The last day of the year 1620 came, sombre and sad. It was the Sabbath. Many were sick. All were dejected. Wintry dreariness frowned over earth and sea. Howling savages filled the forest. The provisions of the Pilgrims were very scanty. The Mayflower was soon to leave them, to contend, a feeble band, against apparently hostile elements, and against the far more formidable hostility of savage men. To meet these perils the Pilgrims could number but forty-one men. Sickness had already commenced its ravages, and of these men, within three months, twenty-one died. The chances that such a colony could long be preserved from extinction, must have seemed almost infinitely small. As usual, the Pilgrims rested from labor, and devoted the day, some on shore, some in the ship, to prayer and praise. On this day the Pilgrims solemnly named their little village Plymouth, in grateful remembrance of the kindness which they had received from the people of Plymouth, in England. Monday morning, the first day of the new year, dawned propitiously upon these bold-hearted exiles. A cloudless sky and genial atmosphere invited them to labor. It was still necessary to be ever prepared for an attack from their unseen foes. With no little solicitude, while urging forward their work, they watched the moving columns of smoke, which day by day rose from the distant wilderness, and the gleam of the fires, which by night illumined the horizon, indicating the movement and position of the Indians. During Tuesday and Wednesday these fires seemed to increase in numbers. They were thus led to infer that the savages were collecting in large numbers from distant parts, and were making careful preparation for a general and simultaneous assault upon the feeble colony. On Thursday morning, the 4th of January, Captain Miles Standish, who might be truly called the “bravest of the brave,” took with him four men, well armed, and boldly plunged into the forest, intending to find the Indians at their rendezvous, and if possible, to open friendly relations with them. Adopting every precaution to avoid falling into an ambuscade, he rapidly pushed forward several miles into the pathless wilderness, threading gloomy ravines, crossing rivulets, and traversing sublime forests. The wary Indians had undoubtedly their scouts stationed to give warning of any approach of the white men; for Captain Standish could not catch sight of a single one of the savages, though he found several of their deserted wigwams, and even the still glowing embers of their camp fires. The adventurers were also disappointed in finding that the woods seemed destitute of game. Upon their return, at the close of the afternoon, they shot one solitary eagle, whose flesh the Pilgrims, in their half famished state, pronounced to be “excellent meat, hardly to be discerned from mutton.”