abinet.

We are told of a sort of picnic day, when "our women went on shore to
wash and all to refresh themselves;" and fancy the times there must have
been among the little company, while the mothers sorted and washed and
dried the linen, and the children, under the keeping of the old mastiffs
and with many cautions against the wolves and wild cubs, once more had
liberty to play in the green wood. For it appears in these journals how,
in one case, the little spaniel of John Goodman was chased by two wolves,
and was fain to take refuge between his master's legs for shelter.
Goodman "had nothing in hand," says the journal, "but took up a stick and
threw at one of them and hit him, and they presently ran away, but came
again. He got a pale-board in his hand, but they both sat on their tails
a good while, grinning at him, and then went their way and left him."

Such little touches show what the care of families must have been in the
woodland picnics, and why the ship was, on the whole, the safest refuge
for the women and children.

We are told, moreover, how the party who had struck off into the
wilderness, "having marched through boughs and bushes and under hills and
valleys which tore our very armor in pieces, yet could meet with no
inhabitants nor find any fresh water which we greatly stood in need of,
for we brought neither beer nor water with us, and our victual was only
biscuit and Holland cheese, and a little bottle of aqua vitae. So we were
sore athirst. About ten o'clock we came into a deep valley full of brush,
sweet gaile and long grass, through which we found little paths or
tracks; and we saw there a deer and found springs of water, of which we
were heartily glad, and sat us down and drunk our first New England water
with as much delight as we ever drunk drink in all our lives."

Three such expeditions through the country, with all sorts of haps and
mishaps and adventures, took up the time until near the 15th of December,
when, having selected a spot for their colony, they weighed anchor to go
to their future home.

Plymouth Harbor, as they found it, is thus described:

"This harbor is a bay greater than Cape Cod, compassed with a goodly
land, and in the bay two fine islands uninhabited, wherein are nothing
but woods, oaks, pines, walnuts, beeches, sassafras, vines, and other
trees which we know not. The bay is a most hopeful place, innumerable
stores of fowl, and excellent good; and it cannot but be of f