Yet even here we find a paradox. They were so thinned in numbers that they had to be cautious, but in an emergency they knew how to be perfectly reckless and perfectly adequate to the occasion. In March, 1623, when news came that their friend Massasoit was "like to die," they knew that, if they were to be accounted loyal friends, they must follow the Indian custom of paying a visit to the chief in his last days. Therefore, Edward Winslow, with one Master John Hampden of London, and the Indian Hobbomock for guide, set out on foot around across the Cape, through what is now Eastham, to Mattapoisett, and thence to "Sowams," now the town of Warren, Rhode Island, the home of Massasoit. In spite of the protests of Hobbomock, part of the journey through the woods was made after nightfall, so eager were they to arrive before "Massassowat" died. And the accurate Winslow records and translates for us a sentence in Massasoit's own language, the very words of the great friendly sachem: "Matta neen wonckanet namen, Winsnow!" that is to say, 'O Winslow, I shall never see thee again.' Winslow tells us how he revived Massasoit by giving him a "confection of comfortable conserves on the point of my knife," and by performing other helpful offices, "which he took marvelous kindly"; and how he then set out on his homeward journey, after learning from the convalescent Massasoit of the plans of other tribes to destroy the paleface colony. On Winslow's return trip through the woods, the Indians themselves, he says, "demanded further how we durst, being but two, come so far into the country. I answered, where was true love, there was no fear." They did explore. But their exploring was always for community purpose, whether for "true love," or for parleys with the French and Dutch, or for trade with Squanto's friends at Chatham, or for pasturage for their "katle," or for fish. We do not know how La Salle and De Soto and the Sieur de Champlain would have looked upon the woods around Plymouth and the Cape. They would probably have thought of them as suburbs of the Mississippi. But as we sit on the Standish doorstep and glance out toward Plymouth, with the harbor between us and the Duxbury woods behind, we realize that the first settlers here were quite completely cut off from the shelter of that comely fort on Burial Hill. There was something very hardy and permanent about their pioneering, though there was always a reasonable explanation for the risks they undertook. There were no heroics about it. Their chronicler says simply, "now they must of necessitie goe to their great lots; they could not other wise keep their katle." They did not come over out of restlessness, or for adventure, or primarily for exploring the new continent, at all. Mr. John Alden spoke in the authentic colonial spirit. They came over to settle it--to open it up. CHAPTER III WINSLOW'S "GREAT LOT"