e.

It is easy to believe that down to the very rack on which they
landed crept the club-moss which the descendants of the Pilgrims
so soon learned to call "evergreen." Tons of it we use today in
our Christmas decorations, nor does the supply from the
Massachusetts woods seem to diminish, ground-pine, common, and
"coral" evergreen, all varieties of the club-moss, that are
commonest out of the dozen that we have in all. Just up those dark
gullies Town Brook would have led them, as it will lead anyone
today, to a country that now, as it was then, is rich in winter
beauties of the woodland with which the exiles might well have
decorated the cabin of the Mayflower. And just within the woods in
any direction waited for them, had they had the will and the
wisdom to seek them, all kinds of Christmas cheer. Deer were
there, wild turkeys in great flocks and two varieties of grouse as
tame as chickens on a farm, and more delicious than any Christmas
goose which might have been served them in Holland or England.
There were no savages about Plymouth at the time and they might
have travelled the woods boldly, instead of taking prudent council
of their fears. But they need not have gone so far as that for
their Christmas feast. The sandy flats of nearby creeks were full
of clams and the sea of fish. The boar's head they might not have,
but there were splendid substitutes for it if they had cared to
make their Christmas feast of products of the new land to which
they had come.

Against all this, no doubt, they sternly set their faces, and
indeed, instead of feasting and good cheer on their December 25th,
they set soberly to work to build their first common house,
cutting greenery indeed, but not for decoration, and dining
abstemiously on the stores that they had shipped months before in
England. One can but believe that had they for a few bright
holidays put their fears behind them with their solemnity and
celebrated their own safe landing with a few roasted turkeys, a
few boiled cod and some clam soup, eaten in an evergreen-decorated
cabin of their good ship, or about a barbecue fire on shore, they
might have taken a step toward warding off the sickness which was
even then fastening itself upon them. But they certainly did not,
and in visiting their landing-place on their landing-day and
trying to see the world here as they then saw it, one must put
such riotous thoughts out of mind, as he must put the great
present-day town out