Under the patronage of Dudley, and Saltonstall, and Eaton, and Pyncheon, and Bellingham, men of substance and “gentlemen born,” men willing and able to offer “the help of their purses,” reinforced by the good wishes of Puritanism at large, the new scheme soon got upon its working feet, and walked forward to success. But so far the project rested on parchment. It must be vivified, and sheltered beneath the _imprimatur_ of a hostile government. “Many riddles must be resolved,” said old Shirley, “and many locks must be opened by the silver, nay, the golden key.”[592] So they purchased of the Council for New England “a strip of land, in width three miles, north of the Merrimack, and three miles south of the Charles river, and running back from the Atlantic to the Western ocean; so that they were not likely to be crowded.”[593] Thus, though it might say as the chief captain Lysias said to Paul, “With a great sum of money obtained I this freedom,” the new colony had “a local habitation and a name” ere it was launched. It has been well said, that Endicott was just the man to lead this venture; firm, rugged, hopeful, zealous, devout, he knew no such word as fail. So on the 20th of June, 1628, he took his wife and children, and “not much above fifty or sixty other persons,” and plunged across the water.[594] They reached New England in the autumn[595]—that hazy, glowing, golden season, when the woods hang out their myriad-tinted banners to the wind, when the streams gurgle most laughingly, when Nature claps her hands with joy, and the “Hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,” smooth their wrinkled fronts into unwonted softness. Endicott must have had quite a different idea of the western wilds from that which stern, icy December daguerreotyped upon the minds of Bradford and his coadjutors. At once fraternizing with Conant’s sentinel squad—apprized of their coming by Woodbury, who had returned ere Endicott sailed—the new-comers proceeded to put up additional cottages; and they called the nascent hamlet _Salem_, “for the _peace_ which they had and hoped in it.”[596] Like their brothers at Plymouth, they immediately began to explore the surrounding country. Imagine their surprise when, on one occasion, they stumbled across “an English palisaded and thatched house.” Approaching cautiously, they heard the ringing music of an anvil. Here, in the heart of the wilderness, lived Thomas Walford, a hermit smith who had won wide favor with the Indians by his skill in working metals.[597]