Part 2 (2/2)

and the old house has been the homestead of her descendants all these years.

When we had signed our names in the big register, and turned to go, Barbara said, ”Do you know why the Aldens and Standishes left Plymouth and came over here so far?”

”Why, they came over to settle it,” said Mr. John Alden kindly; ”to open it up.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Myles Standish Monument]

As we went out down the lane, we turned to take one more look at John Alden's land. There, in the middle foreground, we saw the artist, sketching busily.

”How did _you_ get here?” we asked in a breath.

”In the car. How did _you_ get here?”

”We walked,” said Barbara with emphasis.

”Like to go the rest of the way by stage?” inquired the artist affably, hoisting his sketching kit over his shoulder and pointing to the car at the foot of the lane. ”I'm going over to the Standish house next.”

”Did you know,” said Barbara dreamily to the artist, as she seated herself in the car, ”that the four most famous descendants of John Alden and Priscilla were John Quincy Adams, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and Tom Thumb?”

”Barbara,” said the artist gravely, ”did you make that up?”

”No,” said Barbara, clutching the seat as we went around the corner on one wheel, ”I looked it up.”

Country over which you have just been prowling on foot looks very different when viewed from a car. The blackberry tangles and wild rose-bushes, through which we had waded on our way to the woods, were now simply part of the scenery. And the Myles Standish monument, which had been our mariner's needle, one of the necessities of life, was now only a forsaken watch-tower, with a solitary figure on top of it against the sky. We went careening up the side-road to the Standish house, which was built in 1666, not by the captain himself, but by one of his sons.

It was closed. An old house, locked, with an open field around it and the sea below; a perfect place for sketching, and the rising wind from the sea. Barbara went softly up to the doorway and touched the rusty latch. On one side of the doorstep was a lilac bush, and on the other a wild birch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Standish House, Duxbury, (1666)]

This is probably the oldest of the gambrel-roofed houses on the harbor.

There is something very strong and homely about the pitch of the roof--a balanced, firm old line, in splendid proportions with the huge chimney and low walls. A weathered gambrel has a way of looking at home in the fields, a sort of boulder-shape firmly settled. And the Standish house, with its flat field-rock for a doorstep, looks like a very old settler indeed.

For a long time we sat on the doorstep and watched the outline of Plymouth Town across the harbor, and the white gulls flying, and the crows. The son of Standish of Standish knew where to pitch a house.

Th.o.r.eau criticizes the Pilgrims for lacking the explorer's instinct.

They were not woodsmen, he says, nor, except spiritually, pioneers at heart. He calls attention to the fact that it was long after the landing before they explored the woods and ponds back of Plymouth, territory ”within the compa.s.s of an afternoon's ramble.” ”A party of emigrants to California or Oregon,” says he, ”with no less work on their hands and more hostile Indians, would do as much exploring the first afternoon, and the Sieur de Champlain would have sought an interview with the savages, and examined the country as far as the Connecticut, and made a map of it, before Billington had climbed his tree.”

Well, the Sieur de Champlain had not with him such little travelers as Ocea.n.u.s Hopkins and Peregrine White. After the deaths of the first winter, every one of the few grown men left in the colony was needed for immediate affairs. They could not afford to go exploring overmuch. With the exception of the madcap Billingtons and one boy Crackston, they ran very little risk of losing themselves in the woods. They went, as much as possible by sea, to Kennebeck, to Boston, to all parts of Cape Cod.

But as to wandering through the woods on foot, that was done only for good and warrantable reasons, not to see what they could see.

Yet even here we find a paradox. They were so thinned in numbers that they had to be cautious, but in an emergency they knew how to be perfectly reckless and perfectly adequate to the occasion. In March, 1623, when news came that their friend Ma.s.sasoit was ”like to die,” they knew that, if they were to be accounted loyal friends, they must follow the Indian custom of paying a visit to the chief in his last days.

Therefore, Edward Winslow, with one Master John Hampden of London, and the Indian Hobbomock for guide, set out on foot around across the Cape, through what is now Eastham, to Mattapoisett, and thence to ”Sowams,”

now the town of Warren, Rhode Island, the home of Ma.s.sasoit. In spite of the protests of Hobbomock, part of the journey through the woods was made after nightfall, so eager were they to arrive before ”Ma.s.sa.s.sowat”

died. And the accurate Winslow records and translates for us a sentence in Ma.s.sasoit's own language, the very words of the great friendly sachem: ”Matta neen wonckanet namen, Winsnow!” that is to say, 'O Winslow, I shall never see thee again.' Winslow tells us how he revived Ma.s.sasoit by giving him a ”confection of comfortable conserves on the point of my knife,” and by performing other helpful offices, ”which he took marvelous kindly”; and how he then set out on his homeward journey, after learning from the convalescent Ma.s.sasoit of the plans of other tribes to destroy the paleface colony. On Winslow's return trip through the woods, the Indians themselves, he says, ”demanded further how we durst, being but two, come so far into the country. I answered, where was true love, there was no fear.”

They did explore. But their exploring was always for community purpose, whether for ”true love,” or for parleys with the French and Dutch, or for trade with Squanto's friends at Chatham, or for pasturage for their ”katle,” or for fish.

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