may be sure every family had its candles, "betty-lamps," candlesticks,
and "snuffers." "Lanthorns" were of the primitive, perforated tin
variety--only "serving to make darkness visible" now found in a few old
attics in Pilgrim towns, and on the "bull-carts" of the peons of Porto
Rico, by night. Fire, for any purpose, was chiefly procured by the use
of flint, steel, and tinder, of which many very early specimens exist.
Buckets, tubs, and pails were, beyond question, numerous aboard the ship,
and were among the most essential and highly valued of Pilgrim utensils.
Most, if not all of them, we may confidently assert, were brought into
requisition on that Monday "wash-day" at Cape Cod, the first week-day
after their arrival, when the women went ashore to do their long-
neglected laundrying, in the comparatively fresh water of the beach pond
at Cape Cod harbor. They are frequently named in the earliest
inventories. Bradford also mentions the filling of a "runlet" with water
at the Cape. The "steel-yards" and "measures" were the only determiners
of weight and quantity--as the hour-glass and sun dial were of time--
possessed at first (so far as appears) by the passengers of the Pilgrim
ship, though it is barely possible that a Dutch clock or two may have
been among the possessions of the wealthiest. Clocks and watches were
not yet in common use (though the former were known in England from 1540),
and except that in "Mourt's Relation" and Bradford's "Historie" mention
is made of the time of day as such "o'clock" (indicating some degree of
familiarity with clocks), no mention is made of their possession at the
first. Certain of the leaders were apparently acquainted at Leyden with
the astronomer Galileo, co-resident with them there, and through this
acquaintance some of the wealthier and more scholarly may have come to
know, and even to own, one of the earliest Dutch clocks made with the
pendulum invented by Galileo, though hardly probable as early as 1620.
Pocket watches were yet practically unknown.