Many a lesson was taken by the wondering settlers in New England forestry under the skilful tuition of Squanto or Samoset. “Once,” says the quaint old record, “a party of us got belated in the forest, where the night was spent; in the morning, wandering from the track, we were shrewdly puzzled, and lost the way. As we wandered, we came to a tree, where a young sprit was bowed down over a bow, and some acorns strewed underneath; Stephen Hopkins said it had been fixed to catch deer; so as we were looking at it, William Bradford being in the rear, when he came up looked also upon it, and as he went about, it gave a sudden jerk up, so that he was immediately caught fast by the leg. It was a very pretty device, made with a rope of their own making, and having a noose as artificially fixed as any roper in England could make, and as like ours as can be: this we brought away with us.”[207] This was a pleasant jest to the hunters, in which the gravest of them doubtless indulged in a laugh at their too curious governor, thus caught in the Indian deer-trap. The hint, however, was well worth their study; and often afterwards it served them a good turn, ere their ringing axes frightened the timid deer into following the dusky native hunters beyond the encroaching and ever-widening circle of civilization. To increase the general stock of information, and to relieve the routine _tedium_ of the settlement, several expeditions were planned during this first summer; and these looked into the continent a few miles distant in the east, the north, and the west.[208] The first of them took the shape of an embassy to Massasoit. As the warm weather brought the Indians to the sea-shore in search of lobsters and to fish, they proved to be a sad annoyance to the colonists. They were treated with uniform courtesy, and this kindness furnished a motive for frequent visits, so that men, women, and children, were always hanging about the village, clamorous for food and pertinaciously inquisitive. It was partly to abate this nuisance, and “partly,” says the old chronicle, “to know where to find our savage allies, if occasion served, as also to see their strength, explore the country, make satisfaction for some injuries conceived to have been done on our parts, and to continue the league of peace and friendship between them and us,”[209] that Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow were now delegated to wait upon the friendly sagamore in his forest home. In July, 1621, these earliest negotiators of New England set out upon their mission, “not with the pomp of modern diplomats, but through the forest and on foot, to be received, not to the luxuries of courts, but to share in the abstinence of savage life.” Marks of the devastation caused by the pestilence which had preceded their settlement, of “the arrows that flew by night,” were visible wherever the envoys went, and they witnessed the extreme poverty and feebleness of the aborigines.[210]