AUSTERE PURITAN GARDENS 85 



the red man had long made his home and planted his 

 corn, the ground was impoverished. So instead of 

 the boundless abundance which rewarded the efforts 

 of the Cavaliers in Virginia and the Dutch in New 

 Netherland, these austere settlers met with an austere 

 reserve in Nature, a niggardliness quite unlooked for 

 in what had been regarded as virgin land: which was 

 a great misfortune. 



Safe and splendid harbor the Pilgrims had found; 

 but if Squanto had not been their friend and teacher 

 in that first spring after their arrival, it is hardly 

 likely that they would have had even the small crop 

 of native corn which the autumn brought them. 

 Bradford recounts the agricultural lessons which they 

 learned from the Indian. "He tould them except they 

 gott fish & set with it (in these old grounds) it would 

 come to nothing, and he showed them yt in ye midle 

 of April they should have store enough come up ye 

 brooke, by which they began to build, and taught 

 them how to take it and wher to get other provis- 

 sions necessary for them; all of which they found true 

 by triall and experience. Some English seed they 

 sew, as wheat & Pease, but it came not to good, 

 eather by ye badnes of ye seed or latenes of ye season, 

 or both, or some other defecte." 



This first planting was done in community; but 

 the next year, "they begane to thinke how they might 



