includes "a mortar and pestle,"
sometimes of iron, sometimes of "brass" or "belle-mettle" (bell metal).
They were of course, in the absence of mills, and for some purposes for
which small hand mills were not adapted, prime necessities, and every
house hold had one. A very fine one of brass (with an iron pestle), nine
and a half inches across its bell-shaped top,--exhibited by the Pilgrim
Society, and said to have been "brought in the MAY-FLOWER by Edward
Winslow,"--seems to the author as likely to have been so as almost any
article for which that distinction is claimed.

The lighting facilities of the Pilgrims were fewer and cruder than those
for cooking. They possessed the lamp of the ancient Romans, Greeks, and
Hebrews, with but few improvements,--a more or less fanciful vessel for
oil, with a protuberant nose for a wick, and a loose-twisted cotton wick.
Hand-lamps of this general form and of various devices, called
"betty-lamps," were commonly used, with candlesticks of various metals,
--iron, brass, silver, and copper,--though but few of any other ware.
For wall-lighting two or more candle sockets were brought together in
"sconces," which were more or less elaborate in design and finish. One
of the early writers (Higginson) mentions the abundance of oil (from
fish) available for lamps, but all tallow and suet used by the early
colonists was, for some years (till cattle became plentiful),
necessarily imported. Some of the "candle-snuffers" of the "first
comers" doubtless still remain. We may be sure every family had its
candles, "betty-lamps," candlesticks, and "snuffers." "Lanthorns" were
of the primitive, perforated tin variety--only "serving to make darkness
visible" now found in a few old attics in Pilgrim towns, and on the
"bull-carts" of the peons of Porto Rico, by night. Fire, for any
purpose, was chiefly procured by the use of flint, steel, and tinder, of
which many very early specimens exist. Buckets, tubs, and pails were,
beyond question, numerous aboard the ship, and were among the most
essential and highly valued of Pilgrim utensils. Most, if not all of
them, we may confidently assert, were brought into requisition on that
Monday "wash-day" at Cape Cod, the first week-day after their arrival,
when the women went ashore to do their long-neglected laundrying, in the
comparatively fresh water of the beach pond at Cape Cod harbor. They
are frequently named in the earliest inventories. Bradford also