1627

DIVISION OF LAND AND STOCK.

83

thrive. They had now learnt from their Indian friends the cultivation of maize," and they had also imported some horned cattle.3 Accordingly, in 1627 the settlers resolved to carry further the system of private allotments. The land along the banks of the stream to the south of the town was divided, by officers specially appointed, into patches of twenty acres each, with a river frontage of five acres. These were then assigned by lot to the different householders. At the same time the system of separate holdings did not entirely and at once supersede that of common tillage. Since it was beyond the power of a single householder to till twenty acres of ground at once, only those lots which lay near the town were to be taken in hand. Each landholder whose plot was brought under cultivation was to associate with him a certain number of his neighbours chosen by himself, or, in default, assigned to him by the Governor and Assistants. This arrangement was to last for four years. The owner was to reserve for his own use twice as much land as he would be able to reclaim within that time. Meanwhile his associates were to live on the rest, and at the end of the term to proceed to their own holdings. The owner of each plot was to have full rights over all timber which grew upon it, but he was to enjoy no monopoly of fowling or fishing, and he was bound to leave a footpath through his ground.

tion of live

At the same time, and no doubt as part of the same arrangement, a distribution of live stock was made. A Distribu- cow and two goats were allotted to every stock. thirteen persons. The details of the division are recorded with quaint minuteness. To compensate for varieties in the qualities of the animals, the reci pients of the better ones were bound to return a certain 1 Bradford, p. 61.

2 Ib.

4 Ib. p. 146. Records, vol. xi. p. 5.

3 lb. pp. 109, 137. 5 lb. vol. xii. p. 9.

proportion of the produce to the general stock. The arrangement was, no doubt, less complex in fact than would at first appear. Usually several of the joint owners were members of a single family, and we meet with more than one case where a comparatively rich man, such as Standish, at once bought out his partners.

of meadow

The increased prosperity of the colony is clearly marked by an entry in the records for 1633, dealing Allotment for the first time with the public meadow land. land. Hitherto, no doubt, the rearing of cattle had been confined to one or two of the richest settlers, and there had been no need for any general arrangement as to haymaking. But now the growth of other settlements in the neighbourhood enabled the colonists to drive a thriving export trade both in corn and cattle, and thus hay was needed both for rearing stock and feeding plough-oxen. Accordingly, we find the community adopting the arrangement universal in the old Teutonic system, and allotting to each household a portion of the common pasture, to be kept up and mown, and then to revert to public use.2

By this arrangement the land system of the community was brought into almost exact conformity with that of a primitive village community, as described by those who have reconstructed it from tradition and surviving details. Each household had its own equal patch of arable land. The grass land beyond was divided into two portions; one the waste, where all freemen had equal rights of common pasturage; the other subject to temporary occupancy by individuals on a regular system for the one purpose of haymaking. But, as we have seen, this likeness cannot safely be set down as the result of continuous usage, nor is it likely that it was caused by conscious imitation. It was

1 Bradford, p. 192.

2 Records, vol. i. p. 14.

1627

APPEARANCE OF PLYMOUTH.

85

rather due to the combination of a similar political system with similar conditions of soil and climate.

of the

It is not till a community has reached an artificial and self-conscious condition that it dwells on or comGeneral memorates the details of its everyday life. appearance Fortunately we have independent testimony settlement. from which we can form a clear idea of the outward appearance of the Puritan colony in its early days. In 1627 Isaac De Rasieres, the Secretary of the Dutch colony at New Netherlands, visited Plymouth. The circumstances of that visit will come before us again. For the present we are only concerned with his detailed description of the settlement, which evidently impressed him by its sober dignity and completeness.1 His description, read in conjunction with extant records, brings the little town clearly before our eyes. It stood on rising ground separated from the sea by some twenty yards of sand. The buildings were laid out like a Roman city in miniature. Two streets crossing one another formed the town. At their meeting stood the Governor's house. Before it was an open space, the forum as one may call it, guarded by four cannon, one to command each of the ways which met there. On an eminence behind the town, but within its precinct, stood the building which at once testified to the civil and religious unity of the little commonwealth and to the constant presence of an armed foe, the public storehouse, place of worship, and fort in one, protected with battlements and six cannon. Each house was a substantial log hut, standing on its enclosed patch of ground. Round the whole ran a palisade, the tun, which, as a distinguishing feature, so often gave its name to the Teutonic settlements. Of the four entrances three were

' De Rasieres' letter is printed in the Appendix to New England's Memorial, p. 495.

guarded by gates, the fourth being sufficiently protected either by the fort or the sea. Along the stream to the south was the arable land, divided into small patches of corn. Beyond lay the common pasture, the mark, with its diversity of meadow, wood, and jungle.

Trade of

The sojourn of the colonists in Holland had familiarized them with trade, and had developed habits and capacities beyond those of the ordinary English the colony. yeoman. The partnership with the London merchants too, short and unsatisfactory as it was, must have had its effect. Thus from the outset Plymouth was not merely an agricultural, but also a trading and seafaring community. In 1623 the settlers made their first commercial venture. They built a pinnace, and sent it south to buy corn and beaver from the Narragansett Indians. They found however that the Dutch had already secured that market, and that the beads and knives which they offered were little esteemed in comparison with the cloth and other commodities of their rivals.1 Next year the adventurers in England attempted, with the help of the settlers, to establish salt works at Plymouth, and a fishing station at the northern extremity of Massachusetts Bay, named by the filial piety of Charles the First Cape Ann.2 Both these undertakings failed through the incompetency and misconduct of those who were in charge of them, and an attempt next year to transfer the salt works to Cape Ann fared no better.3 In 1625 the settlers made a more successful venture by sending a shallop laden with corn to sell to the Indians along the Kennebec. This attempt prospered, although

2 This was one of the names given by Prince Charles, and either suggested or adopted by Smith (see p. 43). Smith himself had called the cape Tragabizanda after a princess the heroine of one of his romantic adventures in Eastern Europe. Bradford, p. 117.

1627-33

TRADE OF PLYMOUTH.

87

those who undertook it knew nothing of the district and had no experience in seamanship.'

In 1627 the settlers took an important step in extending their trade southwards. By establishing a permanent station at the head of Buzzards Bay, and keeping a ship there, they were able to secure an overland passage and avoid the dangers of Cape Cod."

Next year the trade on the Kennebec was definitely established by a grant of land there from the council for New England, and by the building of a factory.3 The colonists soon pushed their enterprise yet further. The partners who had bought the trade of the company set up a factory at the mouth of the Penobscot, and some of them, apparently as a private venture, built what is described as a wigwam in Machias Bay. These attempts were regarded by the French settlers in Canada as encroachments. In 1631 they attacked and plundered the factory at Penobscot, and soon after that at Machias shared the same fate. Over and above these ventures to the north, the settlers were pushing the trade with the Indians southwards, in the direction of the Connecticut. These proceedings, however, in that quarter were so closely mixed up with the history of Massachusetts, that it will be best to deal with them later.

The relations of the settlers to the Dutch in New Netherlands were in the early days of the colony uniIntercourse formly friendly. In 1627 the two governments with New exchanged letters, with promises of mutual lands. good offices and proposals for trade. It is noteworthy that Bradford in his letter dwells on the

Nether

1 Bradford, p. 138. Ib. p. 157.

2 Ib. p. 149. 4 Ib. p. 170.

Ib. p. 189; Winthrop's History of New England, vol. i. p. 117. Here and elsewhere I refer to the original pagination,

Winthrop, as above.