FOOTNOTES:
[2] Charlestown.
[3] Salem.
CHAPTER VIII.
STANDISH AT MERRY MOUNT.
Some two weeks had passed by since the visit of the committee of safety to Plymouth; long enough for Bradford, ever moderate, ever considerate, to write a letter of kindly expostulation to Morton, and to receive an insolent and defiant reply; and now in a pleasant June afternoon the Plymouth boat, commanded by Standish, and manned by eight picked followers, drew into Weymouth fore-river, where upon the water-course now known as Phillips Creek, Weston and his men, some six or seven years before, had founded their unlucky settlement.
The fate of this settlement we have seen, and also learned that the houses protected by Standish’s warning to the savages had since become the dwelling-place of some of the followers of Ferdinando Gorges, that showy personage who, coming to the New World with the romantic idea of proclaiming himself its governor, found it so savage and forbidding of aspect that, after a few months spent mostly as a guest of Plymouth, he quietly returned to England, civilization, and a sovereignty on paper. The houses repaired or built by him still remained, however, and among the Gorges men who continued to live in them were the Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Bursley who accompanied Blackstone and Maverick to Plymouth.