Morrel was not spoiled by his disappointment. “I shall always be desirous for the advancement of those colonies,” he said.[475] And in a Latin poem addressed to the New England Council, he wrote: “If these poor lines may win that country love, Or kind compassion in the English move, Or painful men to a good land invite, Whose holy works the natives may enlight,— If Heaven grant this, to see there built I trust, An English kingdom from the Indian dust.”[476] But while “unmerciful disaster followed thick and followed faster” this enterprise of Gorges and several kindred ones,[477] smiting them into early graves, Plymouth, clasping hands with God, strengthened daily, and walked forward to assured success. Early in 1624, the annual election occurred. Governor Bradford, anxious to retire, pleaded hard for “rotation in office,” and alleged that that was the “end of annual elections.” But the Pilgrims rightly regarded him as a pivotal-man, and with rare good sense they reëlected him unanimously.[478] When the election was over the “Little James” was well victualed and despatched to the eastward on a fishing expedition. On reaching Damarin’s cove “there arose such a violent and extraordinary storm that the seas broke over such places in the harbor as were deemed absolutely secure, and drove the vessel against great rocks, which beat a hole in her hulk that a horse and cart might have gone through, and afterwards drove her into deep water, where she sank. The master was drowned; the rest of the men, except one, saved their lives with much ado; and all the provisions, salt, tackle, and what else was in her, was lost.”[479] Saddened by this mishap, but undismayed, the Pilgrims now commenced their preparations for planting. “A great part of liberty,” says Seneca, “is a well-governed belly, and to be patient in all wants.”[480] And Corbett, borrowing the same idea, put it into homely English by affirming that “the stomach is the cause of civilization.” He meant that hunger begets labor to satisfy its cravings. “Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines the mind. The keener the want, the lustier the growth.”[481] The famine of the past had revealed to the Pilgrims the weakness and inefficiency of the communal plan. It educated them; for on an individual basis they reaped plenty. They overcame hunger by patience. They flanked famine by a skilful social arrangement. Now, as before, each man broke ground for himself.[482] There was no longer an Elysium for sluggards; each reaped as he had sown. In March, 1624, Winslow returned to Plymouth, after an absence of eight months.[483] He brought with him three heifers and a bull—the first neat cattle that came into New England.[484] The exiles could no longer say, “We are without cattle, and we have no Egypt to go to for corn.”[485] Cattle they now had, and they created an Egypt.