Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/37

 INTRODUCTION. XXIX

a garden," writes Winthrop.* The more substantial bless- ings of the main land rejoiced the hearts of the rest of the party on the following Saturday, I2th June, who, going ashore at Salem, "supped with a good venison pasty and good beer."f Some, wandering along the shore, feasted on the wild strawberries which grew there in abundance. But at night, when it became time to return to the ship, Winthrop remarks that "some of the women stayed behind," doubtless very reasonably cautious about again trusting themselves to the floating prison in w^hich they had been so long pent up. They did not, like the wretched settlers of Plymouth, arrive in a cold and cheerless season of the year, to perish miserably in the ice and snow ; but the green hills, clad in the rich verdure of opening summer, smiled a genial welcome to our weary voyagers, their beauty heightened by that indescribable charm which any land has for the sea-tossed adventurer. Higginson, who arrived about a year before, speaks of Ten-pound "island, whither four of our men with a boat went, and brought back again ripe strawberries and gooseberries, and sweet single roses. Thus God," he continues, "was merciful to us in giving us a taste and smell of the sweet fruit as an earnest of his bountiful goodness to welcome us at our first arrival." X

But the attractions of the scene to Winthrop and his company must have been more than offset by the melan- choly condition in which they found the little settlement. They could have had little time to consider the beauties of nature, amid their own cares and the miserj^ around


 * Winthrop's New England, Vol. i. p 23, and note i.

t Ibid., p. 26.

J Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 234.

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