flats at low tide, while eels and crabs supplemented this. They were grateful for these means of nourishment from sea and shore, preventing their extinction; yet such could not suffice for permanent living.

Bradford did all in his power to relieve the shortage of food supply. Little could be procured from abroad, and in the case of a visiting ship, the captain's price was cruelly prohibitive. A generous captain of different character, in a fishing fleet to the north, persuaded his fellows to spare from their own allowance enough to load the Pilgrim boat. But the most of the required amount of corn was obtained by bartering various utensils and beads with the Indians, though their natural improvidence usually left them without much of a surplus in crops. In trading expeditions by land and water, Standish and Bradford were both active. And each of them at times was alone, of white men, among the natives. Bradford once left a boat and walked fifty miles back to Plymouth from the south, for the friendly neighboring tribes were not long in discovering his inherent gentleness and fairness.

But firm discipline was necessary in times of dire need. A few unreliable persons had become mixed in the original company, and colonists new or old were punished by flogging, for the theft of corn, some of which was occasionally abstracted even before it was ripe. Bradford's appreciative quotation of Seneca's fine affirmation, that a man is free who has control of his stomach, in this near famine would seem to apply where self-denial meant malnutrition, to prevent starvation.

Weakness and numerical smallness hindered the cultivation of the soil, and the climax was a severe drouth from the last of May, 1623, till about the middle of July, when the stalks nearly perished in the excessive heat. A day of prayer was appointed, in which the Pilgrims engaged earnestly for eight or nine hours, until a general cloudiness overspread the sky. This was followed that night by a gentle shower, which was renewed again and again, with intervals of sunshine, throughout a fortnight. The planting was saved, to the astonishment of the Indians and the deep gratitude of the Christian community. Famine fled for ever. And as the spared crop matured, a Day of Thanksgiving was ordered by the Governor and concurring Council, a season which has been observed annually ever since, and finally throughout the nation.

Bradford did not show favor to the industrial policy of holding all things in common, which was at first attempted and which, because of its early apostolic connection, was supposed to be under divine sanction. If he tolerated the idea at first, he gives no sign of approval; and when it was abandoned he observed: "The experience that was had in this comone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Plato & other ancients, applauded by some of later times; that y^e taking away of propertie, and bringing in comunitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser then God."

This farsighted judgment applied equally to the communistic concept of that time and the present idea of a short working day, a living wage whether earned or not, and an absolute democratic control over all individual rights, which is the perversion of civil liberty, and more potent than despotism because imposed by a multitude.

Under private ownership of land, which superseded the common stock plan, there was better incentive to toil, and the Governor with pleasure observed that even the women and children went willingly afield. Assignments came to be made of one acre to a family, near the palisaded hamlet for convenience and better security. But on petition of the planters, Bradford directed that the allotments should be for continuous use, rather than for one year as heretofore. This encouraged those who had achieved good success on their area, to go forward still in their agricultural accomplishments. They raised the more, as soon as numbers and strength allowed, because they found a corn market among the half-hundred fishing vessels which annually visited the northern coasts.

The story is familiar, how the distressed new-comers at first smoothed the graves of their plague-smitten members, to hide the number of deaths from the savages, whose derisive shouts from the forests mingled with their lamentations. But this local Indian menace was comparatively slight. All the Cape Indians, including those whom the Pilgrim explorers had unintentionally aroused, became before long their permanent good neighbors. This desirable outcome was facilitated by a singular circumstance, the roaming of a boy who lost his way. John Billington, Jr., wandered in the woods until the Cummaquid Indians found him twenty miles down the coast. They carried him farther, to the Nausets, the very tribe of the first encounter. Bradford sent notice of the missing lad to Massasoit, who inquired for him among his subjects. On ascertaining his whereabouts, ten colonists and two interpreters were dispatched in the shallop to Nauset, who received the boy bead-laden and well, and held a friendly parley with Chief Aspinet and his men. These natives forwarded peace delegates to Plymouth, a course not actually required but acceptable after their conflict of 1620.

The whole region of Plymouth was offered free and empty to the white men, through the ravages of previous pestilence. This providential visitation extended as far west as the confines of Narragansett Bay in present Rhode Island, depleting the population where it did not wholly destroy. And further, these Pokanokets, the Sunrise tribes in a confederacy under Massasoit, were the more willing to heed their lord's pacific injunctions concerning the English, because they themselves in their weakened condition were threatened with invasion and conquest by the powerful Narragansetts. Self-preservation, as well as commercial advantage, prompted the never broken treaty made that spring. It was an idea mutually welcome, a most happy plan for both afflicted parties. Only one chief, Corbitant in the Taunton valley, was displeased and jealous, and threatened trouble; but a prompt expedition to the interior frightened him away back home. He sued for favor through Massasoit, and affixed his mark below those of eight other chiefs, in a covenant of loyalty to King James across "the big water."

The Rhode Island Indians were irritated by this unprecedented alliance of natives with foreigners, and knowing the English losses they sent the famous rattlesnake skin with its challenging arrows, to Plymouth. But its speedy return filled with powder and balls and accompanied by a friendly but warning message, punctured their pride and put for a while a complete quietus on their warlike aspirations.

The most serious peril arose in 1623, from the populous Massachusetts tribes along the northern bay which, with the later state, adopted their name. These were never over-friendly, and the later Salem and Boston colonists found their own numerical strength was a needed preventive of further native hostilities after the first had been suppressed. The wrath of the red northerners was fanned into fury by the wicked and abusive conduct of sixty Wessagusset settlers, a worthless and improvident lot which Thomas Weston imposed upon Plymouth in the time of scarcity, until they went up the coast by themselves. Even then Standish, and later Bradford, took command of their pinnace the Swan in attempts to procure corn for distribution in both colonies; and the efficient Squanto died in one of these voyages, despite tender nursing by the Governor.

But the Wessagusset men repaid the terribly taxed hospitality and courtesy of the Pilgrims