The Pilgrim by Hugh Nissenson

Author:Hugh Nissenson [Nissenson, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781402209246
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Part IV

The Swan, with sixty members of Weston’s company and thirty-three sailors aboard, made land at Wessagusset on the afternoon of Friday, the sixth of September in the year of Christ 1622. Rigdale said to me, “Be of good courage, dear friend. The Lord hath lured us into this dark forest to speak to our hearts.”

That night, we lighted fires along the beach. Weston charged ten armed sentinels to watch over the rest of us while we supped on oatmeal porridge and boiled pease and guzzled Aqua Vitae.

One of the drunken sentinels discharged his musket into the sand at his feet. He cried out, “God forgive me, I have murdered a clam. ’Twas an accident. I did it not for any malice.”

I wrote Abigail the following:

Sweetheart, I will send you this as soon as I am able. I commend myself unto you for life. And so, kissing your kerchief, I rest yours in true love,

Charles

Wessagusset, the seventh of September

P.S. Weston says the Indians told him that “Wessagusset” means “the place wherein the North River runs.”

About midnight, we heard a prolonged, doleful howl from the woods. It was answered by another howl further off. Then the first resounded again, followed by the other. Our sentinels called, “Arm! Arm!” and shot off two muskets. The howling ceased. We concluded it was a company of wolves and returned to the Swan for the duration of the night.

The next day, Weston and six men explored the forest near the shore. A quarter of a mile to the south, they discovered a large glade wherein there ran a small brook. Weston decided to establish our settlement in the glade on the brook’s right bank. He charged Pratt to oversee building our habitations there, surrounded by a stockade. Pratt walked up and down in the glade, measuring out the ground and making notes in a little leathern bound book.

The next morning, under his direction, the whole company set to work. We first cut down all the trees growing for twenty rods about the glade. The space was cleared to prevent a surprise assault by savages lurking behind the pines. Then we cut and trimmed three hundred and ninety timbers from the young white pines we found growing in a burned-over part of the forest. Each was one foot in diameter and from ten to thirteen foot in length.

It took us a week to finish the work. It took another three days to drag and carry the timber into the glade. We then digged a three-foot-deep trench in the shape of a rectangle that was seventy-four-foot long and forty-five-foot wide in which we buried the butt ends of the sharpened stakes. That took another day. We then erected the sharpened stakes, which were eight foot in height. They comprised our stockade for which we fashioned four gates hung on hinge posts hard by the four corners of the rectangle. We built a big shed, with open sides, in the middle of the stockade in which we stored our victuals and drink from the Swan’s hold and all of our trade goods.

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