"And here be blackberry briers for my dame to brew her wild-berry wines, and lo you now, this is sassafras whose roots are worth their weight in gold to the chirurgeons, and these are strawberry leaves."
"And we have seen cherry and plum stocks in abundance the way we came," declared Bradford as the rest of the party straggled down the hill.
"Excellent sand and gravel for building," said Warren crumbling the soil around the spring. "Ay, and here is clay to shape into pots and pans when the goodwives have broken all they bring."
"Methinks it hath a look of fuller's clay, and so is almost as well for us as soap," said Howland taking up some and washing his hands in the brook. "There, now, see you its use!"
"Have with you, friend," cried Winslow, daintiest of the pioneers. "Surely cleanliness being next to godliness tendeth somewhat to the same satisfaction!"
The exploration, carried as far as Eel River at the south and Murdoch's Pond westerly, lasted until night, when the Pilgrims bivouacked on the shore, supping merrily on some great clams dug by the sailors and wild fowl shot by Howland and Dotey. Before they slept under the sheltering brow of Cole's Hill it was pretty well decided that Plymouth, as they began at once to call it, should be their permanent dwelling-place, more especially as in their day-long explorations they had seen no natives or even their dwellings, and the site seemed for some reason abandoned to their occupancy.
But the joyous return with good news to those on board the Mayflower was turned into grief and dismay by the tidings awaiting the explorers.
Dorothy Bradford was dead. How it could have happened, or just when, no one knew, but on the very day after her husband's departure she had gone quietly on deck while the rest of the company were at supper and never was seen again; nor till the sea gives up its dead shall any know the story of that poor overwrought soul's last fierce struggle and defeat.
Nor can we speak of the young husband's anguish, and it may be self-reproach, in that awful hour. He speaks not himself of this matter in his journal, save in briefest words; nor dare we intrude upon such matters as lie between a man and his God. But this we may say, that as Jacob, wrestling with the angel and overcoming, went halting all his days from the wound of that strange conflict, so Bradford's face when he again took his place among his fellows told of years forever consumed in one terrible struggle.