AUSTERE PURITAN GARDENS 81 



crop and a very essential food. Not until 1800 did 

 the "Spanish potatoes" take the place generally of 

 turnips, although these had been planted as early as 

 1761. And only for the failure of the corn would 

 they have been used at that time. One account says 

 of the years 1762 and 1763 that they "were years of 

 scarcity, that would have been years of famine had 

 not this despised root been providentially brought 

 among us." 



Although much that is popularly cherished with re- 

 gard to gardening in the New World centers around 

 the section which is now under consideration, this sec- 

 tion, as a matter of fact, is more barren, in some re- 

 spects, than any other. Nor is the reason far to seek. 

 The Independents or Separatists who withdrew them- 

 selves from the ancient Church of England to make 

 up the little congregation which began, under Parson 

 Robinson, to worship God in its own way at Scrooby, 

 in Nottinghamshire, in the year 1606, were simple 

 country folk of little consequence in the land — ^mostly 

 farmers presumably, very like the farmers of to-day, 

 or workingmen perhaps, who earned honest, frugal 

 livings by their trades; all common, rural, unpolished 

 and uncultivated. William Brewster — the Elder 

 Brewster of later Plymouth days — was the village 

 postmaster; William Bradford, then a lad of seven- 

 teen — Governor and historian in his maturity — was 



