In March, it is recorded that “a south wind brought fine weather, and that the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly;” but the sun shone and the birds sang above many graves. Of the forty-one who signed the “solemn compact” before-mentioned on board the Mayflower, twenty alone survived; the living were scarcely sufficient to bury the dead; the hale to attend to the sick. Among those who died thus early, were some of the most distinguished men; the excellent John Carver, whom they had by mutual consent appointed to be their governor, had on his first landing lost a son, and soon after the Mayflower took her departure for England, he himself was carried off suddenly, and his wife, broken-hearted, did not long survive. As spring advanced and the general sickness abated, the hardships of want had yet to be encountered. In the autumn of the following year their numbers were increased by fresh emigrants, who came unprovided with supplies, and the colony for six months had to subsist on half allowance. “I have seen men,” says Winslow, “stagger by reason of faintness for want of food.” In the next July we hear that their number was about one hundred persons, all in health, “that is to say, free from sickness, though not weakness;” they had nearly sixty acres of corn planted, besides well-furnished gardens. Unfortunately, however, a number of emigrants who stayed some time with them, proved to be “an unruly company, who exceedingly wasted and stole their corn, and secretly reviled them,” and their crop proving scanty, a famine would have ensued but for “an unexpected Providence” which sent a ship into their harbour, from which they bought knives and beads, and thus were able to trade with the Indians for corn and beaver. Nor were their sufferings from want of short duration. In the third year of their settlement, their want of food was so great that they “knew not at night where to find a bit in the morning,” and for three or four months together had neither bread nor corn, and having but one boat left, six or seven of their company took it by turns to go out and fish, never returning without a supply, though they might remain five or six days out; and when the supply was short, the remainder dug shell-fish from the sands for sustenance. And thus they lived through the summer, now and then getting a deer from the woods, and in the winter helping out with fowl and ground-nuts. In the midst of this season of want arrived a ship from England, bringing out many of their old friends and various of the wives and children of those who already were here, “and the best dish,” writes the simple chronicler, “that we could present them with, was a lobster or piece of fish, without bread or anything else but a cup of fair water.” When these passengers, says he, “saw our poor and low condition, they were dismayed and full of sadness,” adding that the “long continuance of our spare diet, and our labours abroad, had