In some cases, like those of Gosnold, Raleigh, De La Roche, and others, attempts were made, and settlements actually planted, which seemed for a time to thrive; but the impatient planters, like curious boys, were so desirous of ascertaining how much their plants had grown, that they pulled them up to look at the roots,—an inspection which the plants resented by sulking and dying out. In other instances, fever and ague was mixed up with the first seed, and this had a chilling effect upon the husbandmen. Indeed, a hard fight is still going on in many parts of the country with this strong unsettler, the record of whose assaults and charges is found in the apothecary shops and doctors’ offices. These highly colored little stockades and forts with the rosy-hued land-offices for the sale of the most desirable real estate, with water-lots running in front of them, often indeed comprise the entire settlement. In some instances, the character of the soil interfered seriously with any permanent occupation of the place. People who had no objection to watered silks, or watered paper, entertained, it has been found, well-grounded reasons for not liking an oozy surface, paragraphed between watery curves, and punctuated with bullfrogs and other pointed characters. Some of the early settlers did venture upon these maritime risks; but policy, or no policy, they ended their speculations under weeping willows, with Keat-like epitaphs over them,— “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Oftentimes, even where the soil was rich, the early settler became discouraged by the unexpected crops he obtained. Planting wheat, he found that it came up a rank growth of Indian corn, tasselled out into tomahawks or sharp-pointed arrows, instead of the silken tufts which he had a right to look for in the order of nature. This result frequently took place in the valleys of the Connecticut and Mohawk, along the banks of the Mystic River, and upon the otherwise pleasant slopes overlooking Narragansett Bay. In several instances, too, as in the case of the shipped by the council of the Plymouth Company, the seed thus sent was taken from heaps of full-grown vicious specimens, to be found only in London, or other large places, instead of being judiciously selected from healthy young stocks. Such seed, of course, not only became sour and fermented, but this fermentation spoiled whatever good grain was found accidentally mixed with it. This kind of crop was even worse than that of the tomahawks or arrows. Of course, these penal crops were short-lived. The profligate and dissolute soon died in the virtuous solitudes in which they had no previous experience at home to recall and compare; and escaped as soon as possible from settlements whose greatest crime, in their eyes, was that in them they could make no scores long enough to be worth running away from.