“When it pleaseth God we are settled and fitted for the fishing business and other trading, I doubt not but, by the blessing of God, the grain will give content to all. In the mean time, that which we have gotten we send by this ship; and though it be not much, yet it will witness for us that we have not been idle, considering the smallness of our number, all this summer.
“Now, because I expect your coming unto us,[23] with other of our friends, whose company we much desire, I thought good to advise you of a few things needful. Be careful to have a very good bread-room to put your biscuits in. Let your cask for beer and water be iron-bound, for the first tire, if not more. Let not your meat be dry salted; none can better do it than the sailors. Let your meal be so hard trod in your cask that you shall need an adz or hatchet to work it out with. Trust not too much on us, for corn at this time, for by reason of this last company that came, depending wholly upon us, we shall have little enough till harvest.
“Be careful to come by some of your meal to spend by the way. It will much refresh you. Build your cabins as open as you can, and bring good store of clothes and bedding with you. Bring every man a musket or fowling-piece. Let your piece be long in the barrel, and fear not the weight of it, for most of our shooting is from stands. Bring juice of lemon, and take it fasting; it is of good use. For hot waters, aniseed water is the best; but use it sparingly. If you bring anything for comfort in the country, butter or sallet oil, or both, is very good. Our Indian corn, even the coarsest, maketh as pleasant meat as rice; therefore spare that, unless to spend by the way. Bring paper and linseed oil for your windows, with cotton yarn for your lamps. Let your shot be most for big fowls, and bring store of powder and shot.”
The Pilgrims, it seems, had only oiled paper to keep out the storms of a New England winter. Eight years after this, the arts had made such progress that Mr. Higginson in the year 1629, in a letter addressed from Salem to his friends in England writes, “Be sure to furnish yourselves with glass for windows.” Indeed, glass windows were not introduced into England until the year 1180. Then they were so costly that none but the most wealthy could have them. Even in the time of Henry VIII. they were considered a luxury which the common people could not think of enjoying.
One of the passengers in the Fortune, Mr. William Hilton, in a letter addressed to his friends at home, immediately after his arrival, having written in glowing terms of the richness of the country and the prospects of the colony, adds:
“We are all freeholders. The rent day doth not trouble us; and all those good blessings we have of which and what we list in their seasons for taking. Our company are, for the most part, very religious, honest people. The word of God is sincerely taught to us every Sabbath; so that I know not anything a contented mind can here want. I desire your friendly care to send my wife and children to me, where I wish were all the friends I have in England.”
Mr. Hilton’s family came in the next ship. Not only had the Fortune brought no supply to the colonists, but they were compelled to take from their own rapidly diminishing stores to supply the ship’s crew with provisions for her return voyage. Another winter came. In the absence of all domestic animals such as horses, mules, cows, oxen, sheep, there was but little of the usual winter work of farmers which remained for the Pilgrims to perform. Fishing, hunting and the collection of fuel, which they drew with their own hands to their doors, occupied the most of their time.
On Christmas day rather an amusing event occurred, which has been recorded by Governor Bradford. In the papal church and with the common people in England, Christmas had become a day of revelry, carousing and drunkenness. Ostensibly set apart as a religious festival, the depravity of man had so perverted it that, of all the days in the year, Christmas was the one most utterly abandoned to wickedness. Under these circumstances the Puritans, perhaps unwisely, deemed it expedient to abolish the observance of the day altogether.
On the morning of Christmas day the Governor, as usual on other days, went out with the Pilgrims of the Mayflower to their usual occupation in the fields. But some of the new-comers, idle and frivolous, and accustomed to the Christmas games of England, excused themselves from going into the field, saying that their consciences would not allow them to do any work on Christmas day.
The Governor replied that if it were a matter of conscience they might certainly be excused,—that he did not wish that any persons in the colony should have violence done to their religious convictions. He therefore left these men at home, while he went, with the rest of the colonists, to their daily toil. But when they returned at noon, they found these scrupulous men, whose consciences would not allow them to perform any useful labor on Christmas day, out in the streets engaged in all manner of old country sports. They were pitching the bar, playing ball, and engaged in games of petty gambling. Governor Bradford went to them, and by virtue of his office, took away from them their implements of gaming, saying: