and their home land. They
were as much alone as Enoch Arden on his desert isle. Can we imagine the
emptiness, the illimitable loneliness of that bay? One small shallop
down by the pier--that was the only visible connection between
themselves and England!

I do not believe that we can really appreciate their sense of complete
severance--their sense of utter isolation. And I do not believe that we
can appreciate the wild thrill of excitement, the sudden gush of
freshly established connection that ran through the colony, when, seven
months later--the following November--a ship sailed into the harbor. It
was the Fortune bringing with her news and letters from home--word from
that other world--and bringing also thirty-five new colonists, among
them William Brewster's eldest son and Robert Cushman. Probably the
greetings were so joyful, the messages so eagerly sought, the flutter of
welcome so great that it was not until several days had passed that they
realized that the chief word which Thomas Weston (the London merchant
who was the head of the company which had financed the expedition) had
sent them was one of reproof. The Mayflower had brought no profitable
cargo back to England, he complained, an omission which was "wonderful
and worthily distasted." While he admitted that they had labored under
adverse circumstances, he unkindly added that a quarter of the time they
had spent in discoursing and arguing and consulting could have
profitably been spent in other ways. That the first official word from
home should be one of such cruel reprimand struck the colonists--who had
so wistfully waited for a cheering message--very hard. Half frozen, half
starved, sick, depressed, they had been forced to struggle so
desperately to maintain even a foothold on the ladder of existence, that
it had not been humanly possible for them to fulfill their pledge to the
Company. Bradford's letter back to Weston--dignified, touching--is
sufficient vindication. When the Fortune returned she "was laden with
good clapboards, as full as she could stowe, and two hogsheads of beaver
and other skins," besides sassafras--a cargo valued at about five
hundred pounds. In spite of the fact that this cargo was promptly stolen
by a French cruiser off the English coast, it nevertheless marks the
foundation of the fur and lumber trade in New England. Although this
first visitor brought with her a patent of their lands (a document still
preserved in Pilgrim Hall,