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 
