My name is Mary, and I am setting down all these things about our
people here in this new world, hoping some day to send to my dear
friend, Hannah, who lives in Scrooby, England, what may really come to
be a story, even though the writer of it is only sixteen years old,
having lived in Plymouth since the day our company landed from the
_Mayflower_ in 1620, more than eleven years ago.
[Illustration]
If Hannah ever really sees this as I have written it, she will, I know,
be amused; for it is set down on pieces of birch bark and some leaves
cut from the book of accounts which Edward Winslow brought with him
from the old home.
Hannah will ask why I did not use fair, white paper, and, if I am
standing by when she does so, I shall tell her that fair, white paper
is far too precious in this new world of ours to be used for the
pleasure of children.
In the last ship which came from England were large packages of white
paper for the settlers at Salem, who came over to this wild land eight
years after we landed, and when I asked my father to buy for me three
sheets that I might make a little book, he told me the price would
be more for the three sheets than he paid for the two deer skins with
which to make me a winter coat.
[Illustration]
Of course I put from my mind all hope of having paper to write on; but
these sheets of bark take very well the ink made from elderberries
which mother and I brewed the second winter after our new home was
built. The pen is a quill taken from the wing of a wild goose shot by
Captain Standish.