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 provi¬ 
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 
