CHAPTER IV.

BEGINNINGS.


There are travellers who insist that, as they near American shores
in May or early June, the smell of corn-blossom is on the wind,
miles out at sea, a delicate, distinct, penetrating odor, as
thoroughly American as the clearness of the sky and the pure, fine
quality in the air. The wild grape, growing as profusely to-day on
the Cape as two hundred years ago, is even more powerful, the
subtle, delicious fragrance making itself felt as soon as one
approaches land. The "fine, fresh smell like a garden," which
Winthrop notes more than once, came to them on every breeze from
the blossoming land. Every charm of the short New England summer
waited for them. They had not, like the first comers to that coast
to disembark in the midst of ice and snow, but green hills sloped
down to the sea, and wild strawberries were growing almost at
high-tide mark. The profusion of flowers and berries had rejoiced
Higginson in the previous year, their men rowing at once to "Ten
Pound Island," and bringing back, he writes: "ripe strawberries
and gooseberries and sweet single roses. Thus God was merciful to
us in giving us a taste and smell of the sweet fruit, as an
earnest of his bountiful goodness to welcome us at our first
arrival."

But no fairness of Nature could undo the sad impression of the
first hour in the little colony at Salem, where the Arbella
landed, three days before her companions reached there. Their own
cares would have seemed heavy enough, but the winter had been a