for them."

Winslow.

Edward Winslow was the associate of Bradford, keeping what may be called a day-book as compared with Bradford's ponderous year-book. This journal Edward begins with the departure from England September 6, 1620, summarizing the two months' voyage in a single line, and taking up the continuous record on the day they sighted land, November 9th. For forty days there is the account of attempts to find a suitable place in which to settle, the little shallop hovering and flitting about like a distrustful bird. On board the " Mayflower" there were signs of faction and along shore of Indians. So the famous compact was made and signed, and the same day were "set ashore fifteen or sixteen men well armed to see what the land was and what the inhabitants they could meet with." The narrative of these first amphibious days reads like the story of a winter picnic on a desolate coast. There is no woeful lamentation over the necessity of wading ashore in icy brine-only the simple observation that colds were caught which were the death of many during the winter. The chief regret is for lack of fishhooks and harpoons, but this is counterbalanced by delight at finding corn and beans hidden, which the

discoverers took with the inward promise of paying for it in the future as they did. The account of the first encounter with savages and their college yell, "Woach, woach, ha ha hach woach," is not in the recent style of the cowboy novel. Breaking camp and advancing "after prayer," but with their powder dry, the vanguard soon came running in with arrows flying after them. "In the meantime Captain Miles Standish, having a snaphance ready, made a shot and after him another. The cry of our enemies was dreadful." At last the chief was hit and ran away "with an extraordinary cry. Thus it pleased God to vanquish our enemies and give us deliverance. So after we had given God thanks we took our shallop and went on our journey" toward Plymouth.

"And coming upon a strange Iland we kept our watch all night in the raine upon that Iland: and in the morning we marched about it and found no Inhabitants at all, and here wee made our Randevous all that day, being Saturday.

"10. of December [O. S.], on the Sabboth day wee rested, and on Munday we sounded the Harbour of Plymouth and found it a very good Harbour for our shipping. We marched also into the Land, and found divers corne fields, and little running brookes, a place very good for situation, so we returned to our Ship againe with good newes to the rest of our people, which did much comfort their hearts."

The first clause of this last sentence, "We marched also into the land," is the plain record of the first landing, on the 21st of December [N. S.], 1620, of the ten Pilgrim pioneers, to wit, Standish, Carver, Bradford, Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren, Stephen Hopkins, and Edward Doten, with seven of the ship's company.

The unadorned simplicity of the statement is worthy of the first step of a "march into the land" which has been going on ever since in the same westward direction. There is no dramatic account of planting the British flag, as there certainly could have been no planting of a cross, after the manner of other pioneers.

The story of the second landing is told in a record of repeated ventures ashore of small parties and their return to the ship (lying a mile and a half away) through a period of forty days. Then follow these brief entries:

"Saturday 30. [Jan.] we made up our Shed for our common goods."

"Sunday the 31. we kept our Meeting on Land."

But one looks in vain for any line that could be written under the familiar picture of the "Landing of the Pilgrims." However, the Nation which then and there came ashore has been faithful to the tradition of the elders, and has evermore kept its goods dry and also kept its meetings sacredly on Sunday, however great the seeming necessity of labor. And then an equally characteristic line: "On Munday the 1 [Feb.] we wrought on our houses, and the rest of the weeke we followed our business likewise."

In all this journal, which is continued for thirteen months, there is the same plain and unaffected simplicity of narration where heroic doing and suffering are recounted, and the almost childlike joy at any little measure of good fortune. The best commendation of the unadorned record is to say, that it sets down the truth as it appeared to men of strong sense, having spirit and zealous purpose to do well the hard task they had undertaken. As a document it is a minute and faithful account of the first year in the northern colony, as Bradford's History was that of the first

twenty-five years. Winslow continued his part of the journal for two years more in his "Good News from New England." As writers they both had the historian's discrimination in omitting irrelevant and trivial matters when the temptation to mention such must have been great in the narrowness of the place and time of their writing.

Besides the above, Governor Bradford wrote "A Dialogue Between Some Young Men in New England and Sundry Ancient Men out of Holland and Old England," also a "Memoir of Elder William Brewster." Winslow wrote a "Brief Narration of the True Grounds or Cause of the First Planting of New England." All these and more may be read in "Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers," to be found in any collection of works on early colonial history. Together they constitute the sum of what is worth reading among the writings of the first decade in the Plymouth plantation. They are as true and honest, as simple and unaffected as the social life they record, and sometimes as picturesque as the surroundings they describe. Afterward came another manner, with a fresh influx of colonists not like the first, and new elements began to appear in a literature that was in many respects primitive, and features were added which lacked the homely simplicity of the heroic age.

IV

THREE BAY MEN

Morton.

THOMAS MORTON of Merry Mount was a settler and a
writer who did not allow himself or his writings to be
overlooked by the men of Plymouth. Into Thomas
their perpendicular life he plunged with music
and dancing. Between their sombre lines he scribbled
with porcupine's quill. Accordingly, though he lived
thirty miles away by Indian trail, they sent him three
thousand miles by ship as soon as they could. "Morton
of Clifford's inn, gent," as he subscribed himself, was a left-
over sample of the independent fortune-hunters who now
and then made their way to these shores. His was an
instance of the survival of the strongest in Captain
Wallaston's little company, which came to Massachusetts
Bay in 1625. He gathered discontented fellows and
Indians about him, trading with the last in the dangerous
currency of rum and muskets, powder and ball. He also
set up a maypole, around which he held greenwood
revelry, composing "a song to be sung with a chorus,
every man bearing his part." It is one of the freaks of
literary history that the first effusion of the poetic muse
in staid New England should run as follows:

"Make green garlands, bring bottles out,
And fill sweet nectar freely about;

Uncover thy head, and fear no harm,

For here 's good liquor to keep it warm,"

with other stanzas and a chorus to correspond.