Dear Cousin,
Let me regale thee with an account of our first year in the New World!
On September 6, 1620, our stalwart ship set sail from Plymouth, England, driven by a prosperous wind that continued several days and was most encouraging. Aye, we were fortunate, for the Mayflower is a fine ship of 180 tons, broad of beam and larger than most.
But don't think we passed those long days in comfort, crammed in 'tween decks, with our supplies and all our worldly goods stored in the hold. Time and again, we encountered fierce storms with which the ship was shrewdly shaken and her upper works made very leaky. One of the main beams in our midship bowed and cracked! Will and fortitude—and an iron screw—saved the day, however.
One hundred two strong, we seemed a mixed troop of differing opinions to be tossed together in such a precarious situation. Only half of us came from Holland with the fervent intention of founding a church in the New World. The others we call "strangers," because they are all unknown to us. Some are hired hands, eighteen are servants, and fully a third are children. The young have fared well, for they are often better able to stand the hardships than their elders. (Didn't we have a wee babe born on the crossing and another right after landfall?)
After many discontented murmurings and unruly and mutinous behaviors, we signed a Compact "combining ourselves together into a civil body politic." As thus, we were entitled to apply for a patent from the Virginia Company and become a legal entity. Rest assured that some of us are striving for the general good of our colony!
After enduring this long beating at sea, ye can imagine that we were not a little joyful to fall on the land called Cape Cod on the 11 of November. As William Bradford describes it, "Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean."
But for some of us, especially the women, this New World inspired fear. We know not how or why, but perhaps it was this fear that caused Bradford's young wife, age twenty-three, to fall overboard quite unaccountably and drown.
On the other hand, when we arrived, we were blessed with good fortune. We soon found corn left on the shore in storage pots by the Indians, which served us sufficiently for seed. Then we sounded the harbor named Plymouth by Captain John Smith. A most hopeful place, it is shaped in the fashion of a fishhook, ringed with wood and filled with wildfowl. A sweet brook runs under the hillside, where we may harbor our shallops and boats exceedingly well. In this brook, we have caught many fish. This is where we have settled.
On Christmas Day we began to work together on the Common House. Some made mortar and others gathered thatch, so that in four days half of the building was already roofed over. Alas! We sorely needed it for a hospital, as during the first winter many were ill. It was most sad and lamentable that in two or three months' time, half of our company died. Wanting many comforts like warm clothing, we were suffering from scurvy and
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