THE ARRIVAL.
“Here the architect
Did not with curious care a pile erect
Of carvéd marble touch, or porphyry,
But built for God and hospitality.”
CAREW.
Nine weeks the “Arbella” tossed on the Atlantic; then the lookout
descried the New England coast-line, and shouted, “Land ho!” “About
four in the morning,” was Winthrop’s entry in his diary under
date of June 12th, “we neared our port, and shot off two pieces
of ordnance.”[685] A little later, Endicott entered a shallop and
was rowed out to the incoming ship.[686] Greeting the new governor
cordially, he at once conducted him to Salem, where all “supped on a
good venison pastry.”
Winthrop found disease stalking among the settlers, and provisions
nearly spent; but all were hopeful, though the winter had been
hard.[687] The stores he brought were not unwelcome, but these were
not more heartily received than were those who brought them; for
pioneer life brings out hospitality and good fellowship; and besides,
these men had common hopes and fears, and were united in faith and
practice.
The governor seems not to have been quite satisfied with Salem as a
definitive settlement; for, pausing there but a week to recruit after
the tedious voyage, he pushed on in search of another place to “sit
down.”[688] Sailing up a bay “made by a great number of islands,
whose high cliffs shoulder out the sea,” the explorers finally
decided upon a spot on the banks of Charles river, and a settlement
was commenced where Cambridge now stands.[689]
Busy days followed. Land was allotted, hunting parties were sent
out; Indians were chatted with; and thanksgivings for the past and
prayers for the future were offered.[690] But, enfeebled by fevers
and enervated by the scurvy, while the deceitful river and the marshy
ground in its vicinity bred contagious and miasmal vapors to enshroud
them nightly, the emigrants made little progress in their most
important work, the erection of a town.
Daily the sickness increased, and it haunted Salem as well as infant
Cambridge. In August there was a large mortality; but September was
the most dreary month. Francis Higginson, who had been for some
time slowly wasting away with a hectic fever, died in this sad
autumn;[691] but “in the hour of his death the future prosperity of
New England and the coming glories of its many churches floated in
cheerful visions before his eyes.”[692] Then death struck another
shining mark. The Lady Arbella Johnson’s fragile frame, coming “from
a paradise of plenty and pleasure into a wilderness of wants,”[693]
succumbed shortly to the dread epidemic,[694] to the infinite sorrow
of her loving friends. Her death broke the heart of her devoted
husband. His sorrow was too full for utterance; or he might have
hymned it in that verse of Dr. Watts, so pregnant with tenderness and
pathos:
“I was all love, and she was all delight;
Let me run back to seasons past;
Ah! flowery days when first she charmed my sight,—
But roses will not always last.”
Isaac Johnson survived the beautiful victim but a few weeks,[695]
then he followed her to immortality through the grave.
“He tried
To live without her, liked it not, and died,”
said Mather, quaintly.[696] Winthrop, through his tears, wrote his
assistant’s epitaph: “He was a holy man and wise, and died in sweet
peace.”[697]
And now the mortality was fearful. Eighty of Endicott’s colonists
had been buried ere the coming of Winthrop;[698] in the summer and
autumn succeeding his arrival over two hundred died.[699] Death
reaped its hecatombs and battened on corpses. The Pilgrims wailed
out their grief in God’s ear, and kept fasts and appointed days of
humiliation. But He “who doeth all things well” had his own purpose
to subserve, and his hand was not stayed from smiting till the chill
December skies mantled the earth with snow.[700]
Early in September the colonists determined to desert the
pestilential river banks; a few went back to Salem, some paused at
Charleston; others, led by Winthrop, planted themselves on that neck
of land which is now called Boston.[701]
Ere long this peninsula came to be thought the fittest site for the
erection of a colonial capital, and the 17th of September, 1630,
was formally set apart as the date of its settlement.[702] The spot
was then called _Shawmut_,[703] and it was picturesquely seated on
a surface which swelled into rising grounds of considerable height,
which have since become famous as Copp’s hill, Fort hill, and Beacon
hill.[704] Rome sits upon seven hills; Boston is a trimountain city.
Why was it called Boston? Because Boston in England, a prominent town
in Lincolnshire, some five score miles north of London, had played
no inconsiderable part in the drama of this colonization, giving to
the enterprise some of its chiefest pillars, among others, Dudley,
and Bellingham, and Leverett, and Coddington.[705] The grateful
Pilgrims thought that they owed the old English city a recognition
and a tribute; so they gave to their capital the familiar name of
_Boston_.[706]
Shawmut had an occupant previous to its hasty adoption by the
deserters from Cambridge. William Blackstone, who had come over
with Endicott, found himself cramped even in sparsely-settled
Salem; so he pushed on to Shawmut neck and became sole proprietor
of the whole peninsula, which was afterwards bought of him. Here he
lived ten years, and saw the foundations of society laid. He was an
eccentric character; and though an ordained clergyman of the English
church, he had Puritan proclivities. As he had been pinched at home
by conformity laws, he had exiled himself that he might secure
elbow-room for his sentiments. But he loved liberty so well that he
never would unite with the New England church. “No, no,” he always
replied, when solicited to do so, “I came from England because I did
not like the lord-bishops; and I cannot join you, because I would not
be under the lord brethren.”[707]
The Pilgrims went to work in Boston with a will. Winter impended; a
shelter must be provided against the December sleet and the chilly
braw. But the task was hard; the _vis inertiæ_ of nature was to be
overcome; and, without tools, carts, or experienced joiners, all
hands began to realize that the carpenter was not inferior to the
priest or the poet.[708]
Some few grew discouraged. Of the seven hundred whom Winthrop brought
out, ninety went back to England.[709] But this gap was soon closed
by fresh arrivals. Quite a fleet lay moored in Massachusetts bay;
from Beacon hill seventeen ships might have been counted, all of
which came in 1630;[710] and these had disgorged some fifteen hundred
earnest, devout emigrants, “the best” that Britain could produce.[711]
As a body, the Pilgrims were full of courage, and their faith at all
times bubbled over into song or into prayer. “We here enjoy God and
Jesus Christ,” wrote Winthrop to his wife, whom sickness had detained
in England, “and is not that enough? I thank God I like so well to be
here as not to repent coming. I would not have altered my course,
though I had foreseen all these afflictions. I never had more content
of mind.”[712]
Before such a spirit—the right spirit—all obstacles were certain to
succumb. It was sure to
——“sway the future,
While God stood behind the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.”