“Here the architectDid not with curious care a pile erectOf carvéd marble touch, or porphyry,But built for God and hospitality.”Carew.
“Here the architectDid not with curious care a pile erectOf carvéd marble touch, or porphyry,But built for God and hospitality.”Carew.
“Here the architect
Did not with curious care a pile erect
Of carvéd marble touch, or porphyry,
But built for God and hospitality.”
Carew.
Nine weeks the “Arbella” tossed on the Atlantic; then the lookout descried the New England coast-line, and shouted, “Land ho!” “About four in the morning,” was Winthrop’s entry in his diary under date of June 12th, “we neared our port, and shot off two pieces of ordnance.”[685]A little later, Endicott entered a shallop and was rowed out to the incoming ship.[686]Greeting the new governor cordially, he at once conducted him to Salem, where all “supped on a good venison pastry.”
Winthrop found disease stalking among the settlers, and provisions nearly spent; but all were hopeful, though the winter had been hard.[687]The stores he brought were not unwelcome, but these were not more heartily received than were those who brought them; for pioneer life brings out hospitality and good fellowship; and besides, these men had common hopes and fears, and were united in faith and practice.
The governor seems not to have been quite satisfied with Salem as a definitive settlement; for, pausing there but a week to recruit after the tedious voyage, he pushed on in search of another place to “sit down.”[688]Sailing up a bay “made by a great number of islands, whose high cliffs shoulder out the sea,” the explorers finally decided upon a spot on the banks of Charles river, and a settlement was commenced where Cambridge now stands.[689]
Busy days followed. Land was allotted, hunting parties were sent out; Indians were chatted with; and thanksgivings for the past and prayers for the future were offered.[690]But, enfeebled by fevers and enervated by the scurvy, while the deceitful river and the marshy ground in its vicinity bred contagious and miasmal vapors to enshroud them nightly, the emigrants made little progress in their most important work, the erection of a town.
Daily the sickness increased, and it haunted Salem as well as infant Cambridge. In August there was a large mortality; but September was the most dreary month. Francis Higginson, who had been for some time slowly wasting away with a hectic fever, died in this sad autumn;[691]but “in the hour of his death the future prosperity of New England and the coming glories of its many churches floated in cheerful visions before his eyes.”[692]Thendeath struck another shining mark. The Lady Arbella Johnson’s fragile frame, coming “from a paradise of plenty and pleasure into a wilderness of wants,”[693]succumbed shortly to the dread epidemic,[694]to the infinite sorrow of her loving friends. Her death broke the heart of her devoted husband. His sorrow was too full for utterance; or he might have hymned it in that verse of Dr. Watts, so pregnant with tenderness and pathos:
“I was all love, and she was all delight;Let me run back to seasons past;Ah! flowery days when first she charmed my sight,—But roses will not always last.”
“I was all love, and she was all delight;Let me run back to seasons past;Ah! flowery days when first she charmed my sight,—But roses will not always last.”
“I was all love, and she was all delight;
Let me run back to seasons past;
Ah! flowery days when first she charmed my sight,—
But roses will not always last.”
Isaac Johnson survived the beautiful victim but a few weeks,[695]then he followed her to immortality through the grave.
“He triedTo live without her, liked it not, and died,”
“He triedTo live without her, liked it not, and died,”
“He tried
To live without her, liked it not, and died,”
said Mather, quaintly.[696]Winthrop, through his tears, wrote his assistant’s epitaph: “He was a holy man and wise, and died in sweet peace.”[697]
And now the mortality was fearful. Eighty of Endicott’s colonists had been buried ere the coming of Winthrop;[698]in the summer and autumn succeeding his arrival over two hundred died.[699]Death reaped its hecatombs and battened on corpses. The Pilgrims wailed out their grief in God’s ear, andkept fasts and appointed days of humiliation. But He “who doeth all things well” had his own purpose to subserve, and his hand was not stayed from smiting till the chill December skies mantled the earth with snow.[700]
Early in September the colonists determined to desert the pestilential river banks; a few went back to Salem, some paused at Charleston; others, led by Winthrop, planted themselves on that neck of land which is now called Boston.[701]
Ere long this peninsula came to be thought the fittest site for the erection of a colonial capital, and the 17th of September, 1630, was formally set apart as the date of its settlement.[702]The spot was then calledShawmut,[703]and it was picturesquely seated on a surface which swelled into rising grounds of considerable height, which have since become famous as Copp’s hill, Fort hill, and Beacon hill.[704]Rome sits upon seven hills; Boston is a trimountain city.
Why was it called Boston? Because Boston in England, a prominent town in Lincolnshire, some five score miles north of London, had played no inconsiderable part in the drama of this colonization, giving to the enterprise some of its chiefest pillars, among others, Dudley, and Bellingham, and Leverett, and Coddington.[705]The grateful Pilgrims thought that they owed the old English city a recognitionand a tribute; so they gave to their capital the familiar name ofBoston.[706]
Shawmut had an occupant previous to its hasty adoption by the deserters from Cambridge. William Blackstone, who had come over with Endicott, found himself cramped even in sparsely-settled Salem; so he pushed on to Shawmut neck and became sole proprietor of the whole peninsula, which was afterwards bought of him. Here he lived ten years, and saw the foundations of society laid. He was an eccentric character; and though an ordained clergyman of the English church, he had Puritan proclivities. As he had been pinched at home by conformity laws, he had exiled himself that he might secure elbow-room for his sentiments. But he loved liberty so well that he never would unite with the New England church. “No, no,” he always replied, when solicited to do so, “I came from England because I did not like the lord-bishops; and I cannot join you, because I would not be under the lord brethren.”[707]
The Pilgrims went to work in Boston with a will. Winter impended; a shelter must be provided against the December sleet and the chilly braw. But the task was hard; thevis inertiæof nature was to be overcome; and, without tools, carts, or experienced joiners, all hands began to realize that the carpenter was not inferior to the priest or the poet.[708]
Some few grew discouraged. Of the seven hundred whom Winthrop brought out, ninety went back to England.[709]But this gap was soon closed by fresh arrivals. Quite a fleet lay moored in Massachusetts bay; from Beacon hill seventeen ships might have been counted, all of which came in 1630;[710]and these had disgorged some fifteen hundred earnest, devout emigrants, “the best” that Britain could produce.[711]
As a body, the Pilgrims were full of courage, and their faith at all times bubbled over into song or into prayer. “We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ,” wrote Winthrop to his wife, whom sickness had detained in England, “and is not that enough? I thank God I like so well to be here as not torepent coming. I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions. I never had more content of mind.”[712]
Before such a spirit—the right spirit—all obstacles were certain to succumb. It was sure to
——“sway the future,While God stood behind the shadow,Keeping watch above his own.”
——“sway the future,While God stood behind the shadow,Keeping watch above his own.”
——“sway the future,
While God stood behind the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.”