England, the strangeness and dangers of their surroundings in America, and
the appalling prevalence of disease and mortality among them, possibly
drove them to a more than normal fervor of piety. Since God was so
manifestly their only sword and shield, and was reputed to be so terrible
and implacable in His resentments, it behooved them to omit no means of
conciliating His favor.

Winthrop found anything but a land flowing with milk and honey, when he
arrived at Salem, where the ships first touched. As when, twenty years
before, Delaware came to Jamestown, the people were on the verge of
starvation, and it was necessary to send a vessel back to England for
supplies. There were acute suffering and scarcity all along the New
England coast, and though the spirit of resignation was there, it seemed
likely that there would be soon little flesh left through which to
manifest it. The physical conditions were intolerable. The hovels in which
the people were living were wretched structures of rough logs, roofed with
straw, with wooden chimneys and narrow and darksome interiors. They were
patched with bark and rags; many were glad to lodge themselves in tents
devised of fragments of drapery hung on a framework of boughs. The
settlement was in that transition state between crude wilderness and
pioneer town, when the appearance is most repulsive and disheartening.
There is no order, uniformity, or intelligent procedure. There is a clump
of trees of the primeval forest here, the stumps and litter of a half-made
clearing there, yonder a patch of soil newly and clumsily planted; wigwams
and huts alternate with one another; men are digging, hewing, running to
head back straying cattle, toiling in with fragments of game on their
shoulders; yonder a grave is being dug in the root-encumbered ground, and
hard by a knot of mourners are preparing the corpse for interment. There
is no rest or comfort anywhere for eye or heart. The only approximately
decent dwelling in Salem at this time was that of John Endicott. Higginson