It is true indeed that there is very much work to be done. First comes
the planting and tending of the crops. Then there is the fishing and
the hunting that we may have meat. Lastly is the making of clapboards,
which task was begun soon after the seed had been put in the ground,
for Governor Bradford believed we should make enough with which to load
the first vessel that came to us from England.
It was all we could do, just then, in the way of getting together that
which might be sold to the people in the old country, and father said
the men of Plymouth must be earning money in some other way than by
trying to gather furs, for already were the animals growing more timid
and scarce.
It is not easy work, this clapboard-making, and I cannot wonder that
the men complain at being forced to continue it day after day. First
an oak tree is cut by saws into the length necessary for clapboards,
which, so father tells me, should be about four feet long. Then a tool
called a "frow" is used to split the trunk of the tree into slabs, or
clapboards, making them thin at one edge and half an inch or more thick
at the other.
[Illustration]
This "frow" is shaped something like a butcher's cleaver, and a wooden
mallet is used to drive it into the log until the splint is forced off.
Our people made many clapboards during the time between planting and
harvest, so that we had enormous stacks under the trees ready to put on
board the first vessel that should sail for England.