“He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth Children from play and old men from the chimney-corner.” SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. The life of the Pilgrim Fathers in these first years of their settlement was full of incident. They could not assent to Solomon’s _dictum_, that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Here they found a new heaven and a new earth; all things were strange. Their only acquaintance in the western wilds was God; and they never wearied of investigation. Their first move, after thanking God for preservation and a safe voyage, was to explore. They loved to “guess” out enigmas. They were always analyzing the soil, and speculating on the prospects of storms, and dickering with the Indians. From the homeliest and most commonplace circumstances, they did not disdain to gather wisdom or “to point a moral and adorn a tale.” They had a teachable spirit, and were ardent students in the school of nature. The unbroken forest especially possessed an unfading charm in their eyes. They were fascinated both by its freedom and its vastness; for in England, whatever patches of wood existed were enclosed in the parks of the exclusive nobles, and a bitter code of game-laws barred all entrance. But while a source of pleasure, it was also often a source of anxiety. One pleasant afternoon Winthrop took his gun and strolled into the woods for a short walk. He lost his way, and night overtook him. Kindling a fire, he prepared to “camp out.” He spent the hours till dawn in walking up and down and “singing psalms.” Next morning he reached home safely, much to the delight of his neighbors, who had passed the entire night in the forest, hallooing and shooting off guns, in the hope that the lost governor might hear them.[731] On another occasion one of the settlers lost a calf. Hearing the wolves howl in the night, he got up and shot off his musket several times in rapid succession, to frighten them away. The wind carried the report to all the settlements; every one was aroused; drums were beaten; messengers were despatched to spread the alarm; every bush was taken for an Indian. “But next morning the calf was found unharmed, the wolves and the colonists being well frightened. The former had disappeared, and the latter went ‘merrily to breakfast,’ esteeming their alarm a good joke, and quaintly rallying one another on the ‘great fear that had come upon them, making all their bones to shake.’”[732] But their fright was not foolish; it was bred of caution and a knowledge of their situation. They remembered with old Ben Johnson, that “A valiant man Ought not to undergo or tempt a danger, But worthily, and by selected ways; He undertakes by reason, not by chance.”