The Seeding *of New England 65 



He came in time to help them carry the dead out to burial, and 

 to revive their fainting hopes with the promise of Spring. 



One pictures the red man, whose travels and adventures 

 exceeded those of the Pilgrims, clad in skins and a proud 

 feather, summoning from memory his store of English words, 

 and putting to them questions about London: about Ludgate 

 Circus and the crowds around The Globe; about hawkers in 

 the streets, crying, "Fresh cockles!" and "Sweet lavender!" 

 and "Dutch eels, all alive-o!" Questions which the men of 

 Plymouth, who came, in the main, from small towns and 

 from the class of farmers and artisans, were ill fitted to answer. 



They were eager to start planting. Squanto shook his head. 

 "Not yet. Wait. . . . Soon. . . ." The English could not be- 

 lieve that the warm spell in March when the pussywillows 

 burst along the withes and the skunk cabbage thrust up 

 through the muck of the brooks' edge was not the beginning 

 of clement weather. They had to learn the shyness of the 

 American spring. And the slowness. They had to learn, of the 

 red man, to stay their hands until after April's chilly rains had 

 ceased, and the earth had dried, and the shadbush burst into 

 misty bloom along the creeks. 



Then Squanto beckoned them to follow him. He led them 

 not into the clearing where they were eager to break ground 

 and scatter seed, but along the estuary on which the town was 

 built. He pointed to the tide waters flowing in. ... They 

 were full of leaping silver. Herring, thousands of herring, run- 

 ning in from the sea, and up to fresh shallows to spawn. 



Here was the wealth John Smith had promised. Here were 

 the fisheries coming right to their doors, to their feet; even, 

 as Squanto showed them how to kneel on the bank and form 

 a trap in the water with their loosely linked fingers, into their 

 hands. They filled basket after basket with the catch. 



The waters had brought them fresh food, and something 

 more. The fish, Squanto made them understand, must be 

 buried in the ground with the new corn to make it grow. Only 

 by such fertilizing would the crop be assured to them. A fish 



