Perhaps you would like to know how we light our homes in the evening,
since we have no tallow, for of course people who own neither hogs,
sheep, cows nor oxen, do not have that which is needed for candles.
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Well, first, we find our candles among the trees, and of a truth the
forest is of such extent that it would seem as if all the world might
get an ample store of material to make light. We use knots from the
pitch pine trees, or wood from the same tree split into thin sheets
or slices; but the greatest trouble is that the wood is filled with
a substance, which we at first thought was pitch, that boils out by
reason of the heat of the flame, and drops on whatever may be beneath.
Captain Standish has lately discovered, and truly he is a wonderful
man for finding out hidden things, that the substance from the candle
wood, as we call the pitch pine, is turpentine or tar, and now, if
you please, our people are preparing these things to be sent back to
England for sale, with the hope that we shall thereby get sufficient
money with which to purchase the animals we need so sorely.
I would not have you understand that there are no real candles here in
Plymouth, for when the _Fortune_ came, her captain had a certain number
of tallow candles which he sold; but they are such luxuries as can be
afforded only on great occasions. Mother has even at this day, wrapped
carefully in moss, two of them, for which father paid eight pence
apiece, and she blamed him greatly for having spent so much money, at
the same time declaring that they should not be used except upon some
great event, such as when the evening meeting is held at our house.