“New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the sea-shore. It has a broad street about a cannot-shot of eight hundred feet long, looking down the slope, with a street crossing this in the middle, and running northward to a rivulet, very rapid but shallow, which there empties into the sea, and southward to the land. The houses are built of hewn planks, with gardens, also enclosed behind and at the sides by hewn planks, so that their gardens, court-yards, and houses are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a sudden attack. At the ends of the streets there are three wooden gates. Their government is after the English form. The governor is annually elected. In inheritance they place all children in one degree, only the eldest has an acknowledgment of seniority. They have made stringent laws on the subject of adultery and fornication, and these ordinances they enforce very strictly, even among the savage tribes which live amongst them. “Their farms are not so good as ours at New Amsterdam, because they are more stony, and consequently not so fit for the plough. They have their freedom without rendering an account to any one; only, if their king should choose to send them a governor, they would be obliged to recognize him as sovereign chief. The maize-seed which they do not require for their own use they deliver over to the governor, at three guilders the bushel, who, in his turn, sends it in sloops to the north for the traffic in skins amongst the savages. They reckon one bushel of maize against one pound of beaver-skins. They have better means of living than ourselves, since fish swim in abundance before their very doors. There are also many birds, such as geese, herons, and cranes, and other small-legged birds, which are seen in flocks here in the winter. “The tribes in this neighborhood have the same customs as with us, only they are better conducted than ours, because the English treat them fairly, and give them the example of better ordinances and a better life; and also, to a certain degree, give them laws, by means of the respect they have from the very first established amongst them.”[571] In 1629, the bulk of the long lingering Leyden exiles—among the rest the wife and two sons of John Robinson[572]—at length landed at Plymouth.[573] The reunited flock, now sadly thinned by death, greeted each other with mutual tears and caresses; and tightly-clasped hands and wet eyes told what the voice was too choked to say. But in the midst of sadness they were joyous, for “Hope was changed to glad fruition; Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”