The trees, growing thickly over the ground, save where they had been cut down to build our homes and to provide us with wood for the fires, prevented all, except such of the men as were well enough to go out with their guns in the hope of shooting animals that could be eaten as food, from going abroad, save from one house to the other.
And little heart had we for leaving the shelter of our homes. In nearly every house throughout the village was there sickness or death; the cold was piercing, and, however industriously we had worked filling the cracks between the logs with clay, the wind came through in many places, so that for the greater part of the time we needed to hug closely to the fire lest we freeze to death.
There were days when it seemed indeed as if the Lord had forgotten us; when, with the hunger, and the cold, and the sickness on every hand, it was as if we had been abandoned by our Maker.
THE FRIENDLY INDIANS
With the coming of Samoset and Squanto, however, although the illness was not abated, and one after another of our company died, it seemed, perhaps only to us children, as if things were changed. These Indians were the only two persons in all the great land who were willing to take us by the hand and do whatsoever they might to cheer, and because of this show of kindness did we feel the happier.
Squanto, as father has said again and again, did very much to aid. First he showed our people how to fish, and this may seem strange to you, for the English had used hooks and lines many years before the New World was dreamed of; yet, it is true that the savages could succeed, even without proper tackle, better than did our people.
Squanto showed father how, by treading on the banks of the brooks, to force out the eels which had buried themselves in the mud during the cold weather, and then taught him how to catch them with his hands, so that many a day, when there was nothing whatsoever in our home to eat, we hunted for eels, boiling rather than frying them, because the little store of pork was no longer fit to cook with.
Another thing which Squanto did that was wondrously helpful, was to teach us how to grind this Indian corn, Guinny wheat, or Turkie wheat, which ever it should be called, for none of us seemed to know which was the right name for it. The wheat that we found among the Indian graves could be made ready for the table, as we believed, only by boiling it a full day, and then it was not pleasing to the taste. But when Squanto came, he explained that it should be pounded until it was like unto a coarse flour, when it might be made into a pudding that, eaten with salt, is almost delicious.