"He tried
To live without her, liked it not and died."

Still another tragedy had saddened them all, though in the press
of overwhelming business, Winthrop wrote only: "Friday, July 2. My
son Henry Winthrop drowned at Salem," and there is no other
mention of himself till July 16, when he wrote the first letter to
his wife from America.

The loss was a heavy one to the colony as well as the father, for
Henry Winthrop, though but twenty-two, had already had experience
as a pioneer, having gone out to Barbadoes at eighteen, and became
one of the earliest planters in that island. Ardent, energetic,
and with his fathers deep tenderness for all who depended on him,
he was one who could least be spared. "A sprightly and hopeful
young gentleman he was," says Hubbard, and another chronicle gives
more minute details. "The very day on which he went on shore in
New England, he and the principal officers of the ship, walking
out to a place now called by the Salemites, Northfield, to view
the Indian wigwams, they saw on the other side of the river a
small canoe. He would have had one of the company swim over and
fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very
hot weather; but none of the party could swim but himself; and so
he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with the
cramp a few roods from the shore and drowned."

The father's letter is filled with an anguish of pity for the
mother and the young wife, whose health, like that of the elder
Mrs. Winthrop, had made the journey impossible for both.