At once the “Mayflower’s” course was shaped for Plymouth harbor, where she dropped anchor on the 16th of December.[150] The first law on the Pilgrim statute-book was, that each man should build his own house.[151]
A few days after the arrival of the ship, “a party of colonists went ashore to fell timber, to saw, to rive, to carry, and prepare for the important work of building; and that day every man worked with a will, hopefully and heartily. A new home, a pleasant refuge, future security, was the aim of every one, and while each cheered the other, the axes rang out in harmony with their hopes; their strokes were as heavy as their hearts were light. The crowned oaks of the forest did homage, and yielded their riches to found the infant state.” After sufficient timber had been secured for present want, “many went to work on an adjacent hill[152] to prepare fortifications; others measured the land, and allotted the lots for building.”[153]
The houses were ranged in a double row along one street;[154] and for economic reasons the community was divided into nineteen families, an arrangement which necessitated fewer buildings and less outlay.[155] Yet despite the energetic labors of the settlers, they made haste slowly. At that inclement season it was almost impossible to build. Happily the weather was moderate for December;[156] but rain fell incessantly, which was disastrous to the health of men already wasting away under consumptions and lung-fevers.[157] It was remembered that “a green Christmas makes a fat church-yard.”
The Pilgrims were well satisfied with the site of their settlement, hard and sterile as it was. Indeed, they had a devout habit of looking on the good, rather than the evil of events, and this made even their crosses easier to be borne. “This harbor,” they said, “is a bay greater than Cape Cod, compassed with goodly land; and in the bay are two fine islands,[158] uninhabited, wherein are nothing but woods, oaks, pines, walnuts, beech, sassafras, vines, and other trees which we know not. The bay is a most hopeful place, and has innumerable store of fowl and excellent food; it cannot but contain fish in their seasons; skate, cod, turbot, and herring, we have tasted of. Here is abundance of muscles, the greatest and best we ever saw, also crabs and lobsters in their time, infinite. The place is in fashion like a sickle or fish-hook. The land for the crust of the earth is a spit’s depth, excellent black mould, and fat in many places; and vines are everywhere, and cherry-trees, plum-trees, and many others whose names we know not. Many kinds of herbs we find in winter hereabouts, as strawberry-leaves innumerable, sorrel, yarrow, carrot, brook-lime, liverwort, water-cresses, great store of leeks, and an excellent strong kind of flax or hemp. Here is sand, gravel, an excellent clay, no better in the world, exceeding good for pots, and it will wash like soap; we have the best water that ever we drank, and the brooks will soon be full of fish.”[159]
So runs the journal of the Pilgrims. Hopeful and thankful for what they had, they seemed anxious to be pleased, and to make the best even of their ills. It was in no sour and bitter spirit that they
“Leaned their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,
And looked up with devout eyes to Him
Who bade them bloom, unblanched, amid the waste
Of desolation.”
After all, perhaps it was well even for their present safety that they had landed on the bleak New England strand. “Had they been carried, according to their desire, unto Hudson’s river,” says Cotton Mather, “the Indians in those parts were at this time so many and so mighty and so sturdy, that in probability all this feeble number of Christians had been massacred by the bloody savages, as not long after some others were; whereas the good hand of God now brought them to a country wonderfully prepared for their entertainment by a sweeping mortality that had lately been among the natives. ‘We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old; how thou dravest out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.’ The Indians in these parts had newly, even about a year or two before, been visited with such a prodigious pestilence, as carried away not a tenth, but nine parts of ten; yea, ’tis said, nineteen of twenty among them; so that the woods were almost cleared to make room for a better growth.