Sufferings of the Emigrants

When the Indians had departed, the Pilgrims re-elected Carver governor of the colonv, made some salutary laws, and sent the May-Flower home. She was scarcely out of sight, when the governor died suddenly from the effects of a "sun-stroke," and William Bradford was chosen to fill his place. As the season advanced hope grew stronger. Game was found to be plentiful in the forest, and fish in the streams. The survivors cultivated the land industriously, and reaped abundantly. In a short time other emigrants joined them. The whole community was free as air; and the settlement, begun with so much suffering, bereavement and discouragement, was made permanent. Within a few months after the arrival of the May-Flower, the Christian men and women who survived that winter of terrible experience, planted strong and deep, on the principles of justice and the rights of man, the foundations of the colony and the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

With the prose of suffering there was a little of the poetry of social romance at that tearful planting time. Among the victims of the famine and the fever was Rose Standish. Her husband laid her body tenderly in the earth, and feeling that it was "not good for man to be alone," almost immediately turned to Priscilla Mullins for consolation. She was a daughter of William Mullins, one of the May-Flower passengers. The captain was then thirty-seven years of age, and Priscilla had but lately bloomed into young womanhood. In Standish's family lived John Alden, a young cooper from Southampton, whom the Captain sent as an ambassador to Priscilla's father to ask his consent for the soldier to visit her with matrimonial intent. He performed the duties of his mission modestly and faithfully. The father readily gave his consent, adding, "But Priscilla must be consulted." She was summoned to the room. There sat John Alden, whom she knew well--a young man of graceful form, a handsome ruddy face and sparkling eyes, and of almost courtly manners.