On the fifteenth an exploring party set off under the command of Captain Miles Standish. For drink, wrote Edward Winslow, there was “a little bottle of aqua vitæ—and having no victuals save biscuit and Holland cheese—at last we came into a deep valley full of brush, wood gaile [bayberry] and long grass through which we found little paths or tracts; and there we saw a deer, and found springs of fresh water, and sat us down and drank our first New England water with as much delight as we ever drank drink in all our lives.” They sighted a few Indians, who “ran into the woods and whistled their dogge after them”; and William Bradford, lagging behind to examine a deer-trap, was caught by the leg for his pains. “It was a pretty device made with a rope of the Indians’ own making which we brought away with us.” They were as eager as boys on a Scout trail; and when they came upon an old palisado, they were sure it must have been the work of Christians; and on what is still known as Corn Hill they found a cache of corn packed in baskets, and an old ship’s kettle. Whereupon they took a kettleful of corn along with them—they meant to pay for it when they found the owners, they said, and, moreover, many months after, they did so. They saw flocks of geese and ducks, and also three fat bucks, but would rather have had one. And they camped in the open near Stout’s Creek at East Harbor, and next day kept on to Pamet Harbor in Truro. Altogether a satisfying expedition for Miles Standish and his men who had been cooped up for so many weeks in the Mayflower, but they had found no spot to their taste for a settlement. They wanted not only good farm lands, but an adequate harbor for the trade that was to be: Pamet Harbor they dismissed on account of the “insufficiency of the place for the accommodation of large vessels and the uncertainty as to the supply of fresh water.” These way-worn stragglers were entirely sure they were to need accommodation for large vessels; fresh water, by the way, was there a-plenty, although they did not find it.