s in hunting
venison, snaring rabbits, catching wild fowl, and fishing, especially
during the yearly herring run in the town brook up to the lovely pond
called Billington Sea because its discoverer, young Francis Billington
mistook it for a salt inlet.

Also the faithful shallop was in constant use by successive parties, who
went out into the bay and came not back without a haul of lobsters, cod,
or other fish, though at first they were poorly provided with deep-sea
tackle and proper nets. Clams afforded a further help, the people
treading and digging the flats at low tide, while eels and crabs
supplemented this. They were grateful for these means of nourishment
from sea and shore, preventing their extinction; yet such could not
suffice for permanent living.

Bradford did all in his power to relieve the shortage of food supply.
Little could be procured from abroad, and in the case of a visiting
ship, the captain's price was cruelly prohibitive. A generous captain of
different character, in a fishing fleet to the north, persuaded his
fellows to spare from their own allowance enough to load the Pilgrim
boat. But the most of the required amount of corn was obtained by
bartering various utensils and beads with the Indians, though their
natural improvidence usually left them without much of a surplus in
crops. In trading expeditions by land and water, Standish and Bradford
were both active. And each of them at times was alone, of white men,
among the natives. Bradford once left a boat and walked fifty miles
back to Plymouth from the south, for the friendly neighboring tribes
were not long in discovering his inherent gentleness and fairness.

But firm discipline was necessary in times of dire need. A few
unreliable persons had become mixed in the original company, and
colonists new or old were punished by flogging, for the theft of corn,
some of which was occasionally abstracted even before it was ripe.
Bradford's appreciative quotation of Seneca's fine affirmation, that a
man is free who has control of his stomach, in this near famine would
seem to apply where self-denial meant malnutrition, to prevent
starvation.

Weakness and numerical smallness hindered the cultivation of the soil,
and the climax was a severe drouth from the last of May, 1623, till
about the middle of July, when the stalks nearly perished in the
excessive heat. A day of prayer was appointed, in which the Pilgrims
engaged earnestly for eight or nine h