buy even a paper of pins in America. They packed big chests with clothing and blankets and feather beds and table linen. Cooking pots and pewter dishes and candle sticks were put into barrels. The mother did not forget the spinning wheel and loom for weaving. The father thought of tools and seeds and guns and knives and fish nets. He put in a box of books, too. He did not take money. To trade with the Indians for furs, he took red blankets and calico and beads.
[1]One hundred Pilgrims stood on the deck of the Mayflower and said goodby to the green shores of England. Every one of them could do something useful. There were carpenters and shoemakers and blacksmiths and farmers. There was a soldier to lead them if they had to fight the Indians. A minister went with them, and a wise man to govern them. Puritan mothers could do nearly everything to make people comfortable. The little girls could knit and sew and mind the baby. The smallest boy could whittle wooden shoe pegs.
It was a long journey, in cold winter weather, over the sea. The Atlantic ocean is three thousand miles wide. Today we cross this ocean in steam-ships, in five days. But the Pilgrims came over three hundred years ago, in a little sailing vessel. The voyage took six weeks. Big waves beat the sides of the ship and rolled it almost over. The snow fell thick amd ice covered the deck. Fogs shut them in, so they could not see where they were going. Icebergs as big as hills floated in the water, and they saw whales. By and by they saw sea gulls. They were near land.
The land was not green and pleasant like England. All they saw was black rocks, bare forests and great fields of snow. The Pilgrims got into little boats and rowed over foamy breakers to this land. They knelt on the rocks and prayed and sang hymns. And they named the bleak coast New England, after their old home.
How the trees fell in that forest! Twenty men with sharp axes chopped all day long. Soon the Pilgrims had warm log houses, with chimneys of clay and sticks. Doors of axe-hewn boards were hung on wooden hinges. Thick oiled paper covered the small holes left for windows, but there was plenty of light from the big fire of logs. The straightest logs were split and laid for floors. The carpenters made tables and stools and bedsteads. The blacksmith
- ↑ This first company who landed at Plymouth Rock, were called Pilgrims: those who came later and settled at Boston were known as Puritans.
