The lighting facilities of the Pilgrims were fewer and cruder than those for cooking. They possessed the lamp of the ancient Romans, Greeks, and Hebrews, with but few improvements,--a more or less fanciful vessel for oil, with a protuberant nose for a wick, and a loose-twisted cotton wick. Hand-lamps of this general form and of various devices, called “betty-lamps,” were commonly used, with candlesticks of various metals, --iron, brass, silver, and copper,--though but few of any other ware. For wall-lighting two or more candle sockets were brought together in “sconces,” which were more or less elaborate in design and finish. One of the early writers (Higginson) mentions the abundance of oil (from fish) available for lamps, but all tallow and suet used by the early colonists was, for some years (till cattle became plentiful), necessarily imported. Some of the “candle-snuffers” of the “first comers” doubtless still remain. We may be sure every family had its candles, “betty-lamps,” candlesticks, and “snuffers.” “Lanthorns” were of the primitive, perforated tin variety--only “serving to make darkness visible” now found in a few old attics in Pilgrim towns, and on the “bull-carts” of the peons of Porto Rico, by night. Fire, for any purpose, was chiefly procured by the use of flint, steel, and tinder, of which many very early specimens exist. Buckets, tubs, and pails were, beyond question, numerous aboard the ship, and were among the most essential and highly valued of Pilgrim utensils. Most, if not all of them, we may confidently assert, were brought into requisition on that Monday “wash-day” at Cape Cod, the first week-day after their arrival, when the women went ashore to do their long-neglected laundrying, in the comparatively fresh water of the beach pond at Cape Cod harbor. They are frequently named in the earliest inventories. Bradford also mentions the filling of a “runlet” with water at the Cape. The “steel-yards” and “measures” were the only determiners of weight and quantity--as the hour-glass and sun dial were of time--possessed at first (so far as appears) by the passengers of the Pilgrim ship, though it is barely possible that a Dutch clock or two may have been among the possessions of the wealthiest. Clocks and watches were not yet in common use (though the former were known in England from 1540), and except that in “Mourt’s Relation” and Bradford’s “Historie” mention is made of the time of day as such “o’clock” (indicating some degree of familiarity with clocks), no mention is made of their possession at the first. Certain of the leaders were apparently acquainted at Leyden with the astronomer Galileo, co-resident with them there, and through this acquaintance some of the wealthier and more scholarly may have come to know, and even to own, one of the earliest Dutch clocks made with the pendulum invented by Galileo, though hardly probable as early as 1620. Pocket watches were yet practically unknown.