“Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation, Happy husband and wife and friends conversing together. Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Pleased with the image, that passed like a dream of love through its bosom, Tremulous, floating in air, o’er the depth of the azure abysses; Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors, Gleaming on purple grapes that, from branches above them suspended, Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eschol; Like a picture it seemed of the primitive pastoral ages, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, Old, and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers, So, through the Plymouth woods, passed onward the bridal procession.” Such is the poetic version of the legend of the Courtship of Miles Standish. Nearly every event which the poet has woven into his harmonious lines, is accurate even in its most minute details. We have given but a meagre view of the beauties of this Idyl, and commend the same, in full, to the perusal of the reader. CHAPTER XIV. _The Trading-Posts Menaced._ Menace of the Narragansets.--Roger Williams.--Difficulty on the Kennebec.--Bradford’s Narrative.--Captain Standish as Mediator.--The French on the Penobscot.--Endeavors to Regain the Lost Port.--Settlements on the Connecticut River.-- Mortality among the Indians.--Hostility of the Pequots.-- Efforts to Avert War.--The Pequot Forts.--Death of Elder Brewster.--His Character. In the spring of the year 1632 an Indian runner came, in breathless haste, into the village of Plymouth, with the intelligence that the Narragansets, under Canonicus, were marching against Mount Hope, and that Massassoit implored the aid of the Pilgrims. The chief of the Wampanoags had fled, with a party of his warriors, to Sowams, in the present town of Warren, R. I., where the Pilgrims had a trading-post. It used to be said, in the French army, during the wars of Napoleon I., that the presence of the Emperor, on the field of an approaching battle, was equivalent to a re-enforcement of one hundred thousand men. It seems to have been the impression, with both colonists and Indians, that Captain Standish, in himself alone, was a resistless force. He was immediately despatched to Sowams, _with three men_, to repel an army of nobody knew how many hundreds of savage warriors.