Pastor Higginson wrote enthusiastically of the natural abundance of
the grass that “groweth verie wildly with a great stalke” as high as a
man’s face and as for Indian corn--the planting of thirteen gallons
of seed had produced an increase of fifty-two hogsheads or three
hundred and fifty bushels, London measure, to be sold or trusted to the
Indians in exchange for beaver worth above £300. Who would not share
the hardships and dangers of the frontier colony for opportunity of
such rich gain?
But the housewives in the far-away English homes were more interested
in the growth of the vegetable gardens in the virgin soil, and of
these he wrote: “Our turnips, parsnips and carrots are here both
bigger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in England. Here are
stores of pumpions, cucumbers, and other things of that nature I
know not. Plentie of strawberries in their time, and penny-royall,
winter saverie, carvell and water-cresses, also leeks and onions are
ordinary.” Great lobsters abounded weighing from sixteen to twenty-five
pounds and much store of bass, herring, sturgeon, haddock, eels, and
oysters. In the forests were several kinds of deer; also partridges,
turkeys, and great flocks of pigeons, with wild geese, ducks, and other
sea fowl in such abundance “that a great part of the Planters have
eaten nothing but roast-meate of divers Fowles which they have killed.”
These were some of the attractive natural features of the new colony
in the Massachusetts Bay, as recounted by the Salem minister. Of the
hardships he makes small mention, for his aim was to induce emigration.
There was much sickness, however, and many deaths. Higginson himself
lived only a year after reaching Salem. The breaking up of virgin soil
always brings on malaria and fever. Dudley wrote “that there is not
an house where there is not one dead, and in some houses many. The
naturall causes seem to bee in the want of warm lodgings, and good
dyet to which Englishmen are habittuated, at home; and in the suddain
increase of heate which they endure that are landed here in somer * * *
those of Plymouth who landed in winter dyed of the Scirvy, as did our
poorer sort whose howses and bedding kept them not sufficiently warm,
nor their dyet sufficiently in heart.”[11] Thomas Dudley wrote this
in March, 1631. He explained that he was writing upon his knee by the
fireside in the living-room, having as yet no table nor other room in
which to write during the sharp winter. In this room his family must
resort “though they break good manners, and make mee many times forget
what I would say, and say what I would not.”
But these hardships and inconveniences of living which the New England
colonists met and overcame differ but little from those experienced
in every new settlement. They have been parallelled again and again
wherever Englishmen or Americans have wandered. In a few years after
the coming of the ships much of the rawness and discomfort must have
disappeared, certainly in the early settlements, and comparative
comfort must have existed in most homes. If we could now lift the roof
of the average seventeenth-century house in New England it is certain
that we should find disclosed not only comfortable conditions of living
but in many instances a degree of luxury with fine furnishings that
is appreciated by few at the present time. And this can now be shown
by means of the itemized inventories of estates that were carefully
made, listing the contents of a house, room by room, and enabling us to
visualize the interiors of the homes in which lived the pioneers of New
England.
[Illustration: PARSON CAPEN HOUSE, TOPSFIELD