Twenty-six acres had been cleared,
and a plentiful harvest gathered in; venison, wild fowl, and fish were
easy to obtain. When provisions and fuel had been laid in for the
ensuing winter, Governor Bradford appointed a day of Thanksgiving.
Town-meetings had already been held, and a few laws passed. The history
of New England had begun.
This had evidently been a busy summer for the forty-nine survivors.
On the 9th of November, the anniversary of the day on which they had
sighted land, a ship was descried in the offing. She was the Fortune,
bringing some fifty more of the Leyden company. It was a welcome
reinforcement, but it diminished the rations of food that could be
served during the winter, for the Fortune was not well supplied. When
she set sail for England, she carried a little cargo of beaver-skins and
choice wood for wainscoting to the value of L500 sterling, as a first
instalment of the sum due to the merchant adventurers. But this cargo
never reached England, for the Fortune was overhauled by a French
cruiser and robbed of everything worth carrying away.
For two years more it was an anxious and difficult time for the new
colony. By 1624 its success may be said to have become assured. That the
Indians in the neighbourhood had not taken advantage of the distress of
the settlers in that first winter, and massacred every one of them, was
due to a remarkable circumstance.
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