both weary and welcome home, and delivered in our corn into the store to be kept for seed; for we knew not how to come by any, and therefore were very glad, purposing, as soon as we could meet with any of the inhabitants of that place, to make them large satisfaction. This was our first discovery, whilst our shallop was in repairing. III.――THE FIRST ENCOUNTER. WEDNESDAY, the 6th of December [1620], we set out, being very cold and hard weather. We were a long while, after we launched from the ship, before we could get clear of a sandy point[403] which lay within less than a furlough of the same; in which time two were very sick, and Edward Tilley had liked to have sounded[404] with cold. The gunner also was sick unto death; but hope of trucking[405] made him to go, and so remained all that day and the next night. At length we got clear of the sandy point, and got up our sails, and, within an hour or two, we got under the weather-shore, and then had smoother water and better sailing. But it was very cold; for the water froze on our clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron. Illustration: GOVERNOR WINSLOW. We sailed six or seven leagues by the shore, but saw neither river nor creek. At length we met with a tongue of land, being flat off from the shore, with a sandy point.[406] We bore up to gain the point, and found there a fair income[407] or road of a bay, being a league over at the narrowest, and some two or three in length; but we made right over to the land before us, and left the discovery of this income till the next day. As we drew near to the shore,[408] we espied some ten or twelve Indians very busy about a black thing,――what it was we could not tell,――till afterwards they saw us, and ran to and fro, as if they had been carrying something away. We landed a league or two from them, and had much ado to put ashore anywhere, it lay so full of flat sands. When we came to shore, we made us a barricado, and got firewood, and set out sentinels, and betook us to our lodging, such as it was. We saw the smoke of the fire which the savages made that night, about four or five miles from us.