Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/81

, sent out a party to explore Massachusetts Bay, some forty miles to the northward: they then, for the first time, beheld the three-crested peninsula of Shawmut, site of the present city of Boston. In November, the Fortune arrived, bringing thirty-five new colonists, together with Cushman, who had obtained a patent from the Council of New England, chiefly through the good offices of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Cushman returned to England shortly after.

The Fortune had brought over new mouths, and no provisions; the result was a famine of several months' duration; all had to be put on half allowance; the corn was all eaten, and the colonists were reduced to the scantiest rations—chiefly of fish, or to such precarious supplies as were occasionally obtained from passing vessels at an exorbitant cost. No cattle had been yet imported; their agricultural instruments were scanty and rude, and they were almost destitute of boats and tackle to enable them to profit by the shoals of fish which abounded on the coasts. Mortality and distress had prevented them from subduing the soil—men, toiling at the rude labors of a first settlement, "often staggered for want of food." Nor were they without apprehensions of attack from the Indians. On one occasion, Canonicus, sachem of the powerful Narragansetts; who were enemies of the Warnpanoags, sent, by way of defiance, to New Plymouth, a bundle of arrows, tied up with the skin of a rattlesnake. Bradford lost no time in returning the same skin, stuffed with powder and ball—a significant hint of what the whites would do—whereat the Indians were not a little frightened, esteeming it some fatal charm. It was judged prudent by the colonists to surround the village with a palisade of timbers driven into the ground, a mile in circuit, with three gates.

Weston, who had taken an active part in fitting out the Plymouth colony, was dissatisfied with the pecuniary results of that undertaking, and accordingly resolved to found a separate plantation for his own advantage. He sent out some sixty men, chiefly indented servants, to begin the settlement. They were fellows of indifferent character at best, who, after intruding upon the people of Plymouth for two or three months, and eating or stealing half their provisions, attempted a settlement at Wissagusset, now Weymouth, on the south shore of Massachusetts Bay. Having soon exhausted their own stock, they began to plunder the Indians, who formed a conspiracy to cut them off. The plot was revealed by the dying sachem Massasoit. Here there was fresh cause to deplore that hasty spirit of revenge which had, in almost every instance, sown the seeds of lasting hatred and hostility in the Indian breast. Captain Standish, brave but greatly wanting in discretion, surprised Wituwamot, the chief of this conspiracy, and put him to death oil the spot, together with several of his Indians. When Robinson heard of this, he wrote back to the colonists, "Oh how happy a thing had it been, had you converted some, before you had killed any!" The plantation at