72 Singing Valleys 



prayer and humiliation in which all were to confess their sins 

 and to beseech the Almighty to spare their corn. 



.... For all the morning and the greatest part of the day it 

 was clear weather and very hotte, and not a cloud or any signe of 

 rain to be seen, yet toward evening it begane to overcast, and 

 shortly after to raine, wich shush sweete and gentle showers as 

 gave them cause of rejoyceing and blessing God. It came without 

 either wind or thunder or any violence, and by degrees in that 

 abundance as that the earth was thoroughly wete and soaked ther- 

 with. . . . Which did so apparently revive and quicken the de- 

 cayed corne and other fruits as was wonderful to see. . . . 



For the rest of that summer the weather continued with 

 "Shush interchange of faire, warme weather and seasonable 

 showers" that the drooping corn revived miraculously, and 

 yielded a far better harvest than even the most sanguine among 

 the colonists had hoped for. It would have been sufficient to 

 see them safely through the winter, had not the arrival of the 

 Anne a fortnight after the rains began brought a new detach- 

 ment of settlers for whom the foodstuffs also carried in the 

 Anne were not adequate until another corn harvest twelve 

 months off. 



So began those starving months in which five grains of 

 corn were a day's ration for a man. In comparison to the 

 Spaniards, extolled by Peter Martyr, who led a miserable life 

 for five days together with only parched maize to eat, "and 

 that not to saturitie," the Plymouth colonists, "when they had 

 corne, thought it as good as a feast and wanted, not only for 

 five days together, but sometimes two or three months to- 

 gether, and neither had bread nor any kind of corne." It may 

 have been then that Roger Clap bartered a puppy with an 

 Indian for a capful of maize, a trade which gave each party to 

 it a dinner to his liking. Certain it is that during those months 

 the men of Massachusetts became clam diggers, and the 

 women evolved chowders, fries and fritters made of the useful 

 quahaugs. Even this harvest of the sea was not without its 



