AUSTERE PURITAN GARDENS 93 
have. . . . Excellent vines are here up and 
down in the woods. Our Governor hath already 
planted a vineyard with great hope of increase. Also 
mulberries, plums, raspberries, currants, chestnuts, fil¬ 
berts, walnuts, small nuts, hurtleberries and haws of 
white-thorn, near as good as our cherries in England, 
they grow in plenty here.” 
Half a score of houses were all that “Naumkeag” 
could boast when Higginson arrived there, “and a 
fair house newly built for the Governour.” Each of 
these no doubt bore the noon sun-mark upon the ledge 
of a window of the great room—that room which was 
literally living-room, where food was prepared, 
cooked, and meals eaten, and where all the household 
tasks went on, moving in their orderly sequence 
through the hours of a day accurately divided—the 
better to marshal them into their proper places—into 
two parts, by this line. The houses faced the south 
usually—and one “primitive planter” of Salem, 
whose place was old and had fallen into ruins in the 
eighteenth century, had his garden “eastward of the 
house, higher upon the hill.” 
The “house newly built for the Governour” did not 
remain the official residence long after Winthrop’s ar¬ 
rival, for he at once looked about with a view to 
locating the seat of government to better advantage. 
Just what his objection to Salem was, is not clear. 
