terrible one, and Dudley wrote later in his letter to the Countess
of Lincoln: "We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected
condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before; and
many of those alive, weak and sick; all the corn and bread amongst
them all, hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight, insomuch
that the remainder of a hundred and eighty servants we had the two
years before sent over, coming to us for victuals to sustain them,
we found ourselves wholly unable to feed them, by reason that the
provisions shipped for them were taken out of the ship they were
put in, and they who were trusted to ship them in another, failed
us and left them behind; whereupon necessity enforced us, to our
extreme loss, to give them all liberty, who had cost us about L16
or L20 a person, furnishing and sending over."

Salem holding only discouragement, they left it, exploring the
Charles and the Mystic Rivers, and finally joining the settlement
at Charlestown, to which Francis Higginson had gone the previous
year, and which proved to be in nearly as desperate case as Salem.
The Charlestown records as given in Young's "Chronicles of
Massachusetts," tell the story of the first days of attempt at
organization. The goods had all been unshipped at Salem and were
not brought to Charlestown until July. In the meantime, "The
Governor and several of the Patentees dwelt in the great house
which was last year built in this town by Mr. Graves and the rest
of their servants. The multitude set up cottages, booths and tents
about the Town Hill. They had long passage; some of the ships were
seventeen, some eighteen weeks a coming. Many people arrived sick
of the scurvy, which also increased much after their arrival, for
want of houses, and by reason of wet lodging in their cottages,
etc. Other distempers also prevailed; and although [the] people