It seems paradoxical to speak of child-life in this hard-pressed, serious-minded colony, but it was there and, doubtless, it was normal in its joyous and adventuresome impulses. Under eighteen years of age were the girls, Remember and Mary Allerton, Constance and Damaris Hopkins, Elizabeth Tilley and, possibly, Desire Minter and Humility Cooper. The boys were Bartholomew Allerton, who “learned to sound the drum,” John Crakston, William Latham, Giles Hopkins, John and Francis Billington, Richard More, Henry Sampson, John Cooke, Resolved White, Samuel Fuller, Love and Wrestling Brewster and the babies, Oceanus Hopkins and Peregrine White. With the exception of Wrestling Brewster and Oceanus Hopkins, all these children lived to ripe old age,—a credit not alone to their hardy constitutions, but also to the care which the Plymouth women bestowed upon their households. The flowers that grew in abundance about the settlement must have given them joy,—arbutus or “mayflowers,” wild roses, blue chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, purple asters, golden-rod and the beautiful sabbatia or “sentry” which is still found on the banks of the fresh ponds near the town and is called “the Plymouth rose.” Edward Winslow tells[16] of the drastic use of this bitter plant in developing hardihood among Indian boys. Early in the first year one of these fresh-water ponds, known as Billington Sea, was discovered by Francis Billington when he had climbed a high hill and had reported from it “a smaller sea.” Blackberries, blueberries, plums and cherries must have been delights to the women and children. Medicinal herbs were found and used by advice of the Indian friends; the bayberry’s virtues as salve, if not as candle-light, were early applied to the comforts of the households. Robins, bluebirds, “Bob Whites” and other birds sang for the pioneers as they sing for the tourist and resident in Plymouth today. The mosquito had a sting,—for Bradford gave a droll and pungent answer to the discontented colonists who had reported, in 1624, that “the people are much annoyed with musquetoes.” He wrote:[17] “_They_ are too delicate and unfitte to begin new plantations and colonies that cannot enduer the biting of a muskeet. We would wish such to keep at home till at least they be muskeeto proof. Yet this place is as free as any and experience teacheth that ye land is tild and ye woods cut downe, the fewer there will be and in the end scarce any at all.” The _end_ has not yet come!