While I have been setting down all these things that you might know how
we lived here in the wilderness, other villages have been built around
us until we can no longer say we are alone, or that our only neighbors
are those Englishmen in Virginia, which place is so far away that we
should need make a voyage in a ship in order to come at it.
First I will speak of that village of Merry Mount, wherein dwell those
people who, led by Thomas Morton, are a reproach to those who walk in
the straight path.
Then, so we have heard, there are white men living on the river called
Saco; at the mouth of the river Piscataqua and higher up the stream is,
so Squanto declares, a village called Cochecho.
At Pemaquid, and on the nearby island of Monhegan, are settlements
whose dwellers are nearly all fishermen, and who send their catch to
England.
One Captain Wollaston, with between thirty and forty men, began to make
a village on the seashore not above fifty miles from here; but he soon
tired of battling with the wilderness, and set sail with all his people
for Virginia.
Master John Oldham, who came to Plymouth with Master Lyford, having had
hot words with Governor Bradford, set off for a place called Nantasket,
where, in company with four other discontented ones of our village, he
aims to make a town.
Near by Plymouth, if one makes the journey by boat, is a town called
Salem, lately set up with Master Endicott as the governor, wherein live
more than two hundred people, and within a few weeks it has been said
that another company are making homes on Massachusetts Bay, calling the
place Charlestown.
Therefore you can see how fast this new world is being covered with
villages and towns, and we who were the first to gain a foothold in the
wilderness, are surrounded by neighbors until it seems as if the land
were really thronged with people.