people roundabout us were talking excitedly of the skill which had been displayed by the master of the Arabella, in thus bringing us directly to the place where we had counted on coming.

It can well be fancied that Susan and I overhung the rail as the ship sailed nearer and nearer to the land, watching intently everything before us; yet seeing, much to our surprise, little more than would have been seen had we come upon the coast of England.

I had foolishly believed that even the shores of this New World would be unlike anything to be found elsewhere, and yet they were much the same. The rocks rising high above the waters, with the waves beating against them, made up a picture such as we had before us even while we lay at anchor off Cowes. The trees were like unto the trees in our own land, and the grass was of no different color. Save that all this before us was a wilderness, we might have been off the coast of Cornwall.

I have said it was all the same, and yet because of the fears and the anxieties regarding the future, was it different.

This was the land to which we had come for the making of a new home; the place where our parents had pledged themselves to spread the gospel as the Lord would have it spread.

We knew, because of what had been written by our friends who had journeyed to this new world before us that here we were to find brown savages, many of whom, like wild beasts, would thirst to shed our blood. Here also could we expect to see fierce animals, such as might not be met with elsewhere in the world; and, in the way of blessings, we should meet those friends of ours who, for conscience sake and for the will to do God's bidding, had come to prepare the land that it should be more friendly toward us.

THE TOWN OF SALEM

I had not yet been able to discover any of the dwellings which marked the town of Naumkeag, or Salem, when all the cannon on board our vessel were set off with a great noise. Then, as we came around a point of land, there appeared before our eyes a goodly ship lying at anchor, and beyond her the town that was—much to my disappointment, for I had fancied something grander—made up of a few log houses which seemed rather to be quarters for servants than dwellings for gentlemen's families, although we had been told that the habitations would be rude indeed.

A boat was put into the water from our ship, and as the sailors rowed toward the vessel which was at anchor, I heard my father say to my mother that they were going in quest of Master William Pierce, a London friend of ours.

As we watched, I asked that question which had come often in my mind during the voyage, which was, why this new town that Master Endicott had built should have two names.

Mother told me that the Indians had called the place Naumkeag, and so also did those men who first settled here; but when some of our people came, and gathered around them several from the Plymouth Colony, together with a number of planters who had built themselves homes along the shore, it was decided to name the new town Salem, which means peace, for here it was they hoped to gain that peace which should be on this earth like unto the peace we read of in the Book, which passeth all understanding.

And now before I set down that which we saw, and while you are picturing our company on the deck of the Arabella looking shoreward, impatient to set their feet once more on the earth, let me tell you what I had heard, since we left England; regarding this town of peace, and those of our people, or of other faiths, who settled here two years or more ago.

OTHER VILLAGES

Master Endicott, who was of our faith, had come to these shores in March of the year 1628, with a company of thirty or forty people, and, finding other men living at the head of this harbor which the Arabella had entered after her long voyage, decided to build his home at this place.

In the next year, Master Higginson, coming over with six vessels in which were eighteen women, twenty-six children, and three hundred men, joined the little colony. These last brought with them one hundred and forty head of cattle, and forty goats.

However, only two hundred of this last company remained at Salem, the others having chosen to build for themselves a new town, which they called Charlestown, on that large body of water which is set down on the maps as Massachusetts Bay.

In addition to these two villages, it was said that there were five or six houses at the place called Nantasket; that one Master Samuel Maverick was living on Noddles Island, and one Master William Blackstone on the Shawmut Peninsula.

I have set this down to the end that those who read it may understand we were not come into a wild country, in which lived none but savages, and I must also add that not so many miles away was the town of Plymouth, where had been living, during ten years, a company of Englishmen who had worked bravely to make for themselves a home.

And now since I am done with explaining, and since the boat which put out from our vessel and which I left you watching, has come back from that other ship, bringing Master William Pierce, let me tell you what we did on the first day in this new world.

VISITING SALEM

The gentlemen and ladies of our company were invited on shore to a feast of deer meat, while the servant women and maids were allowed to land on the other side of the harbor, where they feasted themselves on wild strawberries, which were exceeding large and sweet.

It would be untrue for me to say that deer meat made into a huge pie is not inviting, because of my having enjoyed it greatly, and yet I could not give so much attention to the dainty as I would have done at almost any other time, so intent was I upon seeing this village concerning which Master Endicott had written so many words of praise.

Had Susan and I come upon it within an hour after leaving the city of London, it would have looked exceedingly poor and mean; but now, when we were on the land after a voyage of nine long weeks, verily it seemed like a wondrous pleasant place in which to live.

More than an hundred dwellings, so my father said, had been built. Some were of logs laid one on top of the other in a clumsy fashion, with the places where windows of glass should have been, covered with oiled paper, and doors that were so cumbersome and heavy it was a real task for Susan and me to open and close them, but yet they had a homely look.

Then there were what might be called sheds, made of logs, or the bark of trees, and, in two cases, dwellings of branches laid up loosely as a child would build a toy camp.

It was as if each man had built according to his inclination and willingness to labor, the more thrifty having log dwellings, and the indolent ones rude huts.

Even Susan and I could understand that whosoever had decided upon the places where these homes should be built, had in mind the making of a large town; for paths, like unto streets, led here and there, while all around grew trees, not thickly, to be sure, but yet in such abundance as to show that all this had lately been a wilderness.