Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ...them an easy prey to the destroyer. One fell after another--each week and month increasing the mortality in a fearful ratio. Many were carried off by the scurvy; the tender frame of woman sunk under protracted cares and privations, and even the most robust were unable to bear up against such a complication of hardships. How bitter, although softened by faith, must have been the parting of those who had borne together the toils and perils of the emigration! How sad the scenes which these few log-huts in the wilderness must have witnessed! Bradford, Standish, Allerton, and Winslow, were all left widowers in the course of a few weeks. Six died in December, eight in January, seventeen in February, and thirteen in March--until of that little band scarcely one half remained; and had not the winter, severe at all times, proved unusually mild for that keen and trying climate, not one, in all probability, would have been left to tell the tale! As one by one they sunk in death, they were borne by their friends to the summit of a small cliff, immediately overhanging the rock upon which they had so recently landed with spirits full of hope, and there deposited side by side. Those who survived were hardly able to carry the corpses of their relatives; and, far from raising tombs to the departed, the field of death, which had received all that was dearest to them on earth, was planted with a crop of corn, to conceal the extent of their losses from the jealous Indians, who might have been tempted by their weakness to crush the melancholy handful of survivors. The constant fear of surprise by the savages had indeed kept the colonists in a constant state of watchfulness during the whole winter. On the 17th of February, Myles Standish was formally chosen...