een too vast ever to be adequately described,
the influence of those brave pioneer women, while less ostentatious, is
none the less powerful.

What perils, what distress, what positive torture, not only physical but
mental, those first mothers of America experienced! Sickness and famine
were their daily portion in life. Their children, pushing ever westward,
also underwent untold toil and distress, but not to the degree known by
those founders of New England; for when the settlements of the later
seventeenth century were established some part of the rawness and
newness had worn away, friends were not far distant, supplies were not
wanting for long periods, and if the privations were intense, there were
always the original settlements to fall back upon. Hear what Thomas
Prince in his _Annals of New England_, published in 1726, has to say of
those first days in the Plymouth Colony:

"March 24. (1621) N.B. This month Thirteen of our number die. And in
three months past die Half our Company. The greatest part in the depth
of winter, wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the
scurvy and other diseases, which their long voyage and unaccommodate
conditions bring upon them. So as there die, sometimes, two or three a
day. Of one hundred persons, scarce fifty remain. The living scarce able
to bury the dead; the well not sufficient to tend the sick: there being,
in their time of greatest distress, but six or seven; who spare no pains
to help them.... But the spring advancing, it pleases GOD, the mortality
begins to cease; and the sick and lame to recover: which puts new life
into the people; though they had borne their sad affliction with as much
patience as any could do."[1]

Indeed, as we read of that struggle with famine, sickness, and death
during the first few years of the Plymouth Colony we can but marvel that
human flesh and human soul could withstand the onslaught. The brave old
colonist Bradford, confirms in his _History of Plymouth Plantation_ the
stories told by others: "But that which was most sad and lamentable, was
that in two or three months' time half of their company died, especially
in January and February, being the depth of winter ... that of one
hundred and odd persons scarce fifty remained: and of these in the time
of most distress there was but six or seven sound persons; who to their
great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains, night nor day, but
with abundance of toil and hazard of