For a whole year the Pilgrims had not heard a word from the great world across the sea. How eager they must have been for just one word from their old homes! One day the Indians sent runners to tell them that a ship was in sight. The cannon boomed on the hilltop. Captain Standish and his men ran for their guns and stood ready to defend the colony against Spaniards or French. But it was a ship with news and friends from Leiden and England. After a few weeks this ship returned to England loaded with furs, clapboards, and sassafras to pay those English merchants who had furnished the Pilgrims the _Mayflower_ to bring them to America. [Illustration: WEDDING SLIPPER WORN BY A MAYFLOWER BRIDE] [Sidenote: =An Indian's challenge to war=] An Indian chief, not far away, decided that he would rather fight with the Englishmen than be friendly with them. So he sent a bundle of arrows, wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin, to the governor of Plymouth. Squanto told the Pilgrims that this was an Indian's challenge to war. [Sidenote: =Bradford's answer=] The Pilgrims were men of peace, but they were not cowards. Governor Bradford filled the skin with powder and shot and sent it back to the hostile chief. But the Indians would not touch it and the chief would not permit it to be left in his wigwam an hour, but sent it from place to place, until it again reached Plymouth. Thus the Pilgrims went on year by year, living in peace when they could, but fighting when they must. Every year or so new settlers came from their old homes, and the colony grew slowly, but steadily. [Sidenote: =The Pilgrims the most famous of all the Puritans in America=] After a few years the new King of England was so hard upon the Puritans in England that thousands of them followed the example of the Pilgrims and came to America, and planted many other colonies in New England. But none have held so warm a place in the hearts of Americans as the little band brought to the New World by the _Mayflower_. JOHN WINTHROP, THE FOUNDER OF BOSTON; JOHN ELIOT, THE GREAT ENGLISH MISSIONARY; AND KING PHILIP, AN INDIAN CHIEF THE EQUAL OF THE WHITE MAN [Sidenote: =Colony at Salem=] =47. The Puritans.= While the Pilgrims were planting their home on the lonely American shore, the Puritans in England were being cruelly persecuted by Charles I. So great became their sufferings and dangers that the Puritan leaders decided to go to America, where they could worship as they pleased. Charles I, fortunately, gave them a very good charter. But even before this, some of the Puritans had already planted a colony at Salem. [Sidenote: =John Winthrop founded Boston, 1630=] =48. John Winthrop.= The Puritan leaders elected John Winthrop governor of the new colony. In the spring of 1630, nearly ten years after the _Mayflower_ sailed, more than seven hundred Puritans, in eleven ships, bade good-by to their beautiful English homes, crossed the ocean, and settled in what is now Boston.