io OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



clime and soil; of lack of knowledge and of numbers; 

 of poverty, of sickness, and of hostile savages. Wil- 

 liam Bradford describes the gathering in of "the small 

 harvest they had" during the autumn of 1621, after 

 their first summer in the new world, and tells of the 

 precautions which they took for their second winter, 

 mindful of the horrors of their first. The proposition 

 to enclose the settlement was approved and "this was 

 accomplished very cherfully and the towne Impayled 

 round by the beginning of March, In which every fam- 

 ily had a prety garden plott secured." The next 

 summer their second every family was assigned a 

 parcel of land for planting of corn, every man for him- 

 self that there might be abundance for another year. 

 And "the women now wente willingly into the feild, 

 and tooke their litle ones with them to set corne." 



Governor Winslow, writing to the mother country 

 in the same year, says that corn proved well but "our 

 pease not worth the gathering, for we feared they were 

 too late sown. They came up very well and blos- 

 somed; but the sun parched them in the blossom." 

 What discouragement! Yet he makes no complaint, 

 and after describing the fruits with which Nature has 

 supplied them "all the spring time the earth sendeth 

 naturally very good sallet herbs. Here are grapes, 

 white and red, and very sweet and strong also; straw- 

 berries, gooseberries, raspas, &c., plums of three sorts, 



