It was yet very cold while our fathers were putting up the houses, and the sickness increased, so that at one time before the women and children could go on shore, nearly one half of our company were unable to sit up. All the while the food was very bad, save when more baskets of Indian corn were found.
One evening, when father had come on board the vessel after working very hard on our house, I heard him say to mother that we must try to be cheerful, praying to God that the sickness which was upon our people so sorely would pass us by until we could build the home, plant a garden, and raise food from the earth.
Sarah and I often asked each other when we were alone, whether the good Lord, whom we strove to serve diligently, would allow us to starve to death in this strange land where we had hoped to be so very near Him; for, indeed, as the days passed and the food we had brought with us from England became more nearly unfit to eat, it was as if death stood close at hand.
THE NEW HOME
It seemed like a very long while before the houses were ready so that we who were well could go on shore to live. I must tell you what our home is like. In Scrooby, when one builds a house, he has the trees sawed into timbers and boards at a mill; but in this new land we had no mills. When a man in England wants to make a chimney, he buys bricks and mortar; but here, as father said, we had plenty of clay and lime, yet could not put them to proper use until tools were brought across the sea with which to work such material into needed form.
There was plenty of granite and other rock out of which to make cellars and walls; but no one could cut it, and even though it was already shaped, we had no horses with which to haul it. Think for a moment what it must mean not to have cows, sheep, oxen, horses or chickens, and we had none of these for three or four years.
My father built the house we are now living in, almost alone, having but little help from the other men when he had to raise the heavy timbers. First, after clearing away the snow, he dug a hole in the frozen ground, two or three feet deep, making it of the same shape as he had planned the house. Then, having cut down trees for timbers, he stood them upright all around the inside of this hole, leaving here a place for a door, and there another for a window, until the sides and ends of the building were made.
On the inside he filled the hole again with the earth he had taken out at the beginning, pounding it down solid to form a floor, and at the same time to help make the logs more secure in an upright position. Where the floor of earth does not hold the timbers firmly enough, what are called puncheons are fastened to the outside just beneath the roof.
Puncheons are logs that have been split and trimmed with axes until they are something like planks, and you will see very many in our village of Plymouth. Hard work it is indeed to make these puncheon planks; but they were needed to fasten crosswise on the sides and ends of our house, in order to hold the logs more firmly in place.