delay was a short one, for her name stands thirteenth on the list.
Charlestown, however, held hardly more promise of quiet life than
Salem. The water supply was, curiously enough, on a peninsula
which later gave excellent water, only "a brackish spring in the
sands by the water side ... which could not supply half the
necessities of the multitude, at which time the death of so many
was concluded to be much the more occasioned by this want of good
water."

Heat was another evil to the constitutions which knew only the
equable English temperature, and could not face either the intense
sun, or the sudden changes of the most erratic climate the earth
knows. In the search for running-water, the colonists scattered,
moving from point to point, "the Governor, the Deputy-Governor and
all the assistants except Mr. Nowell going across the river to
Boston at the invitation of Mr. Blaxton, who had until then been
its only white inhabitant."

Even the best supplied among them were but scantily provided with
provisions. It was too late for planting, and the colony already
established was too wasted and weakened by sickness to have cared
for crops in the planting season. In the long voyage "there was
miserable damage and spoil of provisions by sea, and divers came
not so well provided as they would, upon a report, whilst they
were in England, that now there was enough in New England." Even
this small store was made smaller by the folly of several who
exchanged food for beaver skins, and, the Council suddenly finding
that famine was imminent "hired and despatched away Mr. William
Pearce with his ship of about two hundred tons, for Ireland to buy
more, and in the mean time went on with their work of settling."